What to Expect From 15-Minute Parenting: The Teenage Years

As you read through this book, I invite you to hold in mind that play is not a box of toys, nor is it even a sequence of activities. Play is a state of mind and a way of being. In order to playfully connect with your teenager, you must be playful within yourself.

This is an age when we are most likely to have stopped playing with our teenagers. Often it is parental resistance I meet when suggesting play between parents and teenagers because we struggle to imagine ourselves playing with our teenagers. We feel awkward, so we imagine it will be awkward and we avoid it, telling ourselves that they are too old for play. Well, I have witnessed a marshmallow snowball fight in a home for the elderly with a group of women in their eighties and I can tell you that we are never too old for play. Moreover, we need play and playfulness in our lives.

This is what I want you to take away from reading this book – that play is not only possible with teenagers, it is vital, it is fun and it is worthwhile!

As you read through this book, I invite you to hold in mind that play is not a box of toys, nor is it even a sequence of activities. Play is a state of mind and a way of being. In order to playfully connect with your teenager, you must be playful within yourself.

This is about grabbing opportunities for shared joy as they arise in your relationship with your teenager.

You will make play possible when you embrace the mantra that good enough is good enough and that nurturing your relationship with your teenager is about valuing effort over outcome. Being open to trying something new, to attempt to work it out by yourself is a brave and worthwhile endeavour, even when it doesn’t work out as you might have wished it to. I believe that the failings throughout our life serve as a breadcrumb trail of growth and learning and bring us to a place of fresh thinking and new perspective where we shake off the shackles of our pursuit of perfection and embrace the authentic learning to be found in good enough.

This book is your road map to guide you along the route to relational repair. Just as there is genuine value in trying, failing and learning, there is important learning and an opportunity for growth and development (as a person) in how we negotiate relational rupture (falling out with each other) followed by experiential repair (how we mend that rift and come back together).

These are the core principles of 15-Minute Parenting from infancy and come back into sharp focus now as you prepare to parent through these teenage years. You will row with your teenager. That is a statement of fact and not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. The rows and tension are developmentally unavoidable but the key to strengthening and enhancing your relationship with your teenager is how you come back together after such a row.

This book is filled with practical, playful and creative communication techniques to strengthen and enhance your relationship with your teenagers. Along with gaining a deeper understanding of adolescent (neurological, physical and psychological) development, keeping play alive in your relationship with your teenager will result in fewer tears and more laughter.

Joanna Fortune

15-Minute Parenting the Teenage Years

Joanna Fortune

Published: 23 October 2020

Creative communication to stay connected to your teenager.

The Language of Play Series