Reasons to love your teen

You are raising a teenager. It may seem unbelievable, but here are 15 things to love about your teen:

1. Dora has left the building.

2. Driving you to the brink of insanity with an in-flight tantrum alienating every passenger on board? Replaced by DRIVING you to the airport.

3. Sharing a PG movie then discussing meaningful themes and life lessons.

4. Not expected to read literature assigned in high school (which is cool since The Odyssey is not your “cup of tea”).

5. You dress better now as a matter of THEIR survival.

6. Glimpsing your teen’s joy and skill on the football/soccer/baseball field invigorates the soul.

7. When they cross the room just to bend and give you a hug (read: RARE!), your heart grows three sizes.

8. Forwarding the hilarious youTube they showed you, and suddenly becoming the coolest cat at the office.

9. Tenth graders do a significantly better job vacuuming than toddlers do.

10. Suppositories and rectal thermometers are history.

11. Shelling out $20 for the size XL shirt they’ll wear for two years is better than that $20 onesie which fit for two weeks.

12. Your dream of seeing Europe/taking up golf/reading the classics? Possibly within the realm of possibility now.

13. They no longer spit out purple liquid medicine, staining their white polo and making it hard to know how much of the dose to repeat.

14. Grounding them via email or Facebook.

15. Finally finding time to scrapbook baby photos—a task leading you to fall in love with your teen all over again.

Michele Ranard is a freelance writer from Roscoe, IL.