Have you ever read something that was just what you needed to read?

I finished reading Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. There is an essay/chapter within it titled “Parenting in Three Stages.”

“Adolescence comes as a gigantic shock to the modern parent, in large part because it seems so much like the adolescence you yourself went through. Your adolescent is sullen. Your adolescent is angry. Your adolescent is mean. In fact, your adolescent is mean to you.”

Back when they looked like this,

I could ask them to make their beds and they’d respond with sweet laughter (even if they didn’t make their beds).

But now, they look more like this:

and if I ask them to do the smallest thing, fire comes out of their ears. They whine. They sigh heavily. They’re angry.

Thank you, Nora, for letting me know their behavior is normal. I can laugh it off now. Kinda.