Teenage Mood Swings

I knit when I get home from school and need a minute to unwind and relax. I really need my head examined, after teaching junior high kids all day. Todays lesson on emotions was a real crack up since my students are the epitome of emotional insanity. Funny things, these hormones and the effects they have on teenagers. I look into the insecure eyes of my students and sense that each of them feels they are the only one in the entire world who has extreme mood swings, and they have no idea why. When they walk in the house in their frequent bad mood, it is automatically assumed something has happened. Asking your kid, "What is wrong?" is responsed with, "nothing". If the truth were known, there is nothing wrong, they are just in a bad mood. Who knows why? The more the adult figure -you, inquires, the angrier the teen gets, until there really is something the matter, it is YOU!
Teens go on these crazy up and down mood swings, until they really believe they are wacked out and need therapy. My students seem so relieved when I describe the emotional mood swings they experience and look at me skeptically and wonder, how I know what they are going through. Kids really are OK. They need to know they are normal, even though they don't believe it most of the time-mood swings and all. Their highs and lows will eventually even out and someday, they may be normal. OK, as normal as normal can be. You gotta love em!!