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Teenagers are smart.  They want to be independent but they like having food provided and their clothes cleaned so they hang around home.  The problem is that they don’t always want to live by “house rules.”

My wife and I have been married 37 years.  We didn’t think we were going to be able to have children but lo and behold after being married 10 years we had a son followed by two more sons.

Over the years I have been “taken to school” by these fine young men and I thought, if you have teenagers, I could pass what they have taught me (often without meaning to) your way so that perhaps you could use less headache medication than I have had to take.

Here are three ways to know your teenager is not telling you the truth or is up to something:

1. Massive Showering
   

   Your teen comes home and goes straight to the shower.  The shower creates steam and privacy.  A teen can take their cell phone into the bathroom (with the phone placed between towels) and live for days.

   Reasons for going in there may be to wash off the smell of smoke, alcohol or to wash the sleep out of their eyes because they didn’t sleep at the overnight the prior evening.

   Another takeoff on this same theme is to hurry to the bathroom indicating they are in distress.  The whole idea is to avoid initial contact with a parent whose nose and/or eyes may get too close.

2. Your Teen Often Asks to Spend the Night at a Friend’s House
   

   The problem with friends is that you don’t know who is going to be home.  They may live with seven dwarfs.  Also, there are some pretty crazy parents.  Some feed the kids booze and at least on one occasion we had a mom be less than circumspect while getting dressed.

   A red flag should go up when your teen says that one of their friend’s parents works third shift so you cannot talk to them about rules and who is going to be there when your teen is spending the night

3. Anger is a Great Source of Information

   If you ask your teen about something they may have done wrong and they fly off the handle chances are good you have done a good job.  Remember, teens always operate by the methodology “A good offense is the best defense.”

While I am writing this with a bit of tongue in cheek, I would urge you to take inventory if your teen begins to want money all the time because that may signal drug use.

When your teen changes those kids he or she hangs with all of a sudden then there be trouble “a-brewing.”

Today though, parents almost have an unfair advantage.

Why?  Teens are lazy.

There are many computer sites kids go today such as FaceBook and MySpace.  Kids get and post messages as well as pictures.  Often they roll merrily along thinking they are safe.  The problem for them is they don’t sign out of their site so when mom or dad rev up the computer in the morning to check the stock market, they see their teen in the latest Victoria’s Secret “pajamas” or puffing on something they can’t quite identify.  Or better yet they see a verbal response from one of their teen’s friends congratulating them on their latest success at “fooling their parents.”

Of course there are still such things as eye contact but why worry about such mundane things when most of the time our teens, God love’em, simply shoot themselves in the foot.

I will retain you in my prayers