When parenting teens, it's very important to know how to choose your battles. I learned this hard way. I would fight every battle, no matter how big or small, it was all a battle.

Then it happened, I overheard a conversation between the two teen step-daughters. I overheard the youngest telling the eldest that all I do is yell and she has learned to tune that out. That brought about an epiphany a memory flooded in in the form of Drill Instructor advice from one of my fellow DI's. Spidahl said that recruits would learn to tune me out. They would tune me out because all I did was yell, jump up and down, make them exercise, and piss them off. They would tune me out because I wasn't teaching them anything other than discipline.

The following day I heard someone say "Will it make a difference in five years? If the answer is yes, then fight it, if not forget about it."

I took those two pieces of advice and put them together. It wasn't easy, but within a few months we were developing healthier relationships and they began to actually listen.

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