Parenting 201

Teenagers. What are you going to do? My daughter Gracie is downstairs sniffling and feeling sorry for herself because I am making her clean the kitchen. She pulled out all the stops to try and get out of it, but this time, I didn't fall for it! In case anyone else is dealing with a teenager type, this seemed to work:

1. First she tried the old "rearrange the mess and quietly disappear up to her room and say she did it" scam. I called her on it and told her to finish the job.
   
2. Then she tried to argue her way out of it, but I cut her off at the pass and told her that regardless of who's mess it is, (it was her mess), she is going to clean it up.
3. Finally came the waterworks, with well-timed sniffing so I would notice, and the accusatory "Nothing I ever do is good enough!" ploy, i.e. "you are permanently damaging my self esteem by daring to say that the kitchen is still dirty" guilt trip. I didn't fall for that one either, and mused aloud so she could hear me: "You are certainly putting in a lot of effort not to have to clean the kitchen." Then directly to her, "You are still going to clean the kitchen".

Guess what? The kitchen is now clean! Gracie is now in her room feeling sorry for herself, but the kitchen is clean. I told her, "Thank you, you did a good job". She grumbled something under her breath (probably better that I didn't hear it), stomped up the stairs and began her official pouting session.

That's OK, she can pout. She can feel sorry for herself. The first rounds of kitchen cleaning were NOT good enough. She knew it, I knew it, and it would have been damaging to her self-esteem if I had let it slide. (Not to mention damaging to my morning plans if I had done it for her.)

Today, I get to chalk up a victory, albeit a small one, but a victory nonetheless. As many of us know, when dealing with teenagers, you need every point you can get.

RH

Truth and Disinformation

As I mentioned in my last entry, school's out for summer (or will be soon...my daughter is done for the year and this is my son's last week). I had an interesting little conversation with my kids on the ride home from picking up my daughter from school. I had asked her how she was feeling about the school year being over, and her reply was "both happy and sad".

We then began discussing the year, and all the things that happened, how fast it flew by and so on. She then mentioned that a few kids had gotten into trouble during the year, some had been expelled, some suspended and then reverse suspended - meaning they have to stay during the summer to finish up - and we started to talk about the reasons why.

Can you guess?

One expulsion was for cheating...they take that kind of thing very seriously at her school, but the rest of the problems were drug and alcohol related. Lest you start feeling superior because "the school your kids go to don't have drug and alcohol problems", let me assure you, you are wrong. In fact, I am not even going to refer to it as a "problem", because it is so common it is really a rite of passage. These were the kids that were just stupid enough to get caught, meaning the experience was most likely new to them, and they didn't yet know how to "maintain" as we used to say.

I then launched into one of my mini-lectures (the car ride is only so long) when my daughter said, rather tenatively "it seems like everyone is getting high, and they are still doing allright". She continued to bring as an example a boy who is the sports star at the school, and pulls off straight As to boot. "He is a complete stoner and has a bong in his room". Her issue was that what she was observing in real life hardly seemed to correspond to the doomsday message being hammered into her head at school about the evils of drugs and alcohol.

Time warp! You might even say, Flash Back!

Suddenly I was back in high school and was remembering a conversation I had had with one of my "party friends". We were making fun of a list they had given us on "how to know if you had a problem with drugs or alcohol". According to their list, half the school should have been in rehab. The adults had no credibility then, and they don't have it now. Why? Because adults are not telling kids the truth. We are using scare tactics and zero tolerance which is falling on deaf ears because reality is so obviously quite different.

At what point do people go through this brain scrub that causes them to forget how things were when they were young, and start spouting off platitudes like there is no tomorrow?

I know the answer.

It is that moment of terror when you realize that your sweet little child will one day have to navigate the sometimes hellacious halls of highschool. Because we know what may happen with the boy who is a sports star and gets straight As.

RH

PS... I am planning to write more on this topic because it is so very important. So please chime in and stay tuned!