Teenagers!

Happy Sunday everyone!

I think today I'll introduce you to my DS, the teenager. DH and I were married for 11 years before our little bundle of joy came along. What a difference another person in your household can make! I always thought I would be a different kind of parent than my parents were, and still think I am to some degree (my mother would agree!) but now that he's a teenager, I hear these words coming out of my mouth that echo my mother's and are ones I swore I would never use. "Because I said so" is fast becoming my most used expression. When I was a kid I WANTED a reason, now I realize sometimes there isn't a good enough reason. Am I crazy here? Or have I reached the age of senility?

Don't get me wrong, for the most part he is a dream child. He has a good sense of what is right and what is wrong and is not afraid to tell you (or anyone else for that matter because he knows it all!) He makes good choices, he gets good grades, he hangs out with good kids and USUALLY does what I tell him, though it might be a few minutes, hours, days, decades later. I keep telling him to save his pennies because if he intends on using his God-given talents, he's going to need to go to law school, and that's expensive! This kid could argue that the sky is green and the grass is blue and win!

I remember being a teenager...when no matter how much face washing I did my face still looked like a relief map of the Andes. I washed my hair every day, but you could still drill for oil the next morning and strike it rich! When a cross look could make you burst into tears and a NO response to something you REALLY wanted to do made you have the most cruel parents in the world. Having lived through that and made it to the other side (being a parent now) I see why things were the way they were. Explain THAT to your teenager.

When he was little, I wondered why these little energetic bundles didn't come with an owners manual, I still think they should! I kept turning him over and looking for an OFF button because being an older parent I struggled to keep up! Now I wonder where the ON button is, because unless he's out playing sports, he's the new throw cover for our sofa. Couch potato isn't even a good enough description, it's more like couch slouch.

I hear myself using expressions like "I brought you into this world, I can take you out!" and "If your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do that too?" Even now that we are the same height, we don't see things eye to eye. Please, parents to grown children, tell me there is a light at the end of the tunnel! I know that this hormone-induced defiance will one day end and the human I once nursed will emerge again, but in the meanwhile I need a little hope. Teeenagers....you can't live with them, and you can't kill them!

Before I posted this, I read it to my teenager, who began to argue that it isn't true...and you know what, he ALMOST won! Harvard Law School, here he comes, maybe HE can teach YOU a thing or two!