I've Had It Up to Here with Teenagers (2 page)

9.
Perform only the minimum you are asked to do, in order to keep expectations low.

10.
Try not to agree with your parents' opinions too often. It sends the wrong message.

It used to take so little to excite my children. If I handed them iced cookies from the bakery, I was rewarded with beaming, ear-to-ear smiles. An extra half-hour of television time would result in squeals of joy and, “You're the best, Mom!” I miss being popular. These days, I could probably wake my teens with a surprise we're-going-to-Disney-World announcement, and they'd say, “Do we have to get up right now? Can we go later?” No matter what I tell them to do, how I phrase it, or when I impart any information or directions, my teenagers generally don't want to hear it. The bottom line is that they don't want to be directed by me at all—even if they desperately need my help, and we both know it. All this is a perfectly natural part of growing up. I understand that, but it still hurts my feelings.

The personification of this phase is perfectly captured in a scene from the movie
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
. The bride's aunt
and mother are hatching a plan. The aunt says, “Tell me what to say, but don't tell me what to say.” That's how teenagers feel all the time, I think. It absolutely wears me out.

I'm not a fan of the know-it-all teen or the I'm-too-cool-to-get-visibly-excited-about-anything teen. To combat such common pitfalls, frequent attitude adjustments are as necessary as teeth cleaning. There's no way around it. We have minor adjustments at least once a week around here.

One of my pet peeves that often provokes an attitude adjustment occurs when a teenager
tells
me what he or she is going to do as he or she heads out the door. Telling—rather than asking—skips right on over that pesky ask-for-permission step. I don't like that.

“Bye, Mom. I'm going to _____ with _____. See you later!”

“Would you like to rephrase that, sweetie?”

“Huh?”

That's when I give him or her
the look
. Every mom has
the look
. Words are unnecessary.
The look
speaks volumes. I can use it to control my children from all the way across the room. It's quite handy.

“Oh,
fine
, Mom.
May
I please do _____ with _____ tonight?”

A question is a horse of a different color, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not running a hotel here. It's my job to know where those people I gave birth to are at all times, which is tricky. They can be elusive. Sometimes, it's like trying to get the governor on the phone to stay an execution, or trying to spot the Loch Ness monster in the middle of his/her foggy lake.

I have even been known to pull off the side of the road if an immediate attitude adjustment is called for. On the way to a 6:30
A.M
. baseball practice (which meant I was cooking breakfast at 5:45 on
the first day of summer, like a farmer's wife on the prairie), my son complained so much in the car that I pulled off for a come-to-Jesus meeting that couldn't wait one more second.

“What exactly is your problem, son?” I asked.

“It's stupid to have practice this early! I'm in a bad mood because I had to get up on the first day of summer! What do you expect? Why did you have to get me up so early?” He asked this with a martyred air, as if it were somehow my fault.

I let his little tirade hang in the air for a few seconds and then took a deep breath to lay it on the line in terms my teenager would understand.

“Let me tell you exactly what I expect. You will be polite and respectful when you talk to me. I'll give you a pass on
friendly
this morning. It's a little early for friendly.
Polite
is going to happen, or we can sit here in this car all morning long.”

“
Mom!
Start the car! I'm going to be late!” he bellowed, panicked.

“No way. You owe me an apology. Then I'll give you a chance to start over. That's the good thing about moms. You get unlimited chances to start over. That's good because you need a lot of chances.”

“That's so stupid, Mom! You don't understand anything!”

“Do you want to play baseball, son?”

“What? Of course, I do! You know that!”

“Fine. This is part of it. I have no control over baseball. All I do is sign you up, write a huge check I can barely afford, wash your uniforms, and transport you, you ungrateful wretch. I assure you it is not convenient for me to take you to the school at this hour. I have two other children, a husband, and a job. Get it? You don't have to do this. In fact, it will be much easier for me if you don't.
It will be cheaper, too, and I can think of a lot of fun things to do with my free time other than sit in sweaty ballparks all season long. If you want to play, that's okay, too. I'll support you. However, I am not listening to another word of complaint. Practice is whenever the coach tells you to be there. I do not have one thing to do with it. Those coaches control my schedule, too, you know. My work and vacation days are held hostage all the time by football, basketball, and baseball coaches. I am not going to argue with you about this. If you want to do it, I'll make it happen for you. If you don't, quit. This isn't school. You have to go to school. You don't have to play sports. It's your choice. There will be early-morning practices, late-night practices, and homework to do at eleven o'clock—sometimes after you lose a game, when you are hot, tired, hungry, and in a bad mood. That's the way it goes. You know that. Make a decision right now. Suck it up and play, or don't. It's entirely your call. Either way, you will not talk to me like this again. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And?”

“I apologize. I do want to play.”

“Good deal. Now, what do you want for lunch when you get home?”

With teenagers, once it's over, it's over. There's no point in dwelling on past sins. Onward and upward.

Another stage most teenagers go through that occasionally requires some fine-tuning is the hermit crab phase. That's when teenagers hole up in their rooms like they're hiding out from the Mafia. The only way you know they're still breathing in there is because the music is usually turned up loud enough to rattle
the windows and send tiny rivers of cracking plaster raining down from the ceiling. They emerge periodically like wild animals to forage for food in the kitchen and then scurry back into their rooms to talk for hours on end to their friends on cell phones or the computer. When guests—adults or teenagers—come over, we demand that the cave dwellers emerge to speak and engage in social interaction to keep up their people skills. But it doesn't last long. Adults aren't as interesting to teenagers as their own kind.

The hermit crab stage didn't last long around here, I'm relieved to say. My kids moved quickly from that phase to hanging out with their friends every single moment they aren't in school, participating in extracurricular activities, sleeping, or eating. If one of my teenagers ever accidentally arrives home one minute before his or her curfew, he or she will stand on the front stoop and talk to friends until time runs out. Coming in before one's curfew just isn't done in teenager world.

When family events roll around, I have to make sure to give my kids plenty of advance warning that their presence will be required. My people have to check with their people. You know how it is.

“Don't forget your grandfather's birthday lunch on Sunday!” I remind them a few days beforehand.

“We will all be eating together at 6
P.M
., got it?” I shout as I hear the front door slam.

“You have to get a haircut this week—no excuses!” I begin with that one on Monday and hope that by Friday, the haircut has happened.

“I expect to see you at your sister's play on Tuesday!” I warn the boys in my house.

“Sure, sure, we haven't forgotten,” they answer irritably. They
always make me feel like a too-big-for-my-britches member of the White House staff who lobbies constantly to get on the president's appointment schedule, confident that this will eventually result in an ambassador's appointment to some small island in the South Pacific.

Parenting is the hardest job in the world. Period. The logistics are mind-boggling. Believe me when I tell you that it is not one bit of fun to be in charge of other people's dental hygiene, doctor visits, sports injury rehabilitation, clothing, money, schoolwork, and the thousand other things you have no idea you're signing up for when they hand you that nine-pound bundle at the hospital, roll you in a wheelchair to the front door, and tell you to toddle on home. I never in my life thought I would have to tell someone with bigger feet than my own, “You have to cut your toenails today.”

There is no more humbling work on the face of the earth than being a mother. The chauffeuring services alone are enough to turn off most prospective parents. In addition to the work itself, which is hard enough, it's all uphill. Teenagers do not appreciate what their parents do until much, much later in life. They do not have a positive attitude or a pleasing disposition a lot of the time. Nobody who is doing a good job of it has an easy time raising teenagers. That's such a shame. It shouldn't be that way. It doesn't have to be that way. Sadly, it usually is that way.

Here's the punch line: it's all worth it. I'm telling the truth. That's how God gets you. Once you count those little fingers and toes, smell that newborn head, and feel the weight of that baby in your arms, you're hooked. No matter how hard the future is, you never regret having children. You love them no matter what. I don't know how that works, but it's true. I always tell my kids that even if they go to prison, I'll visit them and bring brownies. That doesn't mean
I'll condone whatever crime sent them there. But I'll never stop loving them. Never. That doesn't mean I have to
like
the little suckers all the time, however. I don't. Parental love is fierce and illogical. I think it is the strongest force on earth. It trumps everything, thank God: mounds of laundry, sleepless nights, hard stadium seats, endless recitals, broken hearts, losing seasons, throw-up viruses, bad grades, poor choices, and everything else life throws at teenagers and their parents. In the end, when nothing else connects you to your teen, and you seem to be worlds apart, love remains. That's the saving grace.

 

1.
“You don't understand anything!”

2.
“It's not that big of a deal, Mom.”

3.
“I'll do it tomorrow.”

4.
“Nobody cares but you.”

5.
“It won't cost anything.”

6.
“I don't have any homework.”

7.
“Somebody must have stolen it.”

8.
“You can check me out. We're not doing anything in school today.”

9.
“I hate it/that/them/him/her!”

10.
“Nobody writes thank-you notes anymore.”

11.
“There's nothing to eat in this house!”

12.
“I turned it in for sure.”

13.
“I just found out about it.”

14.
“I need another check.”

 

T
o teenagers, money is an abstract concept. They can count money as skillfully as professional football bookies, of course. It's not about the math. The problem is that the sums don't mean much because there is no real-life context for them. Teenagers have no experience with agonizing decisions such as, “Should I pay the mortgage or the dentist's bill first?” Like sex and death, budgeting is something you have to experience firsthand to appreciate fully. Of course, most teenagers do not earn money or support themselves in any meaningful way. That is as it should be in our society. However, this means that teenagers understand money only theoretically. As every adult knows, it's a long way from Monopoly money to real-life cash.

In teenagers' minds, all the money the family brings in is split between two giant pots of dollar bills at the end of the rainbow.
One pot contains money that belongs to parents. Teens have a vague understanding that parents use this money to pay bills. Lord knows, they hear enough about that. Just ask your teenagers how often they've been told, “That's too expensive!” or “We can't afford that!”

How many times have you asked your teenager, “What did you do with the twenty I gave you yesterday?” My teens cannot seem to grasp the concept of change. I do not remember ever receiving any change from cash I have doled out to them, no matter how small or large the initial request was. They squirrel away my change in their back pockets like they expect to be asked to pay a poll tax at any moment. Teenagers bank (literally) on parents forgetting to ask for their change. My guess is that this is a good ploy. I bet it pays off more often than not. To combat the lack-of-change con game, I keep stacks of ones and fives like a purse-carrying drug dealer. I will give my child seven ones to go through a drive-through rather than the ten-spot most parents fork over without a second thought. I'm cheap. I have to be. We are on a tight budget. I'd love to be cavalier about small expenditures. Who wouldn't? I feel sure I'd be a genuinely delightful rich person. Unfortunately, I do not see that happening anytime soon.

My teens know that asking me for money while I am sitting at my desk paying bills is like poking a tiger with the barbecue tongs. Just interrupting me with a question is likely to bring on a tirade about the family budget, college tuition plans, federal income tax, the national debt, and the perils of late credit card payments. I can barely add and subtract without a calculator, so it might result in a balance-the-checkbook-for-Mama math assignment, too. No teenager in my house would make an amateur mistake like being in the same room when I am suffering through a bill-paying
morning. When word leaks out that Mom is paying bills downstairs, my teenagers run like they're minors fleeing a bar with mai tais in their hot little hands during a police raid.