“Does she mean it?” the friend asked my son.
“She always means it,” he replied. “My mom doesn’t bluff.”
He got that right.
We made it past the red-glitter-shoe stage. However, the clothing wars continue to this day. Each year brings new fashion challenges. Currently, the battle rages over Nike gym shorts my child would like to wear to every event she attends, whether they are appropriate attire or not. I understand that teaching children to dress for work, church, school, and social events is part of the parenting job description. Like so much of parenting, it isn’t one bit of fun.
It didn’t help that the last time I forced my child into appropriate piano-recital attire, a lazy parent sat right next to me with her kid dressed in hot-pink and lime-green Nike gym shorts. I wanted to smack her and her kid. My child skewered me with a glare that would have undoubtedly turned me to stone if she had known how to cast the spell. I ignored the look and sighed.
“You look beautiful,” I told my daughter.
She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t want to look beautiful,” she said. “I wanted to wear my gym shorts.”
“She only wants to wear shorts these days!” the I-just-want-my-kid-to-be-happy parent leaned over and whispered in my ear. She shrugged her shoulders with a what-can-I-do-about-it gesture toward heaven.
You can do plenty, I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. I just smiled politely. My job is to teach my kids to do the right thing, regardless of what other people do. I just wish other people wouldn’t make my job so much harder than it has to be.
Boys are easy to dress. They wear little boys’ sizes until they outgrow them, and then they wear men’s sizes. Simple. Once they graduate to a blazer, khakis, and a dress shirt, that uniform stays the same for the rest of their lives. Add suits for work, a tuxedo, and gray slacks, and men are good to go. My father, husband, and boys wear clothes that are remarkably similar. Sure, there are youthful distinctions. My sons look rakish in bow ties, but my husband can’t pull it off. He would look like a cinched-up garbage bag in a bow tie. Some fashions, even for men, look best on young, triangle-shaped bodies. In general, however, the male wardrobe comes fairly standard.
Girls are another matter entirely. Since it is impossible to find clothes that fit me anymore, I thought it would be easy to clothe my teenage girl. Everything I try on seems more suited to her body and taste. Everything I see for sale seems to be cut for a teenage body, not one that has been stretched out to carry nine-pound babies. Every dress I try on is too short for me to bend over without revealing my granny panties. I assure you that sight would thrill no one. Don’t even ask me what in the world has happened to women’s T-shirts. I have no idea. They are now teeny-tiny. The cut is called “form-fitting.” Whose form? They look great on my size-zero daughter, but when I try them on, they cling lovingly to each of my fat rolls. This is not a good look for me or anyone else my age. Also, the T-shirts are so long! I’d need a torso like Uncle Sam to use up all that material. If I buy a unisex T-shirt, the neck strangles me and smashes my bosoms flat. This issue has just about worn me out. If you have any ideas, I’d like to hear them.
The biggest conflicts arise over clothing selection. Teenage girls are particularly sensitive to anything that makes them look like “babies.” Why are young people always in such a hurry to grow up? Comfort is not a priority. It’s a fashion-first mentality. Since most designers sew for anorexic-looking six-foot-tall models, the average teenager has to adapt that look for the real world. This leads to arguments about dress and skirt length. Most schools have a “fingertip” rule. No dress or skirt can be shorter than the student’s fingertips when her arms are at her sides. You can’t believe the unnatural ways girls will contort their bodies to convince their moms that the skirts they want to buy meet the school dress code requirements.
Other arguments sprout up over cleavage, bare shoulders, sheer v. opaque, and heel size. There is no end to the variations in girls’ clothing, so naturally there is no end to the number of contentious fashion points to be negotiated for every social occasion. The selection of a prom dress has forced many a mother to bed with a bottle of Tylenol and an ice pack. Feathers have flown; shoes have been flung; doors have slammed; hairbrushes have banged. Fathers have been forced to toss both daughters and mothers over their shoulders to carry them off to their respective bedrooms for a cooling-off period.
I’ve already told my daughter that she is wearing my wedding dress when/if she marries. It was my mother’s before me, and if it was good enough for both of us, it will be good enough for her. I don’t care if she has to alter every stitch in it. If it’s too short, we’ll add a ruffle. If it’s too long, we’ll cut it off. Every girl’s a sucker for the big meringue. It will be lovely, I promise. No way can we survive shopping for a wedding dress together. There isn’t enough liquor in the whole wide world.
My boys are skilled at avoiding being drawn into fashion discussions between my daughter and me. They know better than to pick sides. They are determined to remain as neutral like Switzerland. When asked for their opinions, which may require them to look away from ESPN’s SportsCenter for a few seconds, they mumble that they don’t know which shoes look better. If pressed, they shrug and say, “They both look fine to me. Wear whichever ones you like better.” This complete lack of interest usually results in a mother or sister flouncing off in a huff.
On a positive note, however, when a mom or sister gets an honest-to-God compliment from a son or brother in the household, it’s the real deal. You can take it to the bank. When I came down the stairs recently dressed rather stylishly (for me) for a television interview, rather than in my customary sweatpants and Saints T-shirt, one of my sons stared at me with big, round eyes so long the Coke ran over the top of the glass he was filling, which is as fine a compliment as I have ever received.
“Wow, Mom, you look great … like a real person!”
“Thanks!” I said, resolving on the spot to bake that boy a pie.
I take my compliments where I can get them these days. They are few and far between. You can’t be too picky if you’re hoping for praise from a teenage boy and you’re over the age of consent. In general, adult women are simply invisible to teenage boys.
When my daughter was a toddler, if she saw that my fingernails were polished, she immediately suspected I was leaving town for business or pleasure.
“You going to a hotel, Mommy?” she’d ask, holding my hand and examining my French manicure up close, one finger at a time. “I like hotels, too, Mommy! I want to swim in the pool,” she’d remind me in a wheedling voice.
In the scheme of scary, this-could-happen-to-me family scenarios like unplanned pregnancies, drug problems, failing grades, or criminal behavior, clothing clashes really aren’t that big of a deal. I realize that. This doesn’t mean, however, that a parent/teenager what-to-wear power struggle doesn’t feel like the end of all civilized communication at the time. This, too, will pass. My grandmother used to tell me that when I was a teenager. It irritated me then, and it irritates me now—which doesn’t make it any less true.
Parenting teenagers is a life of triage. You have to accept that premise when your oldest child turns thirteen. Most importantly, you have to make sure your kids breathe in and out and their hearts continue to beat every single day. Sometimes, just the knowledge that they are alive and well is enough. In a world with so many dangers, asking for anything more sometimes seems greedy.
But when things are sailing along as smoothly as they ever do in a household with teens, I have opportunities to address lesser issues, too. I ask (some would say “interrogate”) my teens, “How are your classes going? Are you going to be able to support your family one day with those grades? What’s going on with your friends? Do you realize how much your brother/sister loves you?” Eventually, all the big stuff gets handled—one way or another, for good or for ill. Then it’s time to address the minutia.
My teenagers need to know things�
��like whether or not I will actually have a heart attack if my daughter wears flip-flops to her grandmother’s funeral. “Count on it,” I tell her. It’s hard to predict life with hormonal teenagers and a menopausal mother. It’s a volatile mix. I might take those flip-flops off my child’s feet and beat her over the head with them. Real life is full of risks. My teenagers have learned that life lesson well. They live in fear of Mom. I think that’s a good thing.
CLOTHING COMPLAINTS
1.“If I have to wear that, I don’t want to go!”
2.“Do you want me to look like a nun?”
3.“I’ll be the only guy there in a coat and tie.”
4.“If you pick it out, I probably won’t like it.”
5.“It’s not too short.”
6.“Everybody wears it like this.”
7.“Nobody wears that anymore.”
8.“I don’t know how that hole got there.”
9.“I left my jacket somewhere.”
10.“Mom, what did you do with my ______?”
11.“I don’t have anything to wear!”
12.“My swimsuit is pulled up.”
13.“I like to wear it this way.”
14.“You are so old-fashioned.”
15.“Mom, what look are you going for with that outfit?”
Can I
Drive?
Teenagers genuinely believe they are immortal. If you have doubts about that, ask them yourself. Grab a random teenager from the nearest sidewalk. It doesn’t have to be one of your own. He or she will tell you the same thing Dustin Hoffman tells Tom Cruise in the movie Rain Man: “I’m an excellent driver.” Of course, the next part of that quotation is also true. Hoffman’s character, Raymond, adds, “Dad lets me drive slow on the driveway.”
Unfortunately, teenagers don’t drive slowly on the driveway. They’ve moved past plastic coupes and battery-powered Jeeps and Barbie cars. That starting flag has been lowered—permanently. Teenagers drive real cars purchased with real cash. They fill those cars up with tank after tank of gasoline, which is like pouring liquid gold down the drain. Teenagers use more gas driving around doing nothing than any other group of humans on earth. Go ahead. Ask your teenagers where they’re going this weekend. They’ll say, “Nowhere.” Ask what they’re planning to do. They’ll say, “Nothing.” Ask who is going with them. They’ll say, “No one.” Illuminating, isn’t it? Teenagers are the only people in the world who can use an entire tank of gasoline in one weekend without going more than five miles in any direction.
Teenagers are not excellent drivers, statistically speaking. They’re inexperienced, obviously. They’re also easily distracted, like dogs when a squirrel runs across the road in front of them. One pretty girl or cute boy walking down the side of the road can cause a pileup. Did you know that the more kids they cram in their cars, the more likely they are to be involved in an accident? It’s true. It makes sense, when you think about it. The more friends, the more distractions the driver has. Think about how loud a group of six teenagers is in your basement when they are all laughing, yakking, and wrestling with one another. Now, think about loading that same group into a car and handing them the keys. How safe does that sound to you? It makes me feel like I’m going to vomit. Filling a car with teenagers is like shoving an open box full of puppies into a car without their mama. That’s exactly what a carload of teenagers without adult supervision seems like to me. On the surface, it looks like a whole lot of fun. But really, it’s just asking for trouble.
When more than one teenager occupies a vehicle, there are bound to be arguments over music selection and who gets to ride shotgun. Those arguments can get physical. Bodies may be tossed over the seat or shoved out the door. I shudder just thinking about those long, late-night road trips to the lake and beach. Also, teenagers always leave about ten minutes later than any mature person in his or her right mind. They are unconcerned about traffic jams. They are completely confident that they won’t encounter any detours, accidents, or delays. They leave the exact amount of time needed to drive to their destination, with no wiggle room or margin for error. Then they have the audacity to be outraged if they are delayed in any way.
“It’s not my fault I’m late! I left in plenty of time! It takes eleven minutes to drive there from here. Why did they pick that street for roadwork? It’s totally unfair!” they screech, as if the Department of Transportation goes out of its way to make life difficult for teenage drivers.
I never thought I would say this (yet another item in the long, humbling list of things I never thought I would say or do), but music may be the most dangerous driving distraction for teens. Don’t panic. I haven’t joined a new anti-music cult. It’s not that I think kids who listen to loud music are headed to hell on the expressway. It’s not their souls I’m worried about here. (Although if you haven’t gone through the playlist on your kid’s iPod, you need to do that ASAP. I had to ask my husband to explain some pornographic lyrics in a rap song one time. Once I grasped the anatomical references, it made me blush, and I’ve been married for nearly twenty-five years. Stay on top of the music they download on the computer. You will likely discover some potty-mouth songs that would embarrass a sailor. I can only assume that rap singers have very limited vocabularies. Otherwise, they would not have to resort to such vulgarities as space fillers in their songs. Profanity is the stuff of small minds, I always say.)
The problem is that teens can’t hear anything else going on around them when they crank up the tunes. If teenage drivers cannot hear ambient noises, they can’t respond to auditory warnings in a timely manner. If they can’t hear the police siren, they don’t know to pull over, and that can’t possibly end well. If they don’t hear the tornado siren, they don’t know to abandon the car and dive in the closest ditch. If they can’t hear other drivers and pedestrians—as well as see them—they’ll miss out on important clues to help keep themselves and other people alive.
When a pedestrian crossed against the light one afternoon and came within a hairsbreadth of being mowed down by my teenager, my son was outraged—not at the close call with death but by the fact that the pedestrian had clearly flaunted the rules for safe passage across the street.
“It’s not his turn to cross, Mom! He can’t do that!” my son said in righteous indignation.
“You’re right,” I said. “He should definitely have waited for the light. However, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to run over him just because he jaywalked. It’s not a death-penalty offense.”
If the music is so loud that people can hear it outside the car, it’s like voluntarily making oneself deaf, I tell my kids. I promise you that if a teenager pulls up to my house with the car windows rolled down and the stereo blasting, he or she is responsible for babysitting any neighborhood children who are awakened from their naps. My bet is that spending an afternoon with a toddler who missed his or her nap will turn a music-blaring teenager into a monk with a vow of silence in a matter of hours.
This car-stereo discussion brings up another important question: why do teenagers always turn the music in their rooms or cars up so loud? It’s one of the great mysteries of teenage life. Their ears are still sharp, so it can’t be that. Is it the assumption that everyone else wants to listen to what the teenagers want to hear? That is quite erroneous, I assure them. How often do you enjoy the same music your kids listen to? Sure, it happens sometimes, but not often. First of all, if we grownups like the music they’ve chosen, that is almost enough of a reason right there for the teenagers to find fault with it. If I like the Avett Brothers and Amos Lee and needtobreathe (I do) just like my kids, I think that probably makes them question their own taste in music. Bottom line: since when do teenagers care what we think about anything?
I believe the reason for the loud music is probably the same one behind almost everything else teenagers do. There isn’t a good reason. It’s a whim. It feels good at the time. It’s fun. These people have poor impulse control.
Teenagers’ brains
aren’t fully baked. Studies by serious academics have tried to determine the exact age when human brains fully mature and become capable of wise decision making. (I could have informed those scientists that teenagers aren’t ready for prime time, no matter what they tell you. I don’t know why we spend vast sums of money to prove theories we already know are true. What a waste of green!) Guess what those studies have uniformly concluded? Teenagers are physically incapable of making decisions in the deliberative manner we ask them to. It’s a lot like yelling at a one-year-old for wetting the bed. Your kid may have the IQ of Albert Einstein. It doesn’t matter. You can’t potty-train a one-year-old. They’re not ready. (Yes, I’ve read about some of those competitive parents who potty-train their kids like precocious circus monkeys. There are freaks in every species. I do not have time for those people. I am writing about regular people in this book.)
One of the reasons we need young men and women in the military (besides the facts that their reflexes are amazing, they can eat anything that doesn’t bite back, and they recover quickly from injuries, of course) is that their brains allow them to do dangerous things without reining them in. We call this behavior “bravery” in wartime. In peacetime, we call it “being a teenage idiot.” “Hey, wait a minute, now,” is a cautionary trait we develop with maturity.
One look at insurance rates will clue you in to the statistics. The first time you see how much your insurance premiums will increase when your teenager gets his shiny new driver’s license, the sticker shock will make you sit down and put your head between your knees to avoid keeling over in a dead faint. It would be cheaper to buy tickets to Disney World and ride the monorail to the Magic Kingdom every day for the rest of your life. More fun, too.
Like many parents who want their kids to learn driver’s education from a professional, I signed my oldest child up for a class at school. What a crock! Imagine how pleased I was to learn at the end of the first day’s instruction that the teacher had ridden to class on a motorcycle (we call them “donorcycles” in our house) without a helmet. He also bragged that he could “get it up to ninety-five on the open road.” My son was gleeful. I was peeved in paisley.
I've Had It Up to Here with Teenagers Page 10
