Ellyn Oaksmith's Blog - Posts Tagged "teens"
The Best Part About Mothering Teens
It's all too easy to gripe about the perils of mothering teens: the toxic waste dump your child calls My Room, as in: "it's My Room, My Moldy Coffee Cup, My Lump of Clothes." Also, the Teen Diet, which consists of fat, sugar and whatever healthy thing you serve sitting on their plate while they mentally calculate how many GirlScout cookies they can sneak upstairs after dinner.
Also there is the Teaching Your Teen to Drive moment, which, when you are not driving yourself would involve a fortifying glass of wine beforehand but it's setting a bad example and makes you look like a lush at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Alright, I'm getting to the good part. The good part is trying on clothes at H & M with your young teen who has talked you into a skirt to wear to the Romance Writers of America Conference. Your theory is that although no one will have heard of your book, maybe someone will talk to you if you look interesting, well dressed and awake.
So you try on the skirt. And yell to your daughter, in the dressing room across the hallway. She opens the door and tells you that the skirt is fabulous, which nearly makes you faint. It's a skirt you would never have picked out for yourself although, it's very cute.
Furthermore, your teen keeps opening the door to her dressing room and asks your opinion. You end up laughing about the really bad choices, agreeing on the really good ones. You have a great, great time. Your teen helps you pick out 2 cheap scarves for your parents' exchange students as an Easter present. The whole thing takes less than an hour. You drive across the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in the rain, listening to the radio and talk about nothing in particular.
It's the best shopping trip in recent memory. (I hate shopping.) More than that, it's 3 hours with a kid who is on the brink of flying the nest. High school, sports, boys and college will drag her away from you slowly but surely. Moments like this will become a thing of memory.
And it's a great memory.
Happy Thursday!
Also there is the Teaching Your Teen to Drive moment, which, when you are not driving yourself would involve a fortifying glass of wine beforehand but it's setting a bad example and makes you look like a lush at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Alright, I'm getting to the good part. The good part is trying on clothes at H & M with your young teen who has talked you into a skirt to wear to the Romance Writers of America Conference. Your theory is that although no one will have heard of your book, maybe someone will talk to you if you look interesting, well dressed and awake.
So you try on the skirt. And yell to your daughter, in the dressing room across the hallway. She opens the door and tells you that the skirt is fabulous, which nearly makes you faint. It's a skirt you would never have picked out for yourself although, it's very cute.
Furthermore, your teen keeps opening the door to her dressing room and asks your opinion. You end up laughing about the really bad choices, agreeing on the really good ones. You have a great, great time. Your teen helps you pick out 2 cheap scarves for your parents' exchange students as an Easter present. The whole thing takes less than an hour. You drive across the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in the rain, listening to the radio and talk about nothing in particular.
It's the best shopping trip in recent memory. (I hate shopping.) More than that, it's 3 hours with a kid who is on the brink of flying the nest. High school, sports, boys and college will drag her away from you slowly but surely. Moments like this will become a thing of memory.
And it's a great memory.
Happy Thursday!
My Teenaged Next Life
In my next life, I am coming back as a teenager on Spring break. Not a teenager who has to worry about colleges or any adults concerns, the kind that live in my home, whose major concerns are the kind of cereal in the house and how much they can possibly cram into a carry-on bag.
I will begin my day at noon, whereupon I will go downstairs where my crabby mother is hunched over her lunch, disgusted by my long-limbed, wasp-waisted beauty when all I really do is sleep and eat junk food. My short tour of the kitchen is marked by the only comment I make in this room which is "How come there is nothing to eat?" Fruit, anything whole grain or that needs preparing, slicing or doesn't come in a noisy bag doesn't count as food.
The rest of my day will be spent taking a epically long shower during which the previously mentioned parent will bang on the door several times. She yells things about our water bill and the fact that she's not made out of money. Duh. She's made out of cellulite and caffeine.
I respond by yelling one of two things: "What?????" and "I can't hear you!!!!!" From there it's a good hour or two to get dressed, including make-up, although I don't really need any. I just like staring in the mirror. Then I wail about having no clothes although I will never admit to my mother that I spent the bulk of my clothing budget on Justin Bieber books on Amazon.com and a bunch of make-up at Sephora.
Lunch is two bowls of Doritos. When my mother asks if I've eaten any fruits or vegetables I respond as if I were in the shower. She gives me a weird look and hands me a banana.
Checking up on my friends via text takes until late afternoon. After that it's a few hours on Instagram. You can never see enough cute puppy pics or cats eating ice cream cones, can you?
Now it's time to bug my mom to take me and my sister to Dairy Queen. I make a few lame offers to help around the house hoping to butter her up. She sees right through this and asks "What do you want?" Sometimes that woman is so sarcastic.
Finally after my sister and I make a big show of getting along and helping one another, we manage to talk Mom into taking us to Dairy Queen, if we pay. We also have to empty the dishwasher, which we have to do normally, which is fine.
By now it's late afternoon. My sister and I round out the day by watching Psych, the only TV show we agree upon. If we're quiet and stay upstairs we avoid a bunch of housework and dinner helping stuff, which is awesome.
Rounding off my night is more texting, surfing the web for a couple of hours and reading into the wee hours so I can sleep in again until noon.
That will be my next life. I'll skip all the bad stuff about being a teenager and stay forever looped into Spring Break. I'm sure it'll all work out just fine.
I will begin my day at noon, whereupon I will go downstairs where my crabby mother is hunched over her lunch, disgusted by my long-limbed, wasp-waisted beauty when all I really do is sleep and eat junk food. My short tour of the kitchen is marked by the only comment I make in this room which is "How come there is nothing to eat?" Fruit, anything whole grain or that needs preparing, slicing or doesn't come in a noisy bag doesn't count as food.
The rest of my day will be spent taking a epically long shower during which the previously mentioned parent will bang on the door several times. She yells things about our water bill and the fact that she's not made out of money. Duh. She's made out of cellulite and caffeine.
I respond by yelling one of two things: "What?????" and "I can't hear you!!!!!" From there it's a good hour or two to get dressed, including make-up, although I don't really need any. I just like staring in the mirror. Then I wail about having no clothes although I will never admit to my mother that I spent the bulk of my clothing budget on Justin Bieber books on Amazon.com and a bunch of make-up at Sephora.
Lunch is two bowls of Doritos. When my mother asks if I've eaten any fruits or vegetables I respond as if I were in the shower. She gives me a weird look and hands me a banana.
Checking up on my friends via text takes until late afternoon. After that it's a few hours on Instagram. You can never see enough cute puppy pics or cats eating ice cream cones, can you?
Now it's time to bug my mom to take me and my sister to Dairy Queen. I make a few lame offers to help around the house hoping to butter her up. She sees right through this and asks "What do you want?" Sometimes that woman is so sarcastic.
Finally after my sister and I make a big show of getting along and helping one another, we manage to talk Mom into taking us to Dairy Queen, if we pay. We also have to empty the dishwasher, which we have to do normally, which is fine.
By now it's late afternoon. My sister and I round out the day by watching Psych, the only TV show we agree upon. If we're quiet and stay upstairs we avoid a bunch of housework and dinner helping stuff, which is awesome.
Rounding off my night is more texting, surfing the web for a couple of hours and reading into the wee hours so I can sleep in again until noon.
That will be my next life. I'll skip all the bad stuff about being a teenager and stay forever looped into Spring Break. I'm sure it'll all work out just fine.
