Teenage Wasteland

If anyone were to ask me, I would say that the most difficult thing about being a teenager’s parent is that they are always smarter than you.

Whether or not they are actually smarter than you, well, you could go back and forth on that for hours.

In other words, when a minor conflict arises between a teen and their parents--let’s use less-than-desirable grades on a progress report as an example (hypothetically, of course)—there’s not much a parent can say or do to make a teen see the light, or see where there may be misguided, or see that there is some part or aspect of the situation that they are missing.

Especially if their hypothetical lackluster grades are the decided way to make a stand against society.

You know, sticking it to the man and all.

So, if a parent is not completely on their A-game that weekend (when the hypothetical crappy progress report comes home) for whatever reason-- maybe it’s been a long week at work or it’s a full moon, or all of the above—the result can become one of those dreaded life occurrences: The Weekend of Yelling.

Now of course, the entire weekend is not full of yelling. No one can really yell non-stop for hours on end without losing their voice or their mind. In all actuality, there are long interludes of silence and possible moping interspersed with brief intervals of high intensity yelling. Usually both parents and teens are highly active and involved in the Weekend of Yelling. Sometimes someone pulls ahead—either the parent or the teen have good odds. No matter who gets the most minutes of yelling in during the weekend of yelling, however, it always ends the same.

Eye rolling.
Door slamming.
The overwhelming feeling of wanting to beat your head against the wall, because, frankly, the wall may understand your comments better than the party you’ve been lecturing.
Unresolved issue: pissy, pissy hypothetical grades for no other reason than teachers are robotic servants of a corrupt society.

Yeah. Fun.

What follows the Weekend of Yelling? I’ll let you know when I find that out this week. Thank Goodness it’s Education week, because I feel like I need to be educated on how to handle the teen years!