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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

"What? You?!" Sneery Teen

360 replies

PyongyangKipperbang · 23/01/2021 22:25

He is 15 and literally NOTHING existed in the world until he heard of it, which I am sure he is not alone in.

He is into musical theatre. Goes on and on about various musicals he has found and likes. Ok, no problem there except he does it in a very sneery way as if I coudlnt possibly know about these things but I generally let it go.

When I was younger I planned to go into acting and part of my unofficial training when I was waiting to go to drama school was being trained in theatre production. There is a really good theatre nearish to me and I did some am-dram and got a lot of training in sound for stage productions and I really loved it. I decided that I would rather do sound than acting. Then life happened and I didnt go to school and blah blah but I did still do sound for am dram for a few years.

Last night I get "You probably wont have heard of it but there is this great musical called Blood Brothers which has great songs" and I said "yeah I know, they are good". "Oh you've heard of it?" and it just put my back up. So I said "Of course. Its been around for years and is very well known. I did the sound on it when it was on at X theatre about 20 years ago"

That was when I got "What? You?!" in an incredulous disbelieving sneery way. "You dont seem to me to be someone who could do that" And I got really annoyed and did shout that yes believe it or not I do actually know things, that I did have a life that didnt involve being a mother and to not look down his fucking nose at me. Oh and by the way, no he doesnt fucking know it all. I then asked him a few technical questions "do you know how to....." which he didnt and I could say "Well I do, so...." and he bogged off upstairs!

AIBU to think that sometimes it is justified to give them a smack round the earhole, because I have had the most incredible urge to do just that ever since.

OP posts:

Shaniac · 24/01/2021 16:19

Omg teenagers. Did anyone else used to get weirded out seeing teachers in normal clothes in the shops? They live at school! They dont have lives. My mother didnt have a personality or life until i was a grown up as well. Now im nearly 30 its amazing her talking about her life before me.

lottiegarbanzo · 24/01/2021 16:23

Also yes, especially given you're a single parent, I suspect there's a big dollop of sexism in there, that he may or may not grow out of.

Sexism? Highly unlikely given his mother is a single parent so he would have seen over many years his mother do everything and anything a man can. Added to which, sexism really is not prevalent amongst teens. I have worked extensively with this age a group.

If this is true, it is a huge leap forwards since I was a teen, when there was a lot of overt sexism, of different kinds and degrees, from teenage boys.

I think a lot of them 'try on' sexism, like sneeriness and superiority, for a while, to see how it feels and looks and to see what they can get away with. (Others are brought up with it as a familial and social norm of course but that won't be the case with the family OP has created).

PhilCornwall1 · 24/01/2021 16:29

"anyway, so the lead singer of queen .... freddie murphy ...."

Must be Eddie's long lost brother 🤔

ithinkyouareveryrude · 24/01/2021 16:38

A furious ‘who the hell do you think you’re talking to?!’ Has been used for generations in my family and usually gets said smarmy shit to back down.

B33Fr33 · 24/01/2021 16:39

No you can't whack someone around the ear because you don't like their attitude.

MumofSpud · 24/01/2021 16:43

Loving your name too!
I have the same with my 15 year old DD (often about music / films and musical theatre too interestingly!)
She cannot fathom that prior to 2005 I had a life / opinions / knew stuff etc etc etc
As another OP said we are 'mum' not people!
Working with teens, I get this at work too
I have no advice to give - just that you're not alone!

2021betterbebetter · 24/01/2021 16:45

It's funny, my older DD who is 19, despite being the world's biggest pain in the arse as a younger teen, does I think recognise and respect the fact that I have a lot of life experience and knowledge over her, and credits me with giving her a great musical upbringing with lots of cool music
Younger DD (10) is a gobshite from another planet already and I am banking all of the responses here as I think I'll need some good put downs!

AprilThe8th · 24/01/2021 16:51

He sounds patronising and pompous for such a young person

GeordieGreigsButtButtZoom · 24/01/2021 17:00

People don't need put downs and smart retorts and all that. You're the parent, the grown up. They're supposed to think you're a dinosaur, we were the same at that age. Why are so many people taking it so personally??

AuntyMabelandPippin · 24/01/2021 17:08

I can remember telling mine at least once each, 'Do you know exactly how horrible you sound talking to me like that? Go upstairs and have a think about how you'd like it if I spoke to you in that tone.'

They're extremely good lads now, and have as many female friends as male.

TurquoiseDragon · 24/01/2021 17:18

@lottiegarbanzo

Also yes, especially given you're a single parent, I suspect there's a big dollop of sexism in there, that he may or may not grow out of.

If this is true, it is a huge leap forwards since I was a teen, when there was a lot of overt sexism, of different kinds and degrees, from teenage boys.

You might be right, but I did notice the OP's comments about her DS's grandfather telling him his mum knew nothing, so he's got sexist examples around him.

SpilltheTea · 24/01/2021 17:24

I thought I knew it all as a young teenager. Then I turned 18 and got hit with some humble pie. He sounds very patronising and rude for someone so young, so I don't blame you for reacting as you did. Teens need to be taken down a peg or 2 every now and again.

wishywashywoowoo70 · 24/01/2021 20:10

Thumbwitch. It's a gas oven.
If you cook at the top only the outside gets cooked and the inside stays raw.

He had the oven tray right at the top almost touching the top. I find that the outside gets browned/Burnt very quickly

MechantGourmet · 24/01/2021 22:27

@billybagpuss

Slightly in a different vein, I came home and found dd and her friend listening to my vinyl, they’d put a Kim Wilde single on a 33 setting. In their defence they had googled and worked out a 12” should go on 33 but then estimated the size of the single in cms. The look on their faces when I switched it to 45.

This has made me laugh so much!

I bet they were thinking Kim Wilde was all sort of soulful ballads...

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 25/01/2021 00:53

Oh cory - glad he's worked that out.

tyranny · 25/01/2021 01:52

Dd2 is 17 and an athlete. I am almost fifty and, er, not at the peak of physical fitness, shall we say. However, at her age I had been racing for many years (including at higher age categories as well as my own), and spent most weekends white water kayaking, rock-climbing, winter mountaineering etc, with a group of like-minded teens. I carried on and qualified as a mountain guide, joined the military, and was an expedition leader. I ran a few marathons and trained with the blokes, got invited to ski race for the service etc. The youth stuff was the sort of thing that was possible thirty years ago but that these days would make most parents blanch with fear and insist on instructor paperwork, risk assessments, and a great many meetings to go over plans. As a 15yo girl guide I had a permit to take other youth members back-country camping with no adults, and as a girl, I was often invited by a lot of other organisations who needed a second girl to do any of the above for a week or so because they had a female who needed a companion. I was kind of ‘rent-a-girl’ which was awesome as I got to do a massive amount with all sorts of different groups and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to prove to a largely teenage boy cohort that girls could absolutely one hundred percent do anything they could do.
This summer I eventually got a day off work and it was decided that we could kayak as a family on a reservoir near the house. She’s had a few lessons over the last year or so and loves it.
It hadn’t really occurred to me to wonder what she thought the reason I hadn’t been out with them before was, or even that she genuinely had no idea how comfortable I (was? Am?) in a kayak. She started a similarly themed teen-splaining mission until I asked her to stop and gave her a quick run-down on the different countries and different rivers and different multi-day expeditions, and may even have noted that I couldn’t actually remember having canoed or kayaked on anything other than white water, so I thought I could manage a pootle on a reservoir where no one even bothered with a spray deck, thank you very much.
In all honesty though, how would she ever know? The last time I disappeared on a river expedition for a few weeks she was probably 4. And looking at myself in the mirror, it’s hard enough for ME to imagine there was a time that this stuff was totally routine
I think about it now and wonder really if half of my snippiness is about being equally as cross at myself as at them. How did I get so boring?!

ThumbWitchesAbroad · 25/01/2021 02:04

@wishywashywoowoo70

Thumbwitch. It's a gas oven. If you cook at the top only the outside gets cooked and the inside stays raw. He had the oven tray right at the top almost touching the top. I find that the outside gets browned/Burnt very quickly

Thanks wishywashy - I admit I never cook chicken, or use the top of the oven for anything other than once-in-a-blue-moon items like yorkshire puds, so that's good to know

MoiraRosesWig · 25/01/2021 02:28

Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that he called the op a 'fucking bitch' (mentioned in one of her updates).

That's not normal teenage behaviour, that's foul

SkeletorAttack · 25/01/2021 02:45

I do think that there is an opportunity (need?) to pull up our children when they are being rude and patronising. It's really unkind, even when it is directed to "just" us parents. It's not a kind quality.

AStudyinPink · 25/01/2021 07:54

I don’t think we can expect our teenagers to imagine us as adults with lives and interests before them. At least not very easily. When I was fourteen my mum was the age I am now, and I thought she was unimaginably ancient.

Macncheeseballs · 25/01/2021 08:32

I really liked my parents when I was growing up, it would never have occurred to me to speak to them in that manner, being sneery is a learned character trait surely, rather than a natural part of being a teenager?

Oldraver · 25/01/2021 10:02

I had a similar conversation with my 15 year old recently over a bloody SD card of all things

He had never used one just the SSD and painstakingly teensplained that the larger card was just a holder

I had to explain in the 'old days' ie in the era of his birth the larger one WAS the card

1starwars2 · 25/01/2021 10:12

I thought my Mum was useless as a teenager. I wish I had known and understood how hard she must have worked, growing up in poverty on a smallholding with a widowed mother, to qualify as a solicitor. Also how much she gave up to be a stay at home parent.
She died youngish and it is only now I am a parent of a teenager I think how ridiculous I was.
I think your ability and success is beyond his understanding.

LizFlowers · 25/01/2021 11:17

@MoiraRosesWig

Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that he called the op a 'fucking bitch' (mentioned in one of her updates).

That's not normal teenage behaviour, that's foul

That is a step too far, he has no right to speak to his mother like that. I'd have been livid.

Being rather arrogant is, however, not unusual at his age.

LizFlowers · 25/01/2021 11:22

Pyongyangkipper: To answer a few questions, yes he is gay and very out about it. He made a huge song and dance about it
......
I wondered that earlier on in the thread when I said it was unusual for a boy of his age to be so very keen on musical theatre and that he had a niche interest. There is nothing so camp as a musical!

He can do what he likes but has no right to be rude to you in foul language.

Hopefully by now he realises he went too far and is suitably conciliatory.

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