Tell me my teens aren't the only ones lol

[Srepmum1984]

I am growing more and more gobsmacked with my teenagers common sense and I wanted to hear some other funny stories.

This week alone, son has toasted bread with butter already on it because he couldn't be bothered to wait and it smelt like the house was on fire.

Was feeling ill, so made him a Lemsip. He poured it (literally) straight into his mouth then screeched he didn't realise it was hot. He watched me make it from the kettle.

Today he is working with me over his college half term in the office for some extra cash. Blew his nose, then proceeded to try and open my free standing air conditioner fin part as he thought ' I had a fancy Japanese bin'

Please tell me I am not alone😂😂😂

Not my teens but me:

Put a hot iron face down on the carpet.
Leaned on a griddle toaster - elbow was badly burned.
Popped a ciggie on the edge of the white bath and burned it, then blamed somebody else.
Knocked a cyclist down by accident.
So many other dumb/arseholish things I couldn't count them.

I have grown into a fully functional adult. 😂

This is the point isn't it

My kids do really well and yes I have taught them lots but we all make mistakes and there will always be something? And everyone has different skills and logic, even as adults. There are great threads about misheard lyrics or things I didn't know as adults. It's funny and drop being patronising

I remember my mum 40years agar talking about an adult employee baking a cake without taking egg shells off, it's certainly not a generation thing

Kids don’t figure things out anymore as life is so convenient. My 14 yo went to put a metal bowl in microwave as nobody told him so how was he supposed to know. I feel we should start some tiktok infomercials with common sense stuff on.
the pub quiz will die a death as general knowledge is disappearing. Because they can google stuff they don’t remember it.

I navigated around Europe with one large European atlas in the car with the major routes on. I don’t think kids know directions in uk to get from lands end to john o’groats as without google maps.

This has just reminded me of a recent convo with my teen DD. We are going away at Easter to a country with poor wifi so I’ve said it’s the perfect opportunity to go phone/tech free for the week. We’re doing a bit of a road trip.

Anyway, she asks how will we know where we’re going without Google maps. I say, we’ll get a map. She says but we can’t without our phone (looking at me like I’m stupid).

I say, no we’ll buy a hard copy map. You know, like paper?? She is incredulous… “you can’t get a paper map of the world mum with all the roads on it, that would be huge, think about it…” still looking and talking to me like I’m stupid!

I then explain that obviously it won’t have the world on it, just the country we’re visiting.

She rolls her eyes, says whatever and walks off, giving up. She still thinks I’m being stupid and there’s no way I’ll be able to buy a paper map.

My DS1 once missed a flight (long haul) because he was so engrossed in texting a friend. He was sitting adjacent to the gate! He was 17 - first solo trip - didn't hear them calling his flight?

DS2 (first solo trip - 18yo), landed and went to baggage claim. Luggage had been lost but he stood by the carousel just watching it go round for THREE hours. Despite me asking him to go to lost luggage.

There are some things in life you have to learn for yourself. No matter how hard I nagged my children on somethings they would merrily ignore me. Only for the lightbulb to go off weeks, months or years later - best when they then try to teach you the very same lesson as if it was some sort of epiphany 😆

Boy phoned his Mum and asked how you got melted plastic off the cooker. Turned out he'd put his pot noodles directly on to the gas ring.

In a similar vein, one of my university housemates (science degree) attempted to use Blutac to fix (a) the bolt on the bathroom door and (b) the blade on the Flymo.

For everyone saying “teach your kids, this is depressing” etc - do you have children?

Mine is 13 and I can’t think of a moment right now - but some of these responses are very familiar! - my daughter definitely has had times where I’ve wanted to shake her and wondered where her common sense had gone!!

She knows how to boil an egg, hoover, use the washing machine, she makes light meals - she’s still young and watches me do things like top up the oil in the car, garden, put together an IKEA piece of furniture. She has her own card and is learning how to ration money - and I’m pretty proud of her overall.

but she does have moments where you would think I hadn’t taught her anything (or that she has come from a terrible home).

Just sticking up for some of the parents because some of us teach them and lead by example - but I’ve come to the conclusion that every now and then she must blank out or this 2 second attention span kicks in and all common sense goes out the window.

Also sometimes you think that they know because they watch you - my daughter has been around me doing the laundry since she was about 3 - but the first time she used a washing machine - I had to take her through it step by step.

There was a point when ds was 16 that he made several dangerous decisions in a row - we were very worried about his ability to stay safe at uni we suggested he take a year out. Fortunately his brain started working properly again and there was no need but we were very worried at the time!

Wonder if it comes from eating prosciutto which looks and tastes raw to me. (I know I’m weird but it’s a food I can’t see the point of).

My kids wouldnt know because I hate them and never had them since I was a kid!!! Lol

That’s a nono

Possibly but I learned all those life skills too, quite young and not a carer. There was an expectation of domestic competence, cleaning, basic cooking, washing and ironing.
All really helpful when I went to uni. Learning stuff isn’t bad for you.

I'm not sure it's not been a thing longer and people just forget. I am 40 now, and spent a year travelling before starting uni - most of the students I lived with hadn't. I lost count of the number of students I had to teach how to use a washing machine, and in freshers week I ended up with a group of stragglers who were too nervous to navigate themselves twenty minutes away to the supermarket and back again without help.

I was quite self sufficient but actually did have a lot of anxiety making calls in my first office job (17 odd years ago) for the first year... I think a lot of that stemmed from not fully knowing the answers to any questions I might be asked/ not fully having learnt work norms yet/ the people on the other end being more senior than I was. Even back then it was rare I'd need to call anyone that wasn't a friend or family before I started work.

Not dissing anyone but there are instructions on the packet.

i have quite bad eyeball strain from all the hidden eyerolling dealing with 3 teens and a husband who despite seemingly very smart at work can be a daft bugger at home. I think I may also be blinking out WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING in Morse code now. Honestly sometimes I think I’m just a peri bitch stuck in her ways and othertimes I think I live with a circus full of idiots wearing horse blinders.

She has anorexia and her ED coach suspects additional needs so struggles with black and white thinking. Her functioning is that of someone much younger. Things will catch up eventually apparently once her brain is repaired.

I think one of the only positive things that has come out of me becoming suddenly disabled is how competent my 16 year old DS has become at life skills.

He can do anything and everything round the house from cooking and cleaning to furniture assembly, decorating, gardening, all aspects of laundry, shopping, banking, pet care, and helping me with some really specialist hobby stuff as well as his own hobby. He's learned a lot from both me and my DH, who is also very competent, and my DF, who is the same. Spending so much time with men who cook, fix, clean and are very practical all-rounders has been brilliant for him. We've also always encouraged problem solving from as soon as he could walk and talk. I think it's such an important skill to have.

I am worried about him learning to drive, though. He's clumsy and uncoordinated and I don't know how he'll cope behind the wheel.

My step daughter put a foil pan in the microwave and plastic wrap in the oven. Kids don't think at times

I thought it was pretty well documented that teenager brains aren't fully developed and for many, any common sense they had, particularly when it requires extrapolating information/learning from one task to a brand new task, or normally requires a bit of impulse control... goes out the window.

My Mother loved to tell the story of how I set fire to my microwave with a pair of knickers because oh, silly child, was drying her pants in the microwave.

She would fail to mention that I'd done this successfully for months - they needed exactly 9 seconds on high - and the only time it went tits up was the time she was in my kitchen wittering and nagging me about something and I couldn't get to the microwave in time (it only had a 30 second min timer). I had no dryer and no money to put the heating on, how else was I to get dry pants in a hurry?!.

I did once fail to realise the hand mixer had got damp in a cupboard, plugged it in, it went bang and I hid in a corner in the kitchen and cried... That was stupid as I'd dried the bloody thing off before plugging it in and I did know it was near 20 years old!

And there was the time I rang her at 2am because my flat was full of wasps which I am terrified of... I was told to fuck off and work it out myself as she wasn't driving a mile at 2am to sort it out (she had a bee suit in the boot of her car so I thought, bizarrely, she might help).

I did... I lured them into the kitchen by putting that light on and all the others off. Then I filled the kitchen with every aerosol spray i had (fly spray, furniture polish, deodorant) until I was sure it was a lethal dose, and shut the door on them. But only after hiding under my duvet as wasp after wasp flew in, like some sort of wasp rave was going on chez moi!

Hoovering up hundreds of dead wasps the following day whilst it was still pretty toxic in there was pretty unpleasant!

My sister once tried to make cheese toasties using burger cheese slices... she did not realise you had to take the individual plastic wrappers off them though. Not tasty.

Jeezus it doesn't take much to bring out all the arseholes on this thread. Newsflash: it's a light-hearted thread. That doesn't seem to stop people from jumping on to shit on people's parenting skills or musing a person's kid is mentally challenged. FS I despair. 🤦‍♀️

Not a parent, but a teacher of teens. Mainly 16 - 19.

I've written this before

Me to student: Did you say pheasant?
Student: No Miss, what is a pheasant?
Me: It's a bird, you can eat it
Student: Uhg, who'd eat a bird?
Me: Do you eat chicken?

Same class at enrolment, I was filling in forms with the students, one had given her nationality as from an African country (only relevant because it wasn't EU)

So I had to ask about a student visa, apparently not, and her passport was out of date due to how long she had been in this country.

My brain is in overdrove, is she in the country illegally? Has she been trafficked? Who do I contact first?

Then she said, "Oh I've got my British passport, will that do?" Yep she had dual citizenship.

Ok so you are proud of your heritage, I totally understand that, but it might be an idea going forwards to tick the 'British' box too.

The one that drives me mad in the summer is students pulling up the blinds that I have just shut because the room is like an oven.

Other things I have explained, yes there really was a ship called 'Titanic', no the Rose and Jack were not real people, just the ship. Well the ship and some characters.

No the difference between soya milk and cow's milk is that one doesn't come out of a cow and the other does not the shape of the bottle/carton. Yes milk comes out of cows. Yes the milk you drink used to be in a cow, or possibly a goat.

I'm sure hormones rob them temporarily of common sense. It's like teens can't tell the time on an analogue watch / clock. I know they all learn to at primary but it fades.

I really miss teaching.

You can teach your teenager life skills. Unfortunately though they think they know a better way of doing things!

This.
I’ve laughed out loud at some of these. They’re just funny and exactly what we all did and our teens do now. Po faced - you’re not equipping them for life - oh please! We all make mistakes and they make funny stories later. I’m very lucky my mum doesn’t tell my teens my antics - probably because her mum delighted in telling me stories like about her (and her friends) ironing her hair on the ironing board in the 60s….