Things I've done wrong according to teen DD

[GreenHairThingy]

Have enjoyed the various "toddler meltdown" threads over the years - you know the ones where the sandwich was cut the wrong way or the sky was the wrong shade of blue

Well this morning my only interaction with my 17 year old DD had her complaining that:

(super whingey tone) "this isn't fair! My arms just aren't strong enough for this!!! You know I've no upper arm strength" as i callously showed her how to empty and clean the tumble dryer filter so she could dry HER clothes. Take away is: I'm to blame for her lack of upper arm strength: Noted.

5 minutes later she is making herself a sandwich. I've bought a Warburtons loaf this morning.

(totally exasperated tone) "Mum, can you PLEASE stop buying bread that's about to go out of date!"

Confused, I check the date of the bread. It says the 15th March. She continues "exactly! The last loaf ran out on the 13th!!" (the loaf we finished yesterday, on the 11th)

When I politely and calmly suggested she call the team at Warburtons to complain, as i can only purchase the bread that is available with the dates that are offered, she rolled her eyes and said" it's really not ok"

I long for toddler tantrums. They were so much more reasonable.

I picked up 16 year old DS from school at lunchtime yesterday. It took my lunchbreak.
Cue huge row because I wouldn't buy him subway or Maccy Ds for lunch, I never have any good food in the house, he's not eating pasta and pesto, blah blah.
I asked him what "good food" would be - ham and cheese salad sandwich and crisps
Said I had all that except ham, how about a cheese salad sandwich
"Oh yeah, that's a great lunch that is, some cheese and a salad on a couple of slices of bread. Brilliant. Totally a proper sandwich" (in the manner of Kevin The Teenager)
Ffs. Can't keep up with the random going off foodstuffs they've eaten tonnes of fir years, plus always specifying what they don't want and never what they do.

Yeah like not liking tomatoes but will eat pasta or pizza
Not liking cheese unless it’s grated
Not liking the texture of mushrooms but liking the taste.

I could go on and on. Never picky about chocolate or cake though...

We have the going off food that they have eaten for years. At one point I had 3 teens and had very little idea which one liked what on any given day. The only sure fire meal was homemade pizza but even then one would prefer ham then cheese and another cheese then ham!

Today I am celebrating being a mum to only one teenager as Dd2 has just turned 20. Tbf she turned into a human being a while ago and now when she is home does such delights as loading the dishwasher without being asked. It has been dcs job to do the dishwasher for about a decade but she got there in the end.

Speaking as an army brat I can vouch for the benefits of boarding schools in making teenagers appreciate their parents’ company/services.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows that is hard, I can assure you however that yes it does get better as teenagers (well, mostly) do hide in their rooms or bugger off out with their friends.

DD tends to get pally with her friends parents, which inevitably means I have to put up with "but Katie's mum and dad ALWAYS let us do xyz" and "Katie's mum is SO funny, she is hilarious". DD probably thinks I should be more like Katie's mum. I think "thank fuck I'm boring or I'd have a house full of rowdy teens eating all my crisps!" 😂

@ExcusesAndAccusations

Speaking as an army brat I can vouch for the benefits of boarding schools in making teenagers appreciate their parents’ company/services.

I don't yet live with my OH so thankfully the 3 teens have yet to coexist under the same roof for more than the length of a 2 week holiday.

I fully expect, once we do move in together later this year, we will be selling the cats and Guinea pigs to fund boarding school . The girls are not even in school (one in college, one.... Let's not go there on a lighthearted thread!) but I reckon we could sneak them in.

At 17 I went out and got bladdered.

As I was lying near-naked on our bathroom floor chucking my guts up into the bath while my mum held my hair and made soothing noises, I told her my drunken-illness was all her fault for not building up my alcohol tolerance like the French do with their kids.

My mum never gets tired of telling that story.

... aaaaaaand @FeministRabbit wins the thread

@EveningsInTheSummerhouse

'There’s no food in this house, only ingredients.’

🤣 I've heard the exact same words from mine!

I get that from my husband! 🤣

According to my DD18. I have no idea what the REAL world is like because I apparently live in the dark ages.

And there's NEVER any food. Poor love.

And the advice I get ALL THE TIME on parenting her younger siblings. Don't know how I managed without her words of parenting wisdom quite frankly.

Oh and the gem of all gems. I CHOSE to have her, therefore I should pay for everything for her and not expect her to do household chores in a house I CHOSE to live in. Chores just got upped BIGTIME.

And I also:
Breathe too loud (ummm ok)

Can''t take a joke (Not a fan of offensive humour)

Eat too loud (No idea, but pretty sure I'm normal)

Cook the same boring things (I don't. She just never eats any of it)

Need to lighten up (ALL her friends have boys stay overnight ALL the time obviously)

And Why on earth do I bother exercising. I'm, like, forty something!, Whats the point! I'm old. (Bless her)

I suggested mildly to DS, who was whinging about his body at Christmas, that he try out a bit of light yoga for flexibility, so he felt better. He has become a yoga addict in three months. I am very pleased obviously, But now he's trying to tell me (at nearly 65) that handstands are obligatory.... sorry lad, you couldn't touch your toes on Christmas Eve.

Mine went to uni.... then came back, he is lovely to be fair BUT knows. Every. Fucking. Thing 🤨 and does enjoy sharing this wisdom, he is also a spoony fucker grrr

Oh god, I feel for you. My daughter is 14 and has suddenly developed an interest in medicine. She now shares her wisdom with me at every opportunity and loves to point out where I'm wrong.

Im a doctor 😂🤣

@Fluffycloudland77 yea I'm well aware it's weird! Mum lets her away with murder basically and always has

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

You're right - everyone's hard is different and I totally acknowledge that. I only had the one but I also remember the stage you're talking about. It does get easier in some ways as they get older and more independent. Just as an idea when I hit a similar stage I moved stuff around so that dd could reach certain things without my help when she reached a point I knew she could do so sensibly - eg fruit bowl, her own plates, cups etc not sure if that's helpful

Be careful what you wish for though - teens tend to vanish! (In normal times) to their friends, their rooms... you go from "I can't get a minutes bloody peace" to "I miss our movie nights" - but it's perfectly normal that they go from one extreme to another. Not that it's easy for us parents.

I wasn't a "typical" teen as I was a bit of a goody two shoes but I worried and stressed mum in other ways (my mh issues started really ramping up around this time, though neither of us knew what exactly they were until much later - I have ocd)

@GreenHairThingy I went through a brief phase of feeling very sad that I was apparently the uncool, unpopular mum...then I got friendly with 2 of the mums of her new high school friends and ended up we had a revelatory chat once - turns out we all thought we were the "uncool" mum but the kids were busy telling us that the ones that weren't THEIR mum were wonderful, interesting, cool etc and behaving all Perry like at the homes that weren't their own - of course I can't find the blooming link now but there was one "episode" of Kevin & Perry where it showed kevin at Perry's house and Perry was the grumpy, sulky badly behaved one and Kevin was polite, friendly and helpful to Perry's parents, that was basically what was occurring. So we all had our own Kevin's and Perry's but who inhabited those roles depended who's house they were at!

@FeministRabbit ohh that's a good one!

@SecretSpAD oh that's a cracker!

I get the politically engaged/activist version of that, as do my parents to some degree! - I'm 48 and have been an activist for over 30 years in various ways, but my parents? In their 70's, both were shop stewards at various points and there's photographic and video evidence of their appearances on picket lines and marches etc - yet there was one particular incident where dd called us apathetic and uninterested - oh how we laughed! mums response was to say she wouldn't be so anymore and made a placard about ending apathy for next time we went over there

@SecretSpAD I think you should include these conversations in your CPD record 😂. Then steer her into dental for the shorter working week.

One of my favourite comebacks to the Nelly-Know-All here is the stolen 'I've got tights older than you.'

Just wait for your 20 something DC to tell you that they don't know how to handle things because you made their life too easy!
Talk about a kick in the teeth.....so there you have it parents of younger DC...require them to do lots of chores, handle their own situations, get ready for school, etc...else you may just get the above comment...

Thing is DC was cooking his own scrambled eggs at 6yrs, doing the washing up, washing his clothes, getting his own school work done without prompting amongst other "responsibilities "
We can't win for losing

@SecretSpAD - love that. Hilarious.

@Graphista - I think you mean this one - it's not that they're at Perry's house, his mum just phones Kevin's house and he has to talk to her on the phone

@Graphista your mum is awesome

DD has been very lovely this week, I'm quite low with my mental health (have been for a while now) and she is actually being quite helpful. No withered arms this week, although she has yet to sort her laundry but that ain't my problem.

Thank you for posting the link @ThumbWitchesAbroad - I fell down a rabbit hole of Kevin and Perry, (followed by Catherine Tate's Posh People Sports Day), and feel a bit better after considering running away to join the Foreign Legion last night.

@GreenHairThingy

@SecretSpAD

Mine went to uni.... then came back, he is lovely to be fair BUT knows. Every. Fucking. Thing 🤨 and does enjoy sharing this wisdom, he is also a spoony fucker grrr

Oh god, I feel for you. My daughter is 14 and has suddenly developed an interest in medicine. She now shares her wisdom with me at every opportunity and loves to point out where I'm wrong.

Im a doctor 😂🤣

Brilliant!

To be honest just the very sound of me breathing is enough to tip my teenager over the edge!

Working my way slowly through the thread with a large glass of wine.
I had this from the 18 year old today. I was breathing too loudly. Yes darling, that's because Im asthmatic and wheezing because your fucking bedroom hasn't been dusted for six fucking months 😂

I didn't have children of my own because I find babies, toddlers and young children extreme,y boring. But when these two gits came into our lives (actually they were always in our lives as our niece and nephew) when their mum died as angry, stroppy and grieving teens we wondered how we would cope....but had to, because we were the only people they had. We formally adopted the buggers last year.

They are messy, annoying little know it alls. They are rude, obnoxious, illogical, emotional, irrational, argumentative, messy, and often seem as if they have been beamed down from a far distant planet....

But they are fun and I a, hoping beyond hope that eventually they will emerge from teen-hood as lovely adults who we will have in our lives forever more. I hope I'm the mother of teenagers that I wanted. So far they are surviving and we haven't killed each other yet.....some days the bar is set that low

I’ve just gone up stairs singing happily.

‘ For God’s sake, shut up, I’m trying to sleep’

Sayeth the nocturnal child who is never asleep at this time