I've Had It Up to Here with Teenagers

by Melinda Rainey Thompson

  By the time I reached my washer, I was already mad at my teenagers. It wasn’t even 7 A.M. As usual, the little trolls hadn’t bothered to throw their half-eaten candy bars in the trash can. Someone’s retainer was perched on the arm of a sofa. Gross. The television had been left on all night, of course, since my kids never turn it off when they leave the room. I run around after them every day turning off lights, stereos, and televisions. They waste enough electricity every week to power a small Caribbean island. They don’t voluntarily tidy up after themselves ever. They don’t clear away the half-empty soda cans, fluff the sofa cushions, or return their smelly tennis shoes to their rooms.

  When my teenagers move on to other activities with their friends, they simply abandon their current trashed location like drug lords fleeing a narcotics raid. They just get up and go. It’s inexplicable to me. I can track their activities throughout the day by walking from one mess to the next.

  As I used both hands to randomly point, click, and wave the buffet of remote controls (which I found wedged between the sofa cushions) toward the television in search of silence and sanity, I realized that the screen showed a computer game in progress. It wasn’t a television show at all. Then I noticed something unusual. In one corner of the screen, the names (pseudonyms, obviously) of the players were displayed. The bright blue screen said, “Afghanistan.” That couldn’t be right, could it? Was it possible that my kid was playing a computer game with the Taliban? If so, this was definitely bad. It would be a new low for us as a family. I decided I better look into the situation immediately.

  “Son?” I called out at the top of my lungs in an effort to be heard in the kitchen upstairs, over the sound of ESPN’s SportsCenter.

  No one answered me, naturally. Teenagers have very selective hearing. They hear only what they want to hear. It’s maddening. I picked up a broom, banged on the ceiling, and tried again.

  “Son?”

  “What?” a long-suffering voice responded.

  “Ma’am? You mean ma’am, right?” I prompted for the millionth time.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Come here, please.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just come down here, please.”

  “Why?”

  “Come. Down. Here. Now.”

  “I’m eating breakfast right now. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Get down here right this minute!”

  “Okay! You don’t have to be such a grouch! What’s the big deal, Mom?”

  I pointed to the screen. “What is this, son?”

  “I’m in the middle of a game,” he said, as if any half-wit could have figured that out without help from him. “What did you think it was? I wasn’t watching HBO! What are you mad about now?”

  “Are you playing a live computer game with someone in Afghanistan?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah, I am. Cool, huh?” he said, flashing a grin at me and whipping the headphones from underneath the couch and putting them on his head. “I’m way ahead. See the points?”

  I tried to maintain my composure. “Who are you talking to in Afghanistan?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Mom. You can’t see their real names.”

  “Let me get this straight. You are playing a game with an unknown person half a world away. Is that correct?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” he said, sensing I was about to launch into a lecture on Internet safety. He’d heard it all before—many, many times. He had no interest in an encore performance. “It’s not a big deal, Mom. It’s not dangerous or anything. Lots of my friends are playing live, too. We have teams.”

  “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” I asked. “You could be playing with anyone! You could be playing a computer game with a terrorist!”

  “I really doubt it, Mom. I don’t think they’re allowed to play computer games. It’s probably one of our soldiers, actually. Anyway, you think everything is dangerous. You think pedophiles lurk everywhere on the Internet.”

  “They do! Pedophiles actively seek ways to reach you online! I’m not making this up!”

  “Mom, you don’t understand about this. It’s okay. It’s safe. Really. I’m six-one. I weigh 175 pounds. I think I can take the computer guy, Mom.”

  “What? Did someone ask to meet you in person?” I squealed. I was in full-alarm mode.

  “No! I was joking, Mom.”

  We were at a technological impasse. It was one of many. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. Email. IMing. There’s something new every single day. Sure, I read my kids’ texts occasionally when I have their phones. I scroll through their computer’s history to see where they’ve been. I enter as a friend occasionally on Facebook to see what my kids are posting (and what is being posted about them), but it’s pretty random. I don’t stalk my kids online like some parents I know. While I blow metaphorical raspberries at their right to privacy while they live under my roof, I don’t really think I need to know all the teenage gossip. Nothing is worse than parents who are so involved in their kids’ lives that they try to manage them like professional publicists. Tell the truth: do you really need to know all the cheerleader tittle-tattle? What good will come from that? The parents who do that scare me and my kids. Such behavior results in one thing and one thing only: a Lifetime movie of the week. Who wants to inspire one of those?

  My kids came into the world reaching out with both hands. I love that about them. My oldest child used to lean forward in his umbrella stroller when we breezed through the mall. His arms would stretch as far he could reach, fingers spread wide open. He was literally grasping at life. He leaned forward to meet every new person, sight, sound, and experience. He was open to everything! He still is. As a mom, my instinct is always to be cautious, to take the safe bet, to look twice before leaping (feet first), and then to look one more time, just in case. “BecarefulIloveyousomuch” is my one-breath goodbye phrase whenever my kids walk out the front door.

  When my middle child was four, he was obsessed with knights. We read stories about them every day. He wore a cape and carried a wooden sword all over the house. He had a prince, a castle, and a dragon painted on his wall. On his chest of drawers, I stenciled in gold, old-fashioned script, “Sir Nat, a true heart, a brave soul, a kind spirit.”

  In the middle of one of his adventures one afternoon, I cautioned him to be careful as he sailed over the top of the bunk beds in a frontal assault.

  He paused for a moment, sword raised, and said, “You’re not very brave, are you, Mom?”

  “No, son, I’m not. I’m not a bit brave,” I replied truthfully.

  He considered for a moment, then said, “That’s okay, Mom. I’ll protect you.”

  Moms see danger everywhere. Boys do not. This is an important distinction.

  I knew my older son was no longer a child one day when we were walking down the street side by side and a car swerved dangerously close to us. I remember thinking, I better get my child out of the path of that car, but before I could react, he shoved me out of the way and put himself in the path. It was a total role reversal, and it happened in less than a second, without any preplanning. It made me, the mean mama, cry, and I am not a weeper. (When we were at the movies one day, my daughter asked me why I don’t cry at sad films like her friend’s mom. When I just shrugged, she said, “I guess Virginia’s mom is just nice.” Yeah. I guess that explains it.)

  My son was exasperated with my teary reaction. “What’s the matter with you? That car didn’t come close to hitting you!” he said.

  It’s not just the big milestones like birthdays and graduations that choke you up when you’re a parent. Those are emotional moments, but you can see them coming. It’s the little things that blindside you. You don’t know when you read a book one night that it is the last time your kid will want to hear a bedtime story aloud. You have no idea when your daughter will suddenly say, “Thanks, but I can do my own hair. I don’t need you to help.”

  I know I can’t protect my teenagers from every t
hreat. I do. But in general, that’s the job: protect and defend. We’re like the big blue line of police officers. Moms are the physical embodiment of 911. It’s hard for teenagers to see any danger from cutting-edge technology. It isn’t overt. The danger is hidden. And there are so many wonderful things about technology! I use Facebook, Twitter, and email every day of my life. It’s part of the job these days if you are a writer like me. I’m lucky my kids can help when I get stuck.

  The scary part about technology is that teenagers and adults approach social media very differently. I view such innovations with caution and suspicion, like a cat stalking a new vacuum cleaner. Teenagers push buttons without any thought whatsoever. They text with wild abandon while doing two or three other things at the same time. I know that forwarded emails, texts, and Facebook posts have ruined reputations, cost people their jobs, and been cited as evidence in divorce proceedings. I know that teenagers have bullied and been bullied online. My husband, a judge, has seen a huge increase in court records citing social network indiscretions. It’s so quick! We’ve all sent emails in anger or by mistake and wished we could take them back two seconds later. Is there a more dangerous button on earth than Reply to All? That button should be red at the very least—the universal sign for danger and caution!

  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: once it’s out there, it’s out there forever. I tell my teens to imagine that every email they send will be copied to me, a teacher, a coach, or another parent. Believe me, if you write something that could get you in trouble, it will. If you would be ashamed for anyone to read it, you better not send it. Teenagers are just learning the rules of social interaction. They need the clues they get from other people’s faces to learn what is and is not socially acceptable. It’s hard to convey humor and tone in a text or email, even for professional humor writers like me. Just think how much harder it is for teenagers! How often have you heard teens say, “I was just kidding”?

  My kids do not see any potential danger in the use of social media. The pace is fast and furious, and they imagine that their audience is always someone just like them. They don’t think about the fact that every prospective employer is going to Google them. Colleges check out incoming students’ online presences—fraternities and sororities do, too. No matter how many safeguards are built into the system, every piece of information you put out there can be used against you. My children think I’m a total kill-joy about the whole thing. So what else is new?

  A common pitfall for teenagers is sexting. If you don’t know what this is, you’re lucky. I hope you never find out. This is a much more common phenomenon than you might think. (I find this prevalence hard to believe. Growing up, I never even called a boy on the telephone. I can’t imagine sending a man a sexy text message. Clearly, I haven’t lived a very interesting life. I become more aware of that every year. I have never even sent my husband a sexy text. If I did, there is no question in my mind what he would text back: “Who is this?” No one has ever sent me a sexy text either. The messages I receive say things like, “Come pick me up now” and “Don’t forget the cat litter.” Since sexting is apparently a rampant problem, I feel a little bit left out.)

  “Sending a provocative or X-rated email may seem funny and cool when you envision your boyfriend or girlfriend reading it,” I tell my kids, “but imagine that email being read by his or her parents. That happens all the time. How fun does that sound?”

  Of course, there is no shoving all that stuff back in Pandora’s box. Instant communication is part of our lives now, and there are good things about that, too. We don’t have to wait for the five o’clock or ten o’clock news to find out what’s going on around us. We get live news all day long on our phones, even. This technology saves lives. There’s no question about that. The best we can do is to beg, bribe, order, and cajole our teenagers into using technology thoughtfully. They’re going to make mistakes. Our job as parents is to minimize the collateral damage so they won’t be sry when ppl LOL at them.

  WWW.TEENAGER

  1.No chat rooms. You don’t need to talk to strangers about anything. Period.

  2.Don’t “friend” friends of friends! You have no idea where those people have been.

  3.No sleeping with your cell phone. You don’t need to be available twenty-four hours a day. You are not the president of the United States.

  4.No, no, no, no, no texting and driving! You can wait until you reach your destination to confirm the nuclear launch codes.

  5.No texting in church, at the dinner table, or at funerals or weddings.

  6.Sometimes, you need to turn your cell phone off and be with real people. To be clear: Vibrate is not Off.

  7.It’s rude to text people when you are with someone else. Live people trump avatars every time.

  8.It is just plain bad manners to send a thank-you text without a properly penned, snail-mailed follow-up. Don’t even think about sending a condolence text. Break out your monogrammed stationery or invest in a Hallmark card from the drugstore.

  9.Don’t rat yourself out in a text. It’s the equivalent of a written confession. Texts travel from person to person at the speed of light. Remember that. Forward is a one-button operation. Your mother is bound to see it.

  10.Think before you text. Is it something you want floating around on your wedding day?

  Leave a Light On,

  Please

  When I began writing this book, my teenagers and I hammered out a deal. Turns out, they are pretty tough negotiators. They agreed to be good sports about having their teenage angst paraded in front of the world for my professional shtick as long as I stayed away from one subject and one subject only. The topic they all agreed was taboo: dating.

  “You cannot use the word sex in your book, Mom. Gross! You cannot speculate about the dating life of your teenagers. It’s just too weird. Promise us right now you won’t go there!” they demanded.

  I agreed not to comment on the dating lives of the adolescents who live under my roof. It wasn’t hard for me to take a vow of silence. I wasn’t exactly anxious to head down that road myself. I’m a little bit of a prude.

  Naturally, one of the first questions I received from my editor after he read the first draft of the book was, “Why isn’t there a chapter about dating or sex in here?”

  “Because my teenagers consider it an invasion of their privacy,” I replied virtuously in my email response. I was thrilled to have a legitimate excuse to avoid that particular minefield. “Because I don’t want to write a chapter about it,” although true, doesn’t sound nearly as professional.

  Then I got to thinking. That almost always leads to trouble. Most often, I think thoughts like, Why does she wear her hair like that? or I wonder if that’s the woman he’s having the affair with. Most often, my thoughts do not merit sharing with readers. I rarely ponder world hunger or the current state of the economy or who’s up for a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, I know perfectly well that dating is an important subject to address in a book like this. However, the idea of writing about it makes me want to put my head down on my desk. I am fully aware that ignoring the birds and bees accomplishes nothing. “Just say no” is a good idea. I’m all for it, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the reality around me. “Everybody’s human,” the father of one of my friends always says. Temptation may have begun with a single man and woman in the Garden of Eden, but nothing much has changed since then. Half the drama incurred by teenagers is a result of raging hormones and a new awareness of the young men and women around them. Since I do not expect my daughter will want to join a convent nor my sons a monastery, I think that budding awareness is a good thing.

  Teenagers have to learn how to interact with the opposite sex appropriately, respectfully, and responsibly. I think that modeling begins at home. Boys and girls observe how their fathers treat their mothers, and vice versa, and they tend to model their own treatment of the opposite sex based on those examples. The patterns tend to reappear across generatio
ns. We’ve all observed that. Dating etiquette really boils down to good manners. My kids will roll their eyes when they read that sentence. They know I savor nothing more than an opportunity to lecture on the importance of good manners in any endeavor.

  I enjoyed watching my sons and later my daughter head out to their first dances in middle school. It was good practice. My daughter and her friends got together and preened in their party dresses. My boys donned freshly pressed slacks and button-down shirts and actually began to enjoy dressing up at that age. Corsages and boutonnieres were exchanged. Pictures were taken by beaming parents. The biggest question for sweaty-palmed boys was, “Will she say yes to a slow dance with me?” The biggest question for girls was, “What if nobody asks me to dance?” The good news these days is that girls often dance with one another, and big groups seem happy to take to the dance floor together.

  Nothing quite prepares you for seeing your son or daughter clasped in the arms of a person of the opposite sex. It takes your breath away, literally. It’s a bittersweet moment, one of those times you are reminded that this young person does not belong to you forever. That’s how I felt, at least. I have a friend who chaperoned a dance with me and excused herself to go throw up. What can I say? You feel what you feel. When you actually see your son or daughter lock lips with a date, it’s something else, let me tell you. It scrambles your brain for a few minutes.

  When my boys started dating, I worried about everything. Would girls break their hearts? Would one of them break some girl’s heart? Would they know how to behave in new, coed situations? Occasionally, I overheard in the car or when their friends came over (they almost never volunteer any love-life information to this day) that my boys were “going with” some girl or other. The names of the girls changed on a regular basis. There was obviously no real emotional investment. Gradually, I realized that those crushes were just part of the learning curve. My boys never actually went anywhere with the girls they were “going with.” They rarely spoke to one another on the telephone or over the computer.