
My sixteen year old has really begun to embrace the "teen" part of "sixteen". She's a great kid: straight A's, good group of friends, not boy-crazy, a don't hear curse words or see cigarette ashes or smell alcohol on her breath. But, she still can annoy the begonias out of me!
This week she was sick, so she stayed home from school. On Thursday she asked if she could go to a friend's house to sleep over.
"What?!!!"
Was she serious? One, she was sick. Two, we don't do social calls at 9pm on school nights. And, three, sleepovers on school nights just don't happen in our home.
She argued that she was feeling better, that the next day was a short, wasted day at school, and that all of her friends' parents were allowing their girls to go to the sleepover (damn those other parents who make us look like the mean ones).
But we put our foot down and told her it wasn't happening. Then, she asked if she could just stay home from school the next day seeing that it was a shortened day, all her friends would be staying home (those damn parents again), and that since she still had a decent cough, riding her bike to school would aggravate it, and she'd be hacking like a lumberjack.
Like I said, she takes her school work seriously, so her mom and I told her that she could make the call, but that if she chose to stay home, she shouldn't expect us to let her hang out with her friends that evening. This is when she fully embraced her "teeness" and got incredibly upset. "It's not fair" (her mantra for 2016), she expressed.
Then she went into this whole monologue about how she missed her friends, and that she has good grades, and she's coughing, but actually feels better, on and on with more confusing teen logic. We stood firm. You make the decision: go to school and hang with friends, or stay home and... stay home.
Our old-person logic was that if you can't hang with a two mile bike ride (no inclement weather) and a couple hours at school, then you're not up to hanging with friends later that day. The "discussion" ended with an attempted door slam (our cheap doors are too light to actually slam) and she decided to stay home.
So, what's the point of this post? Well, the next day she ended up texting her mom during the day to tell her she was sorry for the way she acted (from a 16-year old...my 16-year old?), and that she went overboard. Turns out, none of her friends' parents let them stay home from school and they all went...but her (Now we look like the parents that make all the others look mean).
I couldn't believe she admitted her mistake and actually apologized. Just goes to show us that our little girl is still in there somewhere under all of the make-up, hair products and outfits from Tilly's.
Thing is, when we got home later that night, she had used all of her time at home to create a Power Point presentation as to why she should still go out with her friends that night...at least we had those two minutes of reason from our teen.
image courtesy of morgue file (mantasmagorical)
This week she was sick, so she stayed home from school. On Thursday she asked if she could go to a friend's house to sleep over.
"What?!!!"
Was she serious? One, she was sick. Two, we don't do social calls at 9pm on school nights. And, three, sleepovers on school nights just don't happen in our home.
She argued that she was feeling better, that the next day was a short, wasted day at school, and that all of her friends' parents were allowing their girls to go to the sleepover (damn those other parents who make us look like the mean ones).
But we put our foot down and told her it wasn't happening. Then, she asked if she could just stay home from school the next day seeing that it was a shortened day, all her friends would be staying home (those damn parents again), and that since she still had a decent cough, riding her bike to school would aggravate it, and she'd be hacking like a lumberjack.
Like I said, she takes her school work seriously, so her mom and I told her that she could make the call, but that if she chose to stay home, she shouldn't expect us to let her hang out with her friends that evening. This is when she fully embraced her "teeness" and got incredibly upset. "It's not fair" (her mantra for 2016), she expressed.
Then she went into this whole monologue about how she missed her friends, and that she has good grades, and she's coughing, but actually feels better, on and on with more confusing teen logic. We stood firm. You make the decision: go to school and hang with friends, or stay home and... stay home.
Our old-person logic was that if you can't hang with a two mile bike ride (no inclement weather) and a couple hours at school, then you're not up to hanging with friends later that day. The "discussion" ended with an attempted door slam (our cheap doors are too light to actually slam) and she decided to stay home.
So, what's the point of this post? Well, the next day she ended up texting her mom during the day to tell her she was sorry for the way she acted (from a 16-year old...my 16-year old?), and that she went overboard. Turns out, none of her friends' parents let them stay home from school and they all went...but her (Now we look like the parents that make all the others look mean).
I couldn't believe she admitted her mistake and actually apologized. Just goes to show us that our little girl is still in there somewhere under all of the make-up, hair products and outfits from Tilly's.
Thing is, when we got home later that night, she had used all of her time at home to create a Power Point presentation as to why she should still go out with her friends that night...at least we had those two minutes of reason from our teen.
image courtesy of morgue file (mantasmagorical)