One person's "nosey"
...is another person's "giving a damn."
We're just getting into the realm of teenage independence with the youngster. No, we aren't there yet, but I see the seeds being sown. He's starting to want his own life, separate from us, and he wants some privacy there. I'll grant him some, but not nearly as much as he'd like. He's pushing limits and seeing what he can get away with and where he gets hammered, and so on. It's a strange time full of paradoxes, but they're also the same paradoxes we've had before, just twisted a bit. From the time they're born, kids push the envelope to see where the boundaries are, secretly hoping they find some. Not only that. I recognize it from my childhood, when I wanted my dad to get his face out of my life...especially when I had plans he wouldn't approve of. Yeah, I thought he was being too nosey. He gave a damn about me, and still does. Both of my parents were like that. If you had your older brother sneak a keg out in the woods and invite the neighborhood kids to a beer bash, and you had to pick one parent who would find you out there and drag their kids home, the easy bet was one of mine. I can still picture the day my mom did that. I didn't see or value that when I was 18 and knew everything (except surprisingly, how to sneak off to a keg party in the woods without mom finding out), but I do now.
At the root of all of it is the "I hate you because you don't let me do anything I want, but if you did let me do that, I'd know you didn't care." paradox. It's a no win for parents if you're trying to be your kid's buddy, so I don't go there. Hate me if you will, but there will be boundaries and you'll live in them. I will be nosey. I'll want to know who you're with and what you're doing and how things are going in your life and if you're happy, or depressed, and why. I'm entering the "stupid" phase of my child's life. It's where the parents become idiots, and don't know anything, while the (almost) 13 year old is far smarter that both of us combined. If we know anything, he knows better. We will continue to have this lobotomy, I'm told, until he's in his 20's, when we'll begin to regain our intelligence. We'll see if that prediction holds. In the meantime, I will do my best to help him get to adulthood in the best shape possible to head out on his own, with what little intelligence I can muster for now.
Still, I know we haven't quite reached that phase, because in the middle of telling me how awful I'm making his life by not letting him do what other kids can do, occasionally he'll smile, hug me and tell me "I love you." I'm wondering how much longer that'll last.
We're just getting into the realm of teenage independence with the youngster. No, we aren't there yet, but I see the seeds being sown. He's starting to want his own life, separate from us, and he wants some privacy there. I'll grant him some, but not nearly as much as he'd like. He's pushing limits and seeing what he can get away with and where he gets hammered, and so on. It's a strange time full of paradoxes, but they're also the same paradoxes we've had before, just twisted a bit. From the time they're born, kids push the envelope to see where the boundaries are, secretly hoping they find some. Not only that. I recognize it from my childhood, when I wanted my dad to get his face out of my life...especially when I had plans he wouldn't approve of. Yeah, I thought he was being too nosey. He gave a damn about me, and still does. Both of my parents were like that. If you had your older brother sneak a keg out in the woods and invite the neighborhood kids to a beer bash, and you had to pick one parent who would find you out there and drag their kids home, the easy bet was one of mine. I can still picture the day my mom did that. I didn't see or value that when I was 18 and knew everything (except surprisingly, how to sneak off to a keg party in the woods without mom finding out), but I do now.
At the root of all of it is the "I hate you because you don't let me do anything I want, but if you did let me do that, I'd know you didn't care." paradox. It's a no win for parents if you're trying to be your kid's buddy, so I don't go there. Hate me if you will, but there will be boundaries and you'll live in them. I will be nosey. I'll want to know who you're with and what you're doing and how things are going in your life and if you're happy, or depressed, and why. I'm entering the "stupid" phase of my child's life. It's where the parents become idiots, and don't know anything, while the (almost) 13 year old is far smarter that both of us combined. If we know anything, he knows better. We will continue to have this lobotomy, I'm told, until he's in his 20's, when we'll begin to regain our intelligence. We'll see if that prediction holds. In the meantime, I will do my best to help him get to adulthood in the best shape possible to head out on his own, with what little intelligence I can muster for now.
Still, I know we haven't quite reached that phase, because in the middle of telling me how awful I'm making his life by not letting him do what other kids can do, occasionally he'll smile, hug me and tell me "I love you." I'm wondering how much longer that'll last.
John put this out here at 9:17 AM
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