Or S.A.T.A.N: Suburban American Teenager Acting Naturally
I was a bad, bad teenager. I did it all and the more I was punished the worse I rebelled. Now as a parent, I have been raising my children differently from how I was raised because the rebellion is still fresh in my mind.
My Theory: if your kids don’t hate you, they won’t have any reason to rebel against you.
Does this mean they are spoiled? Absolutely. Does this mean I have given them everything they have wanted since birth? Yes it does. Are they rotten? No they are not. The teenager is a Star Rank Boy Scout, an A student and on a baseball travel team. He doesn't smoke or take drugs and is respectful of adults. However, his hormones are raging. Ladies, think about PMS or god help us, Menopause, how the hormones make you feel and act crazy. Combine that with the inability to drive, have your own money, or make your own decisions. Add a powerful sex drive with no real outlet. Pimples. And your mother nagging you to make your bed, get your haircut, and your teachers piling on projects. How would you feel?
This week there have been 2 incidences with 14-year-old spoiled son. One I made him get a haircut. He is furious with me. I think it looked really bad, it was longer than any other kid on the baseball team, by far. This was a major battle and he lost. I think his hair looks better, everyone at school is calling him “adorable”! He wants to look cool, not adorable.
The next issue is the telephone. I despise call-waiting and always have. My son gets on the phone after school at 4:30PM and doesn’t hang up until 11PM. No one can get through. Unlike in my day, when the phone was connected by a cord to the wall, he can roam around the house, or down the basement, or in the backyard with this phone. With the phone always busy my options are getting call-waiting, buying him a cell-phone or putting a limit on his phone time.
Last night I went out to buy him Easter and Birthday presents. The other 2 kids were with their dad. I knew they would be dropped off around 9:00 and I wanted to call home to make sure they were getting to bed. After dialing my house for 90 minutes straight to a busy signa, I arrived home at 10:30. The other 2 kids were not in bed. I was furious and I blew a gasket. I told him that there would be no phone today at all. He told me “You are just trying to make my life miserable”.
Now what do I do when he gets home? Do I go with my first instinct and hide all the phones? I think that might make him hate me and want to rebel. In the sense that if I hide the phones he will hate me so much that he will go down the street and smoke a cigarette, just to spite me.
I am going to attempt to keep my cool and have a nice, friendly discussion about the limits required for my phone. 30 minutes every 2 hours is okay with me. I hate to have to pay for call-waiting, which is allowing him to be on the phone for 4 hours at a time. I also thing he should not be allowed to use the phone until his homework is done. One solution is letting him use my cell phone after 9PM when it is free. I am dreading this "talk" but I’ll let you know how it goes.
2 comments:
I think he just isn't thinking about anyone calling cuz the phone used to have call waiting. So now it seems to him as if no one has been trying to phone you because he's on the phone all the time. If the phones are hidden their purpose is defeated, therefore, would only appear to be quite an immature and disconnected response to the actual problem and that would surely build resentment and retaliation.
IMHO, get call waiting reinstated and simply don't click over if it beeps while you're using it unless you want to. Call waiting is the simplest and cheapest (¢ell phon€ bill$, anyone?) resolution.
I had call waiting for about 10 days when I realized they tricked me/trapped me into it. It was actually $15 more than they claimed, so I cancelled when I realized BellSouth was scamming me. He knows we don't have call waiting.
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