For the next ten months, I will be the parent of three
teenagers. This is the truth, even
though Oldest Daughter claims she is a young adult, not a teenager. Sorry, but if your age has the suffix “teen”
in it, e.g. 19, then you are a teenager. The Common Household Son is now 17, and Youngest Daughter just turned 13.
This new status might mean that eye-rolling and requests to
use the car will be at an all-time high in the Common Household. Bring it on, baby.
Having teenagers around is great. Here are some things I could not do until I
had teenagers:
- ask the teenager to drive his/her sibling to Hebrew school,
band rehearsal, summer day-camp, piano lesson, and library. This requires explaining that this is to
their advantage since I will be busy earning their college funds instead of
driving people around. I don’t tell them
that I actually spent my time eating bon-bons and reading blogs.
- ask them to fetch something from the grocery store. This can be slightly disconcerting, since
they are as likely to return with the wrong brand/size/item as the Husband
would be.
- borrow money from my own kids. Frequently, my children have more cash on hand
than I do. For explanation, I have an
Actual Example:
I needed cash, but had none, so I borrowed $20 from my son. The next morning, as I was driving him to the
SAT test, I said, “I owe you $20.” I
said this mostly to remind myself to go to the bank.
Son said, “Yes.
And I charge 1% interest per day.”
I said, “Just stop that. If you
are going to charge me interest, then I’m going to start charging you for the
cost of the gas it takes to drive you everywhere.” He said, “Oh.
I see. If you control the oil,
you control the economy.”
As you can see, at least one of my teenagers is beginning to
understand the way the world really works.
5 comments:
I am eagerly awaiting the day when Emma can do the grocery shopping for me :-) It's a chore I really hate, and that will seem like such freedom!
Unfortunately at almost 12, she says she doesn't want to learn to drive until she absolutely has to. Did any of your kids feel that way, and then change as they got a bit older?
Because I might have to decide that she absolutely has to learn to drive by 16 :-)
Yes, I agree, teenagers can be very useful -- chores around the house, driving themselves to activities, and as you said, grocery store runs and borrowing money from them. I love it.
Cassi, your daughter sounds like my oldest when she was that age - said driving was too hard and too nerve-wracking, and she would never do it. By the time she was 16, she was chomping at the bit to learn how to drive. Some of her friends, though, still haven't learned how to drive. So I guess it depends on the kid and the parents. I do know that it was much easier to give driving lessons in the summer - there is more light in the evening after the work day.
Angie, as I was writing this blog post, I thought of your family, "maturing" as you said in a comment earlier. I'm glad to hear you are reaping some of the benefits of having teens around.
I really like the idea of kids driving themselves and one another around.
Really.
And the borrowing money sounds like a good perk, too.
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