I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: teens are God’s way of helping mothers let them go. It’s not that they are bad, it’s just that they aren’t likeable.

Example: When my two year old had a tantrum, despite the kicks and screams and little pounding fists, I said, “Aw. He needs me, poor thing.” When my fourteen year old pitches a fit, because of the deadpan glares, the shrugs, the incessant mumbling and the occasional slammed door, I say,  “Poor me, I  don’t need this.”

Teens and parents just don’t get along and I am convinced it’s them and not us. Do you need proof? Deadpan stares and mumbling isn’t enough?

Which brings me back to my childhood when I was convinced of the same. As in, it’s them (my parents) not us (myself and other teens).  So I know for sure that my mom just didn’t like me back then when I was a teen. Just like I thought. There was no reason for her to insist on the radio being turned down or off or to care about how my jeans fit. Besides the fact — and it’s a fact — that she didn’t like me. When I yank my son’s jeans up — I mean, when is this fad of sagging pants going to die? — I think of my mom and how often she made me change my clothes.

Another example: My kids listen to my music. Creed, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Wheezer, Alice in Chains, Abba. They listen to MY music… so why is that my music bothers me all of the sudden? I just want to turn it off. “It’s giving me a headache,”  I say and experience a sick satisfaction in their groans. But I’m not lying. It does.

And here’s the worst part — when they aren’t with me, I can still listen to it sans headache. I carefully guard my music — what’s left of it – from them because I don’t want to dislike it. And their association with it will make me hate it.

So that’s the proof. Teens aren’t likeable no matter what they do.  It’s us, not them. I knew I was right.

Either way, I’m right. Right now, or right then.  You can’t argue that.

And maybe this attitude is what made me a difficult teen as well as what makes me a difficult mother. D’you think?

What I’m Reading Now

     C all of the Wild by Jack London

      White Fang by Jack London

    Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert