I’ve written (or perhaps spoken, or perhaps both) recently about the sort of mental fog that occurs in teenagers (or those about to be). It seems more prevalent in boys, though it could be that I’m just more attuned to them because that’s what I was and have. It commonly manifests as impaired ability to remember multiple responsibilities, and consequently “dropping” a task/obligation or two.
This happens to everyone from time to time, so why am I picking on kids? Well, because in adolescence, this tendency responds poorly or not at all to increased effort. I remember experiencing it myself. I could sit and plan and really emphasize to myself how important it was that I not drop any of these balls, and my chance of success might increase 5%. I’d understand completely how important it was, and I’d try as hard as I knew how, but I was still going to drop a ball more likely than not.
Nathan showed me another manifestation of what I think is the same impairment last night. It is the ability to evaluate a thoroughly elementary choice and somehow make the wrong one.
We had 6:30 reservations at Below the Radar last night. That means leaving the house about 6. Because it was about 18 degrees, about 5:50 I went out and started Lea’s van. Ten minutes of running should make it bearable, and positively toasty wouldn’t be far behind.
Now our habit is to exit the house and open both power sliding doors on the van, which then stay open until the boys get in and close them. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to do that tonight. So, inside the house, before I went out, I said:
Boys, I am going to open the right side door on Mommy’s van. You will get in together. Nathan, you will go first, as you sit in the left seat. Aaron, you will follow behind and close the door behind you. I am not opening both doors because I want to keep as much heat in the van as possible. Everybody understand?
Affirmative acknowledgment all around.
I exited the house to get in the van. Nathan came out behind me, though I didn’t notice until I was almost all the way in the driver’s seat with the door closed. He stood on the right side of the van for a few seconds, then opened the door, got in, and closed the door.
My explanation of how things would go was, at this point, perhaps ninety seconds in the past. Unbelievable.
I said “Nathan, Aaron is still in the house. Now we’ll have to open the door twice for no reason. Did you not understand what I said about the van doors?”
“Well, I didn’t want to stand in the cold!”
I am trying hard to be sympathetic, because I really do remember having this fog and so little ability to genuinely clear it.
Remember Louie Anderson? He’s a pretty good comic. One of my favorite things he ever said was an impression of his buddy talking to him when they were both teenagers:
Hey Louie, your dad told me not to drive all over the lawn…so I did anyway.
Parenting teens? How about equal parts sympathy, frustration, and abject terror? Is that about the right breakdown?
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Wow – this one hits close to home. My daughter is closing in on 13, and she has just as much trouble with simple reasoning and remembering as Nathan. And on top of that, we have to deal with the occasional out-of-the-blue crying fits and meltdowns. Sometimes Brian and I just look at each other like “Where did THAT come from?!”. Her mood can be wildly unpredictable, which is where the abject terror part comes in. We’re just sorta feeling our way through this whole parenting-a-teenager thing. Hope we at least get some of it right.
Or how about the terror of watching them disappear down the street in a car?
Haven’t really had that yet, but it’s coming. I don’t look forward to it.
Well, you know we haven’t had the experience either, but my memory is that this phenomenon doesn’t begin abating until 19 or so. 🙂
As presented, I’m with Nathan on this one. He didn’t hear “wait until the door is open to come outside,” and Aaron didn’t keep up with him, so he showed initiative and problem-solving in both opening (I’m cold) and closing (preserve the heat) the door. I wouldn’t stand or sit there in the cold with the van door open, either (pet peeve: I hate leaving any vehicle door open for more than a few seconds ’cause the exhaust invariably seeks out any opening that will fill the car with stinky fumes). Maybe Nathan is fogged, or maybe he’s thinking a bit for himself, and in this case pretty much within the parameters of the general instructions.
I’m with you that a challenging part of parenting is deciding where to draw a line between following instructions and doing his own thing. I think I too often came down on expecting to-the-letter obedience, so maybe that’s why I’m a little sympathetic with Nathan here.
The specific lack of compliance is with “you will get in together.” 🙂
And I cannot stress enough that I am absolutely sympathetic. I don’t generally huff and puff about this kind of thing, because I remember very well how unfair it felt to me that my dad would get upset with me for something I felt virtually powerless to prevent.
So it tends to be a methodical going through the situation and a request to try to think more carefully about these kinda of things. I don’t know how much good that does, but it feels derelict to say nothing.
I’m with Mike. The “you will get in together” did not sound like the salient point. That sounded like an incidental occurrence caused by them both being there at the same time. The main point sounded like “don’t open both doors” and he did, indeed, get in the right hand door and get in first.
Instead of framing it as a series of tasks, I wonder if it would work better to start with the objective and let them provide the solution. “Boys, it’s very cold out tonight, so we want to keep as much of the heat in the van as possible. How can we do that?”
Amanda, that sounds good in the abstract, but it would come off as remedial and patronizing. They’d look at each other like “is Dad OK?”
The logical jump is to either a) going back in the house; or b) (better) not leaving the house without Aaron in the first place. That I didn’t lay out every possible contingency shouldn’t be enough to derail the realization that one person using an open door opportunity is inefficient and counterproductive.
He (genuinely) got it after the fact. And I must say again, I was not angry with him afterward because I remember this.
Oh, sweet Jesus. You are in for the ride of your life. Things are exponentially better now…but from 13-16, if I had a dollar for every time I said, “I’m not going to live through this,”…
I used that phrase (and meant it) A LOT. To Jeff. To my friends. To strangers. To myself.
Hey…why isn’t a link to my blog showing up with my comment? Didn’t it used to do that?
Your name is hyperlinked.
If you click Marianne above, it will go to your blog.
Did you know you asked me this very same question a few months back? 🙂
Really??
Did I mention that parenting a teen also sucks your memory cells out of your brain? True story.
Mine had an hysterical breakdown today because some how it is my fault she was born with hair that doesn’t hold curls well, and OHMYGOD THEDANCEISINANHOUR ANDMYEYEMAKEUP ISNTRIGHT!!!!
So. Yeah.
Last night, while trying on which shirt went best with her size ZERO blue jeans, mine declared that “Everything makes me look huge.”
Your respective daughters are two of the loveliest young women I know.
You are both strong women married to good men. At this point almost nothing you convey to your daughter is as important as the moral imperative for her to be very discriminating when she decides who gets to be close to her.
(In my opinion.)
Right now she is bonecrushingly discovering that affections are not necessarily reciprocated in predictable manners. “Mom, I really miss that he used to talk to me.” She uttered, while weeping on my shoulder.
I have a Twitter friend who is an unambiguously gorgeous blonde-haired blue-eyed college student. She initially got my attention because she got retweeted so much into my stream. She is very smart, screamingly funny, and her sense of crassness is a good ten years older than she is.
She’s going to be able to call pretty much all of the shots at will when she decides to settle down.
And in some ways, she’s just as insecure as anyone else. She doesn’t seem to be fully aware of just how much she has going for her.
I haven’t the slightest creepy feeling toward any of these young women whose acquaintance I make. I wasn’t into girls their age when I was their age, fercryinoutloud.
What I desperately wish I could do, though, is get their undivided attention for two minutes and make sure they understand just how crème de la crème they are. These girls are 19, 20, 21 years old and weepingly freaking out that they don’t have boyfriends.
I think that steeling them through that youth-driven vulnerability is nothing short of critical to our future. They’re too susceptible to subpar jerks in that state.
You are not lying…
It seems to be getting a little easier lately…but her 14-16 years were flat out AWFUL when it came to the topic of boys. Her first real “hearbreak” was at the hands of a young man that did everything he could on his way out of their “relationship” to crush her self esteem. I’m afraid that social media had not done our kids any favors as they steer through the whole “dating” thing…stuff is “said” on FB or Twitter or through a text that would NEVER be uttered face-to-face.
And EVERYONE gets involved in any little old argument. One of the hardest lessons she’s had to learn is that the whole world doesn’t need to see behind the scenes of everything that’s going on in your life.