ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

My daughter, 11,

The age 11, not the Stranger Things character.

lol!

My 19-year-old wrecked the car I let him drive. It was pretty clearly his fault. Thankfully, he was not hurt, and the car is salvageable. No one else was involved. I am probably going to make him pay the insurance deductible and take a remedial driving course, but am wondering if there is anything else I can do to help him understand how he's put everyone out. Oy.

Jesus, kids and cars...

My 18-year-old just got his license last fall. He was delayed slightly due to covid, but also due to a bunch of behavior stuff around age 15-16 where his mother and I were just like "you aren't ready for a learners permit yet." In retrospect, despite passing the test, he still isn't ready for a driver's license.

Anyway, he's been working hard at a shitty job since last spring. Bought himself a used pickup the day he got his license. Crashed it in March, the week of his 18th birthday. Not hurt, but damaged someone else's property and had to pay for it. Took the truck around and found that it would cost more than it's worth to have it fixed at a professional mechanic so he decides that one of his friends, who is an amateur mechanic, will help him fix it.

Without telling us, spends $1,000-ish on a BACKUP car to drive while he's "fixing up the truck." So now we have 4 cars in our household, one just taking up space in the driveway. In early June, he skids out driving too fast on a wet road and crashes the backup car. Fortunately, no one is hurt and this car remains driveable. A week or two later, he gets pulled over doing 60 in a 45 and gets a ticket, which under the terms of the provisional license means he has to go to traffic school, and the next offense will be a suspension.

Before he has a chance to go to traffic school, he goes to senior week (every graduating senior in the state ends up in Ocean City, which must be pure hell for anyone who is not a teenager). Rents a fucking MOPED and gets into an accident on THAT. Gets tickets for operating too fast for conditions and NOT WEARING A HELMET.

So he's looking at a suspension, but we're going to a hearing to try to get him out of it so he can have a car to drive to community college in about a month.

And I still have to help him get registered for community college...

sending up sanity prayers for both of you, that shit is stressful!

UUUUGH, reflexively/sympathetically saying WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING ?!? to myself in reaction to all that.

plus the fear of what could have happened to them in any of those accidents! i imagine it is hard for that not to compound your reaction

like as a parent that all would be so terrifying to me

It is terrifying, but somehow you learn to live with it.

I console myself with the thought that I did plenty of stupid shit at that age and survived. But . . . sometimes it was just out of pure dumb luck.

My daughter, 11,
The age 11, not the Stranger Things character.

― peace, man, Thursday, July 21, 2022 12:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Catching up on the thread and cannot stop loling irl at this

Many xps but I think with the Simpsons, at least during the classic seasons, a lot of the more cynical stuff goes right over kids' heads. Or, they get the basic vibe of why a situation is funny but not the granular details that might lead to actual cynical beliefs about society/life/whatever. otoh, it's also possible that kids are exposed to so much more now that they are more fluent in parsing the cynicism.

Cow_Art, love that post about the Beach Boys! A Beach Boys greatest hits CD of my parents' was one of the first "adult" albums I ever took an interest in as a kid myself at age 8 or 9, though it was then another 15 years before I came back around to exploring them. I am looking forward to my kids geeking out about music but also emotionally preparing myself that it may not happen to the extent of my dreams

I kind of caved on Stranger Things because she has been stuck home sick for days and because she has several friends who watch it and has this really strong "wanting to feel mature" thing lately. I try to check in with her about it since I can't watch with her. I asked her not to watch the 4th series because it's not appropriate for her age, but I guess we'll see if that stops her. I've been trying to talk about some of the scary parts with her just to see how she feels about them and how she's handling them. She does kind of like dark stories so I'm not surprised it appeals to her, plus it has a strong and somewhat introverted female lead character, which I would bet she relates to.

Seeing how much grim/dark TV our daughter can tolerate is one of my favorite things. Recently we watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I love and she was really in to. I don’t think we’re ready to level up to Death Note though.

I was pretty surprised at how unperturbed they were by the Harry Potter Movies, which they started watching at like 8 and 5 respectively

my 5 year old daughter loves Spongebob and I feel that show is a little grotesque for her

Oh lord I had at least 4 different kinds of car accidents between ages 16-22, one of which was hitting a deer in the dark which is the only one that was definitively not my fault. Sorry to hear things are so rocky.

i recommend raising raffi by keith gessen.

keywords include: immigrant parents, multilingualism, russia, dealing with anger as a parent, boys, sports and parenting, pandemic, brooklyn housing, schools and daycares.

are we all having fun?

My favourite study of "how often does a family with small children get a respiratory infection?" is this one, from the USA: https://t.co/fepEzs4A6Q
Children <5y have one of 16 common respiratory viruses detected in a nasal swab 50% of the year! pic.twitter.com/xvkTPXqyQc

— Dr CJ Houldcroft 🕷️ (@DrCJ_Houldcroft) January 3, 2023

Yep, we might not have had actual life disrupting infections for 50% of last year but it certainly seemed like it. Usually impeccably timed, our 6 yo missed her one school theatre trip and one christmas cinema trip of the year.

my kids have been coughing for like 3 months straight

my kid has, too. super-hard to tell if her cough this morning was the remnant of an old infection or the beginning of a new one.

my 5 and a half year old has had a late night post-nasal drip cough for weeks. Totally find during the day, then every night hours into sleeping, she's coughing and sitting up for a bit.

hi horseshoe!

I remember our pediatrician's rule of thumb was that kids get sick 8 times a year until they're five then five times a year until they turn eight.

The first part of this was totally true but covid wrecked our data for the second part.

hi Tracer!

'Welp, enjoy working at Dollar General for the rest of your life' is a thing I say now.

Haha. I lost count of the number of times I said "Do you want to graduate from high school?" during the 2020-21 school year.

Earlier this evening, I literally found myself saying “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed…” – and even though I knew it was a cliché as I heard myself say it, it accurately expressed how I felt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My three year old took my two volumes of Maus off the bookshelf and was, like, “what’s this about daddy”, and the best “quick change the subject” response my brain could come up with was “er, it’s a story about some mice who go on a lovely holiday together”

2-yo perfectly recreated the sloppy steaks from i think you should leave tonight

Just successfully hosted my daughter's 11th bday party with FIFTEEN 11yo girls in the house. Whew.

Here's a story that I was randomly thinking of today. I don't think I've told it here so I will tell it now.

Fact 1. When I'm in an elevator, or otherwise immobilized and idle, I have a habit of taking out my handkerchief and wiping off my glasses.

Fact 3. Some years ago, I was working in a U.S. government building with strict security.

Fact 4. At the time, my routine was to drop my daughter off at preschool before going to work. Now, when you have a kid in preschool, they sometimes need extra clothes for accidents and whatnot.

On one particular rainy morning I was made my commute as usual, got to work, and got into a crowded elevator.

As I often do in this situation, I took off my glasses, reached into my pocket, and began idly wiping my glasses with... a pair of Strawberry Shortcake panties, in size 6.

hahaha

a likely story

"...and that's why I no longer have a security clearance."

Amazing

My three year old daughter has a toy called Harry and she asked me “what’s his last name” and in a - not unusually - unthinking moment I said “Balls” and now she has a toy called Harry Balls.

Our boston terrier has very…. prominent, large jowls. At a certain point I started referring to them as her meat flaps and the term stuck. I, also, was not thinking when this happened.

my six year old found some internet site with a bunch of games (i think it's called random?) and i'm not a big fan. lots of ads between the games and a couple with guns. anyone know of a good subscription based gaming sites where i won't have to worry about him stumbling on something awful?

the youngest person on Something Awful is probably like 34 now

Don't know what it's like now but my kids used to play on Friv (but that's several years ago)

https://www.friv.com/

Nice thanks

Apple Arcade is surprisingly good for this.

when you’re so furious at your kids ignoring your pleas to put their phones away you fish your own phone out and in a blaze of anger you turn downtime on in your own phone by accident

Got a text from my wife while I was at work the other day. Our 19-year-old (who is living at home, working 6 days a week, not attending college) had saved up $15,000 to get his pilot's license. What I didn't learn until later that afternoon was that he told her that as he was running out the door to his first flying lesson! So while I was processing all this, he was zooming around in the skies above our city. We don't have the best relationship with him - our daily interactions are usually less than 10 seconds long. "Good morning, son!" "Hi, dad." "By the way, you got a letter from the mva, and they say youreallyneedtogetyouremissionsinspected!" as he is running out the door. I'm just glad he's taking some initiative to improve himself in an interesting way.

In the meantime, I've been trying not to be too overwhelming with my daughter and school. She had a rough year in 6th grade, as far as keeping up with assignments. There was a lot of back-and-forth between me and her teachers about catching up to assignments. She could never seem to remember them. I think she has ADHD, which I have as well, but I haven't taken the steps to get her evaluated for it yet. So far the school year has been going smoothly and she's staying on top of her assignments. But I'm a nervous wreck because I'm trying to stay on top of them as well and I don't want to overwhelm her with questions. I worry that I risk coming across as a nag and pushing her away.

Sympathies, peace, man. Those are both tough situations (one who's literally flying away and one who may be struggling a bit but will turn out fine).

I can relate. Elder one here is 16 and generally quite sensible, but still has a lot of things to figure out. Younger one will, alas, always need extra care.

I recommend that you take time to get her evaluated ASAP. Both of my kids have it, and they’re doing well without medication but it takes a lot of management for both of them (nothing agains meds, my kids can’t tolerate them). But in middle school testing becomes more intense and the accommodations your kid will get can be useful. The only accommodation my kid takes advantage of is the extra time for testing which helps a lot, especially with math.

The process is a pain in the ass but it’s worth it, and it can also change the nature of your “nagging” and how it’s perceived.

Yeah, understood. My plan is to see how things go for the first couple months of the school year. My involvement with her education last year had me at the breaking point, but I want to see if it was just a blip.

From a teacher's point of view, I'd definitely chase it up. Having at the very least a profile will alert teachers in the short term, and it will open up possibilities down the line for extra time etc. In the UK, awareness of ADD has changed hugely in the last few years and while some teachers struggle with adapting discourse, classroom arrangements and flexibility with homework etc, you'll most will be totally on your side.

As a parent, I wish we'd got it sorted sooner! We have things called EHCPs in the UK (Education health and care plans) and in some cases these run right up the age of 25, meaning classroom adaptations and exam concessions are supported by law - into university and beyond. We should totally have got our shit together and sorted this earlier.

Lastly - with both hats on - I'd say give yourself and your daughter a break. This will sound platitudinous, but I genuinely don't think you should sacrifice your relationship, or your health, for shitty schoolwork.

Replacing ‘you’ with ‘poo’ while singing along to the radio never gets old:

Last night you were in my room/and now my bedsheets smell like poo

Everything is pointless without poo

The 18 year old is going to Cambodia for a holiday next month, having developed an online relaysh with a lovely Cambodian girl over the last year or 2. God I hope it doesnt end in disappointment for him - Ive been there done that twice! - but either way, this'll really grow him up a bit. Both the stepkids are a bit ... well, they dont know or care to do anything like cooking, washing their own clothes, cleaning up unless demanded... typical teens I guess. Id've got them into all that years ago (I'm sick of seeing young women have to date men who just assume their women will do everything mum did) but as per, I'm not their mother so.

After four kids, I am about done getting teens to do much of anything, including getting up in the morning. Now that I'm down to the last one, I keep most of my powder dry for those few battles that actually matter.