Teenage Daughters

[treibeis]

Teenage Daughters

Toby Gymshorts wrote: Are you sure he's hiding when he crouches there? I mean, he is 80.

You may have a point there, although it's not really age-related. As long as I can remember, my father has been obsessed with lavatory paper.

He never gave a shit about what food was on the table or what the house looked like or what was on the television or, basically, anything at all, but if my mother bought the wrong lavatory paper - and "wrong" meant "anything that wasn't the thickest you can get",, he'd go as far as to express an opinion. This usually involved the words "If I wanted to wipe my arse with tracing paper, I'd go down the bus station and have a crap there."

[WOM]

Teenage Daughters

There speaketh Toby 'The World Is My Bog' Gymshorts.

[treibeis]

Teenage Daughters

WOM wrote: My wife and I were in a Blockbuster video one time and I said "I think that woman over there is my cousin." She suggested I go say hello and I just laughed. She said, "In my family, we say hello to relatives." Not six weeks later, she quite intentionally dodged her aunt in a dollar store.

About 15 years ago, my father noticed some bloke staring at him at IKEA. This went on for so long that he ended up marching over to him, intent on "having it out with him" (whatever that was supposed to mean).

It turned out the bloke doing the staring was my father's youngest brother. They desisted from having a punch-up, preferring to have an in-depth chinwag ("Ah, it's you. All right"; "Yeah, I'm all right").

[Sam]

Teenage Daughters

Treibeis's father has skyrocketed in my estimation during this page of the thread.

I have no daughters or sisters, so can't offer any encouragement or advice, WOM. Sorry.

[Various Artist]

Teenage Daughters

Nocturnal Submission wrote: That's excellent, VA, and I'll bear it in mind in the next few years as my daughter, 14 last Sunday, develops.

Gawd, thanks a lot NS (and RC just above) but please also bear in mind the following disclaimer in that case:
• I do not have, and have never had, any teenage daughters
• I do not have any daughters
• I do not have any children
• I have never been, and do not expect ever to be, a teenage girl myself
• I do not have, and have never had, any teenage sisters

My only experience, such as it is, with the breed in question is one cousin (now 19) and a few friends, really. I'm just going on a broad understanding that the juvenile brain has a shedload of synaptic connections that are relatively weak yet very numerous and interlinked – which is why we learn how to think and move and speak, and pick up facts and languages and so on, so easily in our youngest years – but which are then essentially 'rerouted' during adolescence to form fewer-but-stronger adult neural pathways.
(Further disclaimer:
• I am not a neurologist
• I do not have any genuine medical insight, only the ability to regurgitate plausible hearsay, such as that heard on QI)
This, or so I gather, is why we end up with more lasting though less adaptable brain patterns afterwards – and why we go through a phase of being so bloody unreasonable in the middle: our hardwiring is simply all over the place while it's in transition from one state to the other

It does seem to explain why with a teenager it really is like trying to communicate with a different species for a while: because their cerebral processes are in a state of flux, and in the meantime they're neither fish nor fowl if you see what I mean. For a few years the impulses, the temper, the mouth and the mood swings are governed by synapses firing off in all manner of odd directions that they're not fully in control over – which is why they themselves probably wouldn't be able to explain why they react so wildly or badly to seemingly trivial things or differences of opinion, or why they're unable to voice a coherent sentence versus an agonised, furious silence. It's as much a mystery to them trying to peer out through the shifting fogs of adolescence as it is to the exasperated and hapless parent looking in from the outside.

Mix in the standard issues of wanting to carve out one's own social niche, wanting to be "different" from one's parents (and conform with one's peers), a sudden sharp awareness of generation gaps and of the lure of the opposite (or same) sex, one's physical body changing, the size, darkness and complexity of the world, etc. etc., just at the moment in time when one's brain is arguably least well-equipped to deal with all this shit, and it's a potent – and potentially explosive – cocktail they and you may have to handle. Best of luck...!

[Toby Gymshorts]

Teenage Daughters

WOM wrote: There speaketh Toby 'The World Is My Bog' Gymshorts.

You, of all people on this board, know my burden.

EDIT: Whereas TAB probably shits the pair of us into a cocked hat. Which is quite the image.

[WOM]

Teenage Daughters

Hah! Do I. I can look around and locate the Gents within 20 seconds of entering any establishment. My FIL actually said once "I wish WOM was here. He could find me a washroom."

[WOM]

Teenage Daughters

[quote]treibeis wrote:

About 15 years ago, my father noticed some bloke staring at him at IKEA.

That would have never happened to my dad. He utterly refused to go to IKEA. "You start in one end and can't get the hell out until you reach the other end. It's bullshit."

No matter how many times I told him they installed shortcuts, he refused to visit again. And he was a man who enjoyed a good, inexpensive hotdog.

[caja-dglh]

Teenage Daughters

The nearly 5 year old has suddenly started to turned nice. Like the last year or so of what felt like hazing worked.

None of this sounds like something to look forward to.

I have no advice. Maybe an emoji chart for doing things to get something from Toys-R-Us? Ah, teenagers. Switch it to a 40?

[Hot Pepsi]

Teenage Daughters

JUST KEEP 'EM OFF THAT POLE!!!

Being a pain in the ass is an important part of being a kid, really. They're in the process of becoming independent and learning how to define themselves apart from their family. They're trying out different versions of their possible self and figuring out how things work beyond their comfort zone of family and, perhaps, neighborhood. And that's assuming a relatively safe and nuturing childhood. The kids who've seen some shit and been betrayed by family are also struggling with a lot of extra anger and trust problems.

Bill Plotkin has a useful, if a bit hippyish, scheme for describing the stages of growth (https://www.animas.org/wp-content/uploads/Intro-to-ESDW-for-Animas-website.pdf) and teenagers start out in the "Thespians at the Oasis" stage and move into the "Wanderer in the Cocoon" stage.

I don't have any kids and won't, but I volunteer with teenagers via a youth group that is disproportionately female and can say that most of the young women in the group (technically girls, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt) are some of the very best people - not just best kids, but best all around people - I've ever met - kind, thoughtful, self-aware, centered, talented, and all-around-agreeable people. Much moreso than I recall girls being when I was that age. And the lads in the group are good too - better than I recall boys being when I was one. But with the boys, we mostly talk about about school, sports, and comedy. Whereas the girls are more inclined to want to ask us about big life questions.

If it weren't wildly inappropriate and possibly criminal, I'd say they're the kind of people I would like to have a drink with just for the conversation value.

They grow-up quickly in those years. I can even see it from the beginning of the year to the end with some of the kids. But I've known some of for five or six years and it's remarkable to see how fast they get their act together.

Of course, this isn't a cross-section of teenagers. It's not even a cross-section of teenagers in this community, but it shows that kids can turn out OK. Our group helps them a lot. We give them a place to talk about shit without judgment or the kind of intense expectations they get at school. It would be great if all kids could have that.

It sucks that your sister married a dud, but its good for your daughter to have some of that in the family - close, but not that close. She can learn from their mistakes. My extended family has some weirdness too, but we don't see them much or have to deal with their issues day to day. My nuclear family is/was very stable, so I didn't get a good education in dealing with drama or "managing" difficult relationships. - that's a whole other discussion.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Teenage Daughters

I think it helps if you stop seeing her as a hormone-addled monster and acknowledge she's not that different from you at that age, or indeed -shudder- today. Empathy and humour make a big difference.

[Gangster Octopus]

Teenage Daughters

I've nothing helpful to add; but I'd just like to say; think of my parents. Forty years ago myself, my two sisters and my two brothers were all teenagers...