My son recently broke up with a girl that’s been friends with and known my other son since early elementary school.  For nearly a year now, my family has taken a keen liking to this girl.  She’s fun, she’s endearing and well, frankly, living on the banks of Lake Testosterone, I kind of enjoyed having the girl around from time-to-time.

Since this whole being the parent of dating aged teens thing is so new to me, I’m finding myself in serious need of advice.

How do you keep from getting attached to the dates your kids bring home?

I thought by taking the girlfriends along for family days of bowling and having them over for visits frequently was better than having my kids wanting to hang out away from home - now I’m not so sure.

Why did arranged marriages ever have to go out of style?

Share This

A fight between two Indiana boys landed the mother of one of the boys in jail last week after she encouraged the fight and refused to break it up.

For those wondering, NO it wasn’t me!

Although I have to admit, I would like to beat the mother for being quoted as saying:  “The police didn’t bother to talk to none of the neighbors on this side of the street or nobody else,” they just talked to them, and that’s all.”

In all seriousness, and I know it’s tough to be serious following a statement like that - but as the mother of kids who have been on the being bullied side of things, I can’t say that I would never tell my kids to stand there and just take it.  In fact, I’ve told my kids ways to get situations under control that might not be agreeable to everyone else.

I’m all about creative revenge.  Sometimes it might hurt, but most times I offer advice to my kids in ways that will provide a major blow to the offenders ego rather than inflict bodily harm.

As stated a few days back, I’ve tried to instruct my kids to take appropriate actions before by reporting offenses to the adult in charge but that doesn’t always work.

Years ago, I read that making a person own their actions and calling them out on them can change the entire course of action.  For example, if someone were to ask you an uncomfortable question, you could easily turn it around to make them the uncomfortable one by simply asking, “why do you want to know?”

Calling a person out for being a bully could potentially have the same impact but only if it’s done at the appropriate time and in front of the people they try to impress most.

What do you think?  Are parents wrong to encourage their kids to defend themselves?  Should a parent ever tell their child it’s ok to fight?

Share This

Last night, two of my kids wanted to attend the varsity football game.  I didn’t have a problem with it really.  After all they would be just up the road, inside a fenced in field with plenty of school officials around, right?

My only rule when dropping them off to attend the game was to STAY inside the fence.  Do not leave the football field whatsoever.  They were to call me when the game was over.

The one who knows how pissy I can become when my rules are broken, obeyed them.  The other seemed to have no problem changing my rule because he was having fun.

When I arrived at the school to pick them up, one of them had left the football field and had walked quite a distance with a bunch of girls to fetch something one had left somewhere.  UGH!

I phoned this disobeying one and asked where he was.  He responded with, “I went with my friend, she forgot something.”

My response - “That’s not your responsibility.”

When he got in the car, he chuckled with an “I’m sorry, I was just having too much fun.”

When he realized how fumed I was, he changed his tune and said “he had no choice that he was dragged.”

I don’t buy it.  I snapped.

I told him he already “blew that defense when he got in the car laughing and saying he was having too much fun.”

Knowing if I didn’t pass the torch to someone else, I’d probably strangle him, I sent my husband a text message and informed him of the crime and told him to deal with it - I was far to angry.

I’m still fuming a bit but need to come up with something that will teach this kid a lesson.

Short story - we recently had a murder locally - first in 25 years.  The killer is still on the lose and that just creeps me out a bit.  I want to know where my kids are, what they are doing and that they are safe.

I’m SO not doing this parenting teens BS very well.

I’m trying to devise a punishment that will work.  He doesn’t mind the punishments I’ve handed out thus far and is full of the “I don’t care” or “I didn’t want to do this or that anyway.”

Ideas?  How exactly do you punish a kid who doesn’t mind being punished?

*Insert eardrum popping scream here*

Share This

I’ve been told I’m not the most sympathetic parent (or spouse for that matter) on the block when it comes to listening to my kids say they are sick.  I’ve heard every excuse under the sun when it comes to one of them trying to get out of doing something they’ve been told to do or to get out of going to school.

Most of the time I can tell when there’s an issue at school that may be causing the anxiety and will dig to get to the root of that problem, but when I have a kid that repeatedly tells me they are tired, sick, don’t feel good, achy or have a headache, I tend to go for the costly approach and 1. scare the hell out of them with my armchair diagnosis guesses and 2. march their butts to the doctor for a nice, hopefully painful test that will teach them a lesson.

I have two that have serious allergies and while I know allergies can make you feel very sickly, I know it’s almost impossible to sell schools on the necessity for the kid to stay home with “allergies.”  The third doesn’t have much history of allergies or illness of any kind really - he won the lotto with his teeth and will never require braces - and for the most part, is fairly healthy.

I’m fairly certain what we are seeing is either a slight case of a mono or chronic fatigue or a serious case of jealousy and wanting to be as busy with doctors and dentists as the others.  I’m not exactly sure how you can balance attention between kids when one has chronic issues and the other does not.

Well, to answer the call for attention, he’s just had his day.  I truly hope the blood work comes back with nothing more than a serious case of possum and jealousy or maybe even a case of new school year jitters.

It’s painfully difficult for a parent to be sympathetic with kids who cry wolf.  Aside from scaring them and having them checked out - I’m not sure what else there is to do.

What do you do when you’re kids say they are sick when you know deep down they really aren’t?

Share This

At least last year it took more than a couple of days to get me upset at the way our school is ran.  It was my truest hope to be able to sell, move and transfer schools before this school year began.  Obviously that didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped.

This year I have one child in middle school and two in high school.  It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized I was going to be at one school on campus so rather than have the other two ride the bus home, I called the school to get word to them that I would pick them up.

While the secretary had me on the phone, she was very pleasant.  When my son got in the car after school, he informed me that I’d gotten him in trouble.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing - of course I asked, “how?”

When he went to the office to get the message, not one, but two secretaries told him that he “needed to inform his mother that she was not to call the office with such requests again and that from now on, decisions on transportation would need to be made prior to school.”

I’m trying to practice my self control and not phone the office while steaming angry - but WTF?  Why do school staff members not have the nads to tell parents what they are doing wrong, but place the burden on the kids and make them feel as though they’d done something wrong?

Last year I had a phone conversation with the school superintendent where I expressed my growing disappointment in Shenandoah School Corporation here in Indiana.  He informed me that he was quite taken with my disappointment - after all our school had some of the highest iSTEP scores in the state.

I calmly (yes, calmly) informed him that I believed there was far more to an education than the iSTEP scores - that these kids were people, not robots that step up only during iSTEP week to help get another feather in the schools cap.

I went on to remind him of a sampling of my personal complaints over my kids school careers since arriving in the middle school of this particular corporation…

• A principal having loose lips and telling the parent of a bully that I am an ultra sensitive parent.  I’d like to add that that parent is now in jail for fraud and deception for selling caskets to families and not delivering.  Nice, huh?
• That my kids were made to feel bad and forced to sit in classrooms and feel punished because we couldn’t afford to send our kids on the Washington D.C. class trip.
• That I was served with a letter that I was being turned in to the prosecutor because my child had missed too much school.  This was the year he had horrible health problems, always a doctors note and even a surgery - yet still maintained a C and above grade average.
• I had to visit the office when my child’s lunch bill was coming up to $4.00 per day.  When I did some checking and asking, I found that a bully was stealing my boys food.  I was given nothing but lip service on the issue and made to feel guilty for wanting to deny a child food - So, I gave my son permission that on the next time the kid reached for food on his plate to take his fork and stab the kids hand.
• I was made to feel guilty and petty when I complained about a kid stealing my son’s football cleats when he was not able to attend.  The child was told to not do it again and nothing else happened.
• I complained to the office when my son, one who struggles with low self esteem was walking into class when a girl grabbed his shirt and pulled it up over his head.  I asked the office what they would have done to my son had the roles been reversed and he had done that to the girl?  Care to guess what happened?
• I informed the superintendent of my concerns when the principal shared too much private information with me on a child that had to be visited at home, picked up for truancy.  The principal was late for an appointment with me and I guess felt the need to provide too much information in order to make himself look the hero.

Granted, these examples are from MY point of view - however, over the summer, I’ve learned of more parents who have similar issues with the same staff members.

I do have to admit the elementary school is spectacular - but it should not be placed in the position of making the entire corporation look good - because it doesn’t.

So many members of the staff in the middle school and high school are two faced beyond belief.  My cousin had a daughter who graduated a couple of years ago and she had similar complaints with staff acting one way to the student, one way to the parent and one way with the principal or super present.

At this point, I’m seriously considering paying tuition just to get my kids out of this mess.  I know all schools have their faults, but at least with a new school, my kids won’t have 9 years of complaints behind them.

As much as I would love to homeschool, I would HAVE to find a virtual classroom they could work through because I know I don’t have the smarts to teach them myself - nor do I have the patience.

So tell me - am I being an over sensitive parent or would you be a little pissy too?

Share This