When they are little you know you have toddlers ( as if you needed hints on this *rolls eyes* ) from the sticky handprints on everything that’s 2 foot and lower. You find apples in the fruit bowl each with one bite taken out of them. The bathroom looks like an assault course comprised of more toys that can actually fit in a bath tub. And lastly, yesterday’s mug of coffee is still sitting on the side being all hopeful it may be drunk at some time before penicillin starts to grow. Trust me you will look back on these days as the ‘better’ days.
Then you blink and they are teenagers.
Your daily mantra turns into “give me strength” or “pass the gin now” depending where the sun is in relation to the landarm.
You buy more food a month than a small nation scoffs in a whole year and still there is nothing to eat in the house apparently. The bathroom hosts more beauty products than you can humanly imagine but you have still given birth to something that’s ‘hideous'( her words not mine). No, don’t try to tell them they are not hideous and that they are beautiful as these are words to start a world war. And you end up saying 30,40, 100 words to get a 1-word reply which is progress on last week.
The good news is that it is rather more optimistic that the house, in general, will stay tidy as the teenage species does like to nest in one’s own room. They emerge as if on set on Walking Dead and doing a provisions run. They dash to the kitchen surveying the rooms for the undead ( that’s us parents ) and then gather food from the fridge and rush back the safety of their rooms before the undead tries to talk to them.
This does also mean that you now also have your very own bio-hazard laboratory in your house, the teens room. Aren’t you lucky? I’ll give you a fair warning now, don’t open the door. No, don’t, just resist opening it. You don’t want to know what is happening, growing or festering behind it. Every now and then tie a black bag to the door handle . I’m not saying it will be filled but it’s a handy way to check they are still alive. When it’s been removed you can safely deduce they or something are still breathing.
This my friend is just the tip of the teenage iceberg. Stoke up on gin, wine and anything else you can get your hands on. Batten down anything of value or of nervous nature. I am told they grow out of it and if your lucky its before you decide to move to another country and send them a postcard with the news.
“The bathroom hosts more beauty products than you can humanly imagine but you have still given birth to something that’s ‘hideous’. No, don’t try to tell them they are not hideous and that they are beautiful as these are words to start a world war. ” So, you have a daughter who believes she is “hideous” and buys, or has you buy, mountains of beauty products. It sounds like when your daughter(s) were younger that you occasionally showed your them how to use make-up (lipstick? nail-polish?), talked to them about hairstyles. and sometimes pulled a an item of clothing off a rack and discussed whether it was “cute,” fashionable, or had some other aesthetic property as much as whether or it was comfortable, warm, light-wight for the summer, durable, or otherwise practical. Even if you didn’t talk to them much about their own hair, clothes, etc…. maybe they simply watched that their mother applying make-up in the morning, spending great deals of time picking and choosing which clothes at the store you wanted to buy; Maybe you held up to items and asking your child’s opinion about their aesthetic value?; maybe in conversation you would occasionally espouse just how much you love [beauty product X] because of reason [A], or how you really need to pick up more [blah]. This implicitly encourages young girls to care about such things. You pass your daughter’s insecurities off as a joke, but regularly using tons of shampoos, conditioners, make-up etc….every now and again voicing her suspicion that she is actually “hideous” are not cool. There is some serious hurt there. My mother almost never wore make-up, only ever wearing lipstick on special occasions. She was not some radical feminist, and I don’t remember her ever, in my whole life, giving me a lecture on the artificial portrayal of women in magazine ads and billboards or any angry tiraids about beauty products being a scam. It’s just that when the person you learn from doesn’t care much about those things, then often you don’t end up obsessing over it either. I think you must have raised your daughter(s) to be emotionally invested in that stuff.
Hi, thank you for your comment. You are probably correct that is all my own fault that she thinks that way. I am terribly insecure about looks and my figure and hide away from cameras etc so yes my own insecurities have probably passed onto her. With all that said the post was meant as a more tongue in cheek look at life with teenagers.