In my world - parenting two teens (one mostly typical...he has his moments, and one who lives on her own curve) and two young-uns (both typical...although one out-thinks us all on a daily basis) there is never a dull moment under this leaky old roof. *By typical I mean a person who is not learning challenged or developmentally delayed.
I'm more than familiar with the day to day snarky-ness of the teen drama queen. Being non-typical doesn't change the fact that she's a teen.....it just changes how we go about dealing with it.
I'm not so familiar with the mostly-typical boy's teen-ness. He's a farily "new" teen being 14, almost 15 so it's relatively unfamiliar ground for us. He's also easing his way into the whole teen thing. Most days I accuse him of being 12. Then again, I believe I've also accused his father of being 12 a few times lately too. He's doing pretty well in school (for a change) and not giving me much grief over missed assignments and such which is a complete shock. For the most part he's a good spirited child but occasionally can be sullen and moody.
Teens are so sweet aren't they? I'm beginning to ' get' the joke about mothers of teens understanding why in the animal world, mother's sometimes eat their young. Last week would be one of those times I considered it a good idea.
Ty's a pretty busy kid. School and after-school activities etc plus working 2 jobs on the weekends refing hockey and working at a gas station. It's a lot of responsibility for a young kid but he wants to work - the almighty dollar is a powerful thing.
A week ago I got a call for Ty to do a couple games on Saturday. I wasn't sure what his work schedule was like but I told Doug that if there was a problem I'd let him know. On Monday when Tyler got his new work schedule I told him there was a conflict and he'd need to either switch his shift at work or call Doug and let him know he couldn't do the games. I've been putting my foot down on this whole mom as secretary thing. I'll take your phone messages and I'll book your games but if there's a problem you have to work it out. Well he didn't. I, as a good mom/secretary reminded him a few times Monday and again Tuesday about the schedule conflict and that he needed to work it out. Only problem is....he didn't.
On Friday I ditched the secretary hat and went into full-on mom mode and when he didn't immediately jump to find the phone and try to reschedule things he got one heck of a lecture. Tough Love takes no prisoners and I kept on him about it and in return I was glared at and there was an occasional snarky tone in his voice - cuz remember, teens are "sweet" - not! I was as helpful as possible, offering suggestions of who to call, even going so far as to find phone numbers for him but I refused to fix this. He'd been aware of the problem and reminded of it numerous times during the week and I'm pretty strong in my position on this one. The mom of one of the other kids that works at the gas station often calls me to switch shift for her son with my son. My opinion is....it's your job. You get the pay cheque. You deal with the schedule conflicts yourself.
Unfortunately, his communication skills are still developing so in all his phone calls to co-workers (also teen boys who's communication skills are still developing) key information may not have been presented in the best way - but I digress. In the end he couldn't find someone to switch shifts with him at the gas station and he ended up having to call his Ref Coordinator and apologize and tell him he wouldn't be able to ref the games Saturday afternoon, which left Doug scrambling at the last minute to find refs - not fair to him at all and Ty knows it. It was a good lesson for him to learn and had I 'fixed' it (because I found out later I could have fixed it had I called one kids parents.....d'oh! darn me and my stand on the situation!) it wouldn't have inconvenienced anyone....but he wouldn't have learned anything.
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