communicating with your teen 101

Well hello!

Feels kinda weird not blogging for a couple days. I really missed it. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. I sure did!

We had a great time visiting friends back "home". It was a sweet, quiet, free from teenage drama kind a weekend.

Probably due to the fact that my kids were spread all over southwest Michigan most of the time.

And most of communicating was done by texting.

I can't tell you how much I love texting my teenagers!

Every parent should go out and sign up for texting the minute their kid turns 13.

When I am texting with my kids they are almost magically nicer people. I never have to say "don't you take that tone with me!" or "look at me when I'm talking to you" or "don't you roll your eyes at me!". I can just choose to believe that they are behaving like normal human beings while I am talking to them.

So lovely!

I am thinking that we should adopt a "texting only" week at our house. I'm sure you can figure out the week I'm talking about. Just think about how nice it would be when the female hormones are flying if we just kept our mouths shut for one week and "let our fingers do the talkin"!

It would save us from having conversations like this one that Mac and I had a couple of months ago. This was after she said something that hurt my feelings (probably that her whites weren't white enough or that I didn't put enough peanut butter on her sandwich--yeah I know, I tend to get a little "touchy").

Me: "I'm hormonal this week Mac! Do you think that you could just for ONE week be nice to me so I don't get all upset?!"

Mac: "OMGosh MOTHER!!!! Why do you always have to point out that you're hormonal? Do you think that I can't figure it out on my own?! Everyone in this house knows you're hormonal! If you point it out one more time I might have to kill myself!!!!"

Me: "If you know that then why can't you just refrain for one single week from being insulting to me?! Tell you what. I will buy you a notebook and you can write down all the insulting things you want to say to me for that week and then when the week is over you can say them all to me!"

Mac: *rolling her eyes* "You are so lame!" *stomps out of the room*

I don't know. I thought it was a pretty good solution.

Just image if we only texted that week. The peace, the quiet, the money we will save on Kleenex.

Mac and I did have some great "real" conversations this weekend. We went out for lunch one day together. Here's my favorite part.

Me: "...we all went out for dinner on Saturday night. We went to Fricano's. They have the best pizza ever! If I was on death row and was requesting my last meal, it would be Fricano's."

Mac: "wow! That must be good, but I think we need to establish why you would be on death row."

the phone rings and it's my hubby. He pulls one of those "I can't find something and even though you are hundreds of miles away from home because you are the mother/wife you should know supernaturally exactly where it is". I HATE that! Then he gets an attitude when I can't tell him where it is. Like I lost it or something!

So I hang up the phone.

Me: "I would be on death row for murder....you dad, of course" I shrug my shoulders and take another bite of my sandwich.

Mac: "Wow Mom....that is inappropriate on sooo many levels."

Me: Shrugging my shoulders again. "what would you have for your last meal?"

Yes texting is great.

But these conversations are the memories that I will cherish!