Tuesday, September 8, 2009

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!

5 comments:

Lucky Girl said...

That was HILARIOUS!!! Thanks for sharing what goes on in that mind of yours!!!

Jessica said...

That's great! I never really thought of that perspective before. Makes texting look pretty good, instead of annoying.

Brooke said...

I'm going to have to remember that one! Very funny. Thanks for stopping by my blog as well (and for the spit tip for teens) :)

Mrs. Sarcasm said...

I am 31 and I much prefer texting over talking, so I can do the eye rolling and saying out loud what I wouldn't dare text back. I know, someone needs to grow up. Just not quite ready yet! ;)

Mary | Deep South Dish said...

Hi! Visiting from SITS roll call again!

I had to reluctantly get into the texting thing because my 28 year old son and his wife rarely do any other form of communication. I mean I am "retired" so to speak and really have no reason for an iPhone and all the newest "on the go" technology and communication gadgets really, but I got really frustrated with trying to get hold of my son. He apparently rarely checked his voicemail and hardly ever actually answered calls, but he WILL generally text you almost immediately back, unless he is at work or otherwise busy at the moment.

The first couple of days of turning on texting on my cellphone, which I hardly even USE these days (but it's on the family plan), I think I had more "conversations" with my son and DIL than I've had ever had, and certainly since they married 4 years ago!

Still, I wonder if this kind of communication is teaching younger folks how to avoid one on one human contact. So much easier to text than to face someone, or even talk to someone on a telephone, and in many ways, while "safer" to me at least, that is somewhat sad too.