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Feeling Spent

If you are dealing with an insolent teenager daily, chances are sometimes you run out of the reserves of patience. My friend M is the mother of a teenaged boy. All days are hard but some days specially so. The child in question does not think high-school is something he needs to do, college is irrelevant and somehow he has all the answers. In his mind at eighteen something magical will happen and he will be out in the world, free and living a good life his own way. The adults are all idiots and need to stay out of his business - that is only way they could possibly contribute in his life. He is rude, cuts people off mid-sentence to express his ignorant and unintelligent perspectives, acts like whatever he does not know (which is just about everything in the world) is irrelevant. Some days, M finds her patience worn to the bone. 

Last time I talked to her happened to be one such evening. He said something more than usually asinine and uncultured to her and she totally lost it. She told him he needs to understand he is very far from special and no one wants to hear a damn thing he has to say. What is more, the way he talks no one in their right mind will want to have anything to do with him in the real world outside home. To all that he responded he does not care who wants to deal with and M reminded him the day he turns eighteen, she sure as hell does not have any desire to do so and he needs to have a plan. That iced the whole argument in a moment dinner took place is a dead silence - no one had anything left to say. It was the kind of nasty reality check no well-meaning adult wants to give a kid this age. Basically telling the young person he is not welcome in the household he thinks of as his home and he is being tolerated only because he has not come of age yet. People can't wait to get him out to the door - the sooner the better. 

The reasons why things have come to this pass at M's are complex but they are where they are and increasingly the conversations are about each side tolerating the other. It becomes difficult for a kid to thrive in a place that feels impermanent - the feeling of forever and certain is what they crave. M feels bad that she had to use such words but it is a reality check someone has to give the ignorant child. 

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