God Help Get Me Through The Teen Years!

Life is not easy, and it’s certainly not always pretty. Raising adults is hard and I feel incredibly lucky that my marriage is not difficult or challenging. What a blessing! I don’t want to throw Mason under the bus, though I want other moms out there to know that even when you have a kid who in some areas of life is exceptional, they are still normal in most of the other areas. And normal means they argue, they roll their eyes, they do the “heavy sigh” and say their nonverbal communication is nonexistent. They ignore us, they say they heard us and answer in ways we want to hear and then continue to not respond, and then when we finally lose our shit and yell at them, they look at us in complete and utter amazement and ask us, “Why are you yelling at me?” This story is as old as time itself, and I know it’s normal. But then those times come when they behave so badly in front of somebody who is offering them the gift of a lifetime, epic advice and knowledge that you just want to put your head down and cry. I am truly sick to my stomach with the way Mason behaved today, and I know I should grant him grace because he’s only 15, but there comes a time when our kids have to wake up and recognize when somebody is making time for them, giving them valuable information for free. I hope he got that tonight, I truly hope tonight was not in vain. I hope when Mason reads this many years from now, he will remember when Carol Gardner wanted to help him with college applications and how to submit the best information. Carol's former husband was in admissions for Harvard and she had some really good info about how to have his applications rise to the top to the stack and he acted like Carol was being a nuisance. I'm sure in years to come I will chalk this up to him being a teenager, but right now, I am so embarrassed.