A Teenager Always Forgets

I absolutely love this! I KNOW you have ALL experienced this phenomenon. It's 6:45 AM and you are fighting with your teen to GET UP! The argument takes a turn for the worse, and colorful language is shared among the two of you. Or perhaps the fight starts because your teen blames you for his/her lack of clean clothing (even though you washed and left clean clothes in their laundry basket which is now covered with dirty clothes, lots of them!!!!) Or, the night before sent you both to bed after a screaming match that revolved around homework, facebook, never doing chores, wasting money, texting for 18 hours a day...pick one. You go spend the day with your stomach in knots, worried how you will resolve this latest fight when your teen returns from school. You hold conversations in your head, with your partner, or your best friend, coming up with a strategy to work through this latest battle. And lo and behold your teen walks in the door with a cheery hello, and a hug and a kiss, completely throwing you off your game, and a retreat from starting anything. All, at least for them has been forgotten. How do they do that?

Here is how. The argument they had with you is so yesterday....literally.  Your presence in their head has left the building. It happened when they walked out the door to head to school. Big and better things await them...wait is that a text chime? Your teen lives in the emotional center of their brain. We live in the thinking center. We reason, they emote. We process and wonder and strategize, they scream and yell and cathart. That is why yelling rarely works unless you are person who rarely yells. Your teen is desensitized to the arguing. In some ways, it is really a release for them. They can and do yell with such enthusiasm so that by the time they head off to school any angst they might have had, which may have had nothing to do with you by the way...has now been released. See you did them a service. You unfortunately now have an ulcer!

I suggest never starting a fight you literally can't finish!