my middle son, wim 18 years old, likes to watch the bachelor with me. he stays pretty busy with friends, fishing, hunting, part time work, courting girls. also, trying to maintain B average each quarter of his senior year in order for us to continue to pay the exorbitant fees charged to us to add him to our auto insurance coverage. dip below a B, and you better get down on your knees and grovel for more hours at the grocery, son.
wim's total alone is more than double the cost of our original bill so i knew we had to get a huge return on our investment. we set letter grade stakes high for him to keep the gift. good grades are not wim's forte, so it was a no-brainer to tie grades into the deal.
sacrifices were made. would i like to have my turnstyle shopping extravaganzas back into play sooner that later, sure. does being stuck at home on a saturday rather than wasting away the afternoon over-spending at target sound cool, no not really. target is a money-suck and i love it. i could walk those aisles all day long. but i digress. do i want to sabotage his efforts at school so he dip-de-dips down... hell to the yeah! but i'm a good mom, so i cheer instead.
always on the lookout for manipulation (i've become an expert detecting the shit my kids try to shovel) i discovered why, after years of struggling with school work and bad grades, he was so eager to shake on the deal. what i neglected to consider was his schedule. wim has the cakest senior schedule you can imagine. i'm confident he knew it was pretty much Team Sports and Foods II. bump set spike and tiramisu.
those of you subscribing to mommyblogs, may still be wiping noses and tracking zippers. you are far off from parenting adolescents. probably haven't considered how you will talk to your kids about masturbation and smoking. a note reminding you to purchase a spiral pocket notebook for recording how many bottles of beer are left in the downstairs fridge isn't in your google calendar yet. you have not given your 15 year old a twenty dollar bill so she can go to the hair salon with a friend to get her hair cut. the whole while hoping with every breath she doesn't get the dorothy hamill that i talked her out of every single previous hair shop visit. will she come home with that wedge she's been dreaming of? egad!
we have taught wim to keep a towel on a rack, take a shower every day, make a meal, maintain employment, and now drive a car. i wish i could claim success and finito, but there is still work to be done. the core of parenting teens is the same as parenting todds, elems, and tweens. learn lessons along the way and do better next time. the main difference parenting teenagers is that you are freaking running out of time! it's a race against the clock to sufficiently prepare them for responsible adulthood and citizenry. it's both exhilarating and maddening.
well, in the case of the easy peasy lemon squeezy class schedule that wim is loving, my lesson was learned. next time cover more bases like checking the parent portal, before sealing the deal. parent and learn.
and we come full circle, back to the bachelor. wim and i made a bet tonight about who ben's final selection will be in a few weeks. we have two dollars riding on ben's choice. wim said when he wins, "mine is going toward a half gallon of gas".
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