quote:

Originally posted by slabsides45:
My theory is that if they didn't turn into turdnuggets, we would keep them around forever. So their bad attitude changes us from "please never leave" to "how soon can you be out?" It's like the cute baby fawn that the mother doe will fight to the death to protect, then a few months later she's beating it half to death herself to get it to move on.... Nature.

Father of two teenage girls here, pretty much this. Teenage girls are emotional terrorists.

I can completely understand why people married their daughters off at 14 in days of old. If I expect to be dead by 45 I need you out of my one room hut as soon as you’re reasonably able to survive on your own with some other poor young bastard.

Here, take a cow and a couple of chickens on your way out, just let me have some peace.

ETA: To be clear I really do love them, but dang the 13-16 years can be rough.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: asonie,

Last Sunday morning two kids from the Lutheran church group came up to help me get my couch from the second floor down to the first floor.

so that I could relocate it to another house.

they were raising money for a trip next year to go to Louisiana to help the underprivileged and confirmed but they needed the money for airfare and hotel accommodations I gave him 80 bucks for about 9 Minutes work they were pleased.

Turns out that one of the boys was a neighbor where I was taking the couch and he actually helped me get it out of the minivan and into the house I told him I was out of money and he said that's no problem at all.

We are having a rough few days with our teenager. This week is the end of the grading quarter, so there have been comprehensive exams in each class. The grades have come in and they are awful.
My wife and I gave our 16 year old daughter some space and trusted that she could prepare for these exams on her own. We probably shouldn't of done that.

So now, my wife and I agreed to take a restrictive and over watching stance in our daughter's day. We are taking away the cell phone. We are going to check her daily planner in the morning and in the evening. We are going to tell her when to study and what to study.

This Saturday is the homecoming dance and we have decided not to interfere with that and allow her to have a good time. The showdown will happen on Sunday. I will need to pray to The Lord for strength as we sit her down and explain the new rules.
The saying "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you" comes to mind. I'm not looking forward to this at all.

What are her plans for the future? What has she been doing besides studying? Boyfriend,drugs,friends. What is happening in those areas? Maybe she needs a tutor. Parents make lousy teachers as a rule. Good luck.

^ No boyfriend. We wish for a boyfriend. She doesn't really have interest. I think she spends most of her time just watching netflix on her phone. This is odd considering she has a television in her room that is never used.
We think it is time management. At least we are beginning there. She does stay after school and attends tutoring sessions.

Is there a way to monitor the phone? I'll bet you it's a whole lot more than just Netflix, texting, Instagram, social media are all huge time sucks.

How much time does she have her phone? Like 24/7? I really do not want our children to have them for a very long time, it seems like addiction can easily set in. We let our two boys aged 6 and 8 have very limited time on an iPad as a reward for very limited/monitored kids apps and are already seeing some nasty attitude from them when it's time to give it back. It's like electronic crack and I don't like it one bit.

Teenage daughters. In my case it's a teenaged step daughter. 15 now.
Her mother bought the teenager a new Apple iPhone 14 a while ago.
She is an Honors Student, plays varsity tennis, and taking AP classes. She's a spectacular student. Living with her is a different story.
I raised two sons as a single father with custody. That was easy compared to the teenager female. They are not equipped with a mental off switch for the mouth.
She becomes so immersed in the phone, it IS like crack.

We set up the native built in Apple iPhone parental controls so social media apps were not available. The tears flowed and temper tantrums happened.

Where we live has about 1/2 of one bar of cell signal that is from a major carrier conventional steel cell tower. We are down in a "bowl" and the cell signal just plain sucks.
We have fiber optic broadband internet (wired) hooked up to the indoors cell phone network extender. With that unit up and running, it's a solid five bars of cell signal in and near the house.

This is usually about 75 Mbps using our indoor cell network extender without using WiFi.

We also have a nice Netgear router for WiFi which runs nominally at about 300 Mbps.

I run an Android cell phone for my usage and I have the Netgear Nighthawk app on my phone that runs the Netgear router.

When the teenaged stepdaughter is running her mouth, having a teenage female temper tantrum, or just behaving like a crotch, or sometimes being lazy, I have the magic button on my phone at the ready.
I will speak to the stepdaughter first. If I don't get the result I want, I push the button on my phone which blocks her iPhone from the WiFi.
Her phone is almost always blocked from the WiFi due to her mouth.

That drops her iPhone connectivity from the nominal 300 Mbps down to about 75 Mbps.

Then if that doesn't fix whatever the problem is, I push the button on my phone that blocks the fiber optic internet from the indoor network extender.
All the phones in the house have the ability to do WiFi calling so that doesn't impair my phone or that of the teenagers Mother at all.
Once that step is taken, the iPhone is about 1 Mbps connectivity at best. Just enough cell signal to make a phone call, and that is if she goes outside and stands on one foot.
Web browser? Nope. Video chat? Nope. Email? Nope. Text? Maybe, but when the leaves are on the trees, sometimes not.

After I do what I do, the fancy iPhone 14 is about as useful as two Campbell's soup cans and twenty five feet of white string.

After making the iPhone almost useless, I will usually go on a motorcycle ride, or visit the local gun shop, or even go to the recreational property for the day and play.
If it's winter, I grab a shotgun and go small game hunting. The key here, is disappear so you don't hear the nasty teenager mouth. And be away for a LONG time.
I'm generally smiling the entire time that I am gone.

I push buttons on my phone to turn her phone back into operational status when I get the results I want. Sometimes that takes weeks. And you don't even need to take the phone away.

Two teenagers next door, I think the boy is 15 or 16 and his sister is two years older. Neighbor adopted them when they were toddlers. My wife (mental health professional, and mother of two) and I question the neighbor's parenting skills. With both houses closed, no windows open, we can hear angry shouting matches between mother and daughter. Police have been there more than once, we think called by the daughter.

Life is interesting.