First, around the age of 10 or 11, the child begins to explain things to you as if you're an idiot. Especially anything having to do with the pop culture of tweens/teens.
By the time the child reaches 13, they no longer feel obligated to explain things to you that they think you don't understand. They just begin to roll their eyes and give you one word answers.
By 14, the child begins to openly argue with the parent that he/she doesn't know what they're talking about. This is the crucial phase when parents really become completely clueless and stupid.
Apparently, parents stay stupid and clueless until the child reaches the early 20s. Then they start asking for your help, guidance, advice again. Surprise, parents actually do know what they're talking about.
MiniMe is firmly in the early stage. She was reading aloud to me this week and one of the characters in her book about friends at a middle school used the term BTW. MiniMe stops reading to explain to me that BTW means "for your information," since of course her dumb old mom would have no idea what this hip, cool youthful term could mean.
"Actually, MiniMe, BTW means By The Way, but as it is being used in the sentence, the sentiment as you explained it is the same. It's another way of saying For Your Information, or FYI."
MiniMe looks back at her book and checks the spelling of BTW. I can see the wheels turning as she realizes By The Way and BTW share the same letter set.
She glances up at me with a look of pure astonishment. "How did you know that?!?"
"Because I'm a cool mom."
"No really, how did you know that?"
Like I said, she's in the early stage of my parental slide into stupidity.
2 comments:
Yep, it's coming. Mine is going to be 16 in 2 weeks and she's convinced that I know absolutely nothing. I have moments of cool but those are far overshadowed by everything she thinks I don't know.
The good news is that once they reach that stage they can be such bitches that watching them eat crow on occasion when it's proven they don't know all can be quite pleasant.
Hang in there, it just gets more and more interesting.
Post a Comment