After the girls decided to continue their shitty behaviour.... right in front
of Buffalo even, we went upstairs and told them that they should prepare
to meet with the liaison on Wed night. To which we were told that we
could meet alone with her that they couldn't go because M had a choir
performance at 7 and S wanted to go to it. We asked why we hadn't
heard of this before, and the answer was, "I didn't think it was a big deal."
Well, we invited ourself to the performance and told the girls that we all
would be meeting with the liaison at her first possible convenience. To
which they must have gotten the hint that something was up.
Michael and I stepped out for a minute to run a couple of errands. Michael
stepped outside first and I stayed inside to finish up the email to the liaison.
I overheard them talking to each other about how it was ridiculous for us
to expect that they 'hang out with us, have dinner with us 3 times a week,
didn't we know that they weren't here for a relationship with the hosts?'
When we came back they came down and decided to have a talk with us
about how they would buy their own food but they would come to dinner
they didn't want me to make all that food.
Which isn't directly addressing the problem so we told them that if they
insisted that was fine, but the reality of the situation is that it's not wrong to
ask someone to close the fridge, close the cheese bag, not eat all the strawberries out of the special k, eat the middle of a homemade apple pie
with a spoon, drink all of the half and half, eat all of the honey, eat all of the
nuts, leave lids off of stuff, or leave the cereal boxes on top of the freezer door so that when I open it, I get doused with cereal, and I have to clean it up. And that it was ok for me to talk to them about it, and that it was ok for them to eat stuff, it was even ok for them to eat or drink all of it, just go and get another one so that if someone else wanted some they could have it.
They still insist on buying their own food. Just fine by me, their tastes are super expensive.
We then addressed that they weren't here to stay in our house like a hotel. That it wasn't cool to give us one word answers and then go upstairs for the rest of the night, to tell us that they have homework and then go surf the net and laugh loudly all night... obviously not doing homework.
One of them tried to tell us that they thought we wanted all of their time. Like we were suffocating them and I told them that I was going to take them out of school for the next 3 weeks so that I could have more time with them... and then told them that I was being sarcastic and they were being unrealistic.
They told us that they were going camping with us, which was proof that they wanted to spend time with us. We didn't let that fly, they've tried everything that they could say in order to not go camping, "I can't go without phone service, I can't go for four days, I can't be without my friends, I am afraid of forests."
We've only told them one time that they couldn't go to the mall... There was a blizzard.
We told them that we weren't just acting out of our asses, that we asked for advice from others who had teenagers too. That everyone else thought that we were really lenient.
That it wasn't acceptable to tell us that they were going to go do something. They had to ask. They had to let us know if they were going somewhere after school in the form of a question. That whether they liked it or not we were their American Parents, not hostel operators. We were legally responsible, that we decided to treat them with respect and give them independence not so that they could walk on us, but so that they could treat us with respect in kind.
I told them that I was going to pick them up in my voyager mom van right at
the front door of the school the rest of the school year if they didn't ask me/ let me know about their after school activities. To which S replied that she would be gone if that happened, and I let it know that it would be ok if that's what she wanted but I'm not going to be legally responsible for someone who is disrespecting me by not holding up their end of the agreement.
The talk seemed to go ok, there was a few tense moments and a few funny moments. But really only the next few weeks will tell if they are going to have a different attitude or not.
We shall see. I am still taking them to the meeting to see the liaison so that they can know that we aren't playing. I have the ultimate ace. I can have them separated, which of course to teenagers would be the end of the world, but I won't have it.
Posted by hawkie at May 21, 2008 08:55 AM