And so another year of parenting has come around to challenge and age us prematurely. For those with ickle children, I hate to burst your bubble but nothing changes in the worrying stakes as your children get older. Just another reason it felt so fucking awesome to see that even Madonna can’t get parenting right.
Most of us shells of our former selves, with older, entitled teenagers have experienced a similar ungrateful repugnance from our children at some stage, after years of selfless servitude.
I’m not sure I have the strength to survive another year of verbal abuse, wet towels on the floor and looks as terrifying as Medusa’s at the hands of my particular brand of teenager, who is still certain he knows everything.
Sometimes I think that it must be truly exhausting for him being such a threat to Google. Whereas I, of course, am never right about anything.
Except when I am.
The most depressing result of our daily battles is that I have turned into my mother with my war strategy. Recognise any of these little gems that seem to projectile vomit from my mouth with the slightest provocation, just about every day?
‘Money doesn’t grow on trees…’
‘Don’t pick that scab or it will get infected’…
‘How many times do I have to tell you…?’
‘How do you know you don’t like it if you haven’t tasted it?’
‘Life isn’t fair…’
You can find the rest here:
I suppose the good news is that if all us mothers know all these sayings, then we must have been little shits, too. Which means we can’t have been the worst, weakest generation of parents to ever inhabit the planet, can we?
Roll on the end of the uni holidays, I say. This little apartment is way too small for a man suffering his third mid-life crisis, a menopausal woman and two overly-dramatic teens who, if there was any justice in the world, should have left home by now.
I am metamorphosing into a green-eyed monster whenever I meet empty-nester mums, whose kids left home straight after school. And even when they warn me not to wish that level of peace, tranquility and free use of the washing machine upon myself, when you’re still cooking four different meals a night, a ready-made meal for two in front of the tv is very appealing.
‘I don’t eat carbs after 3pm,’ NC informed us last night after she’d watched me slave over a bacon pasta.
Another grey hair.
#Family #Humor #teenagers #emptynesting #Parenting
Louisa Simmonds 
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