Natural Consequences

So parenting is hard, right? We can all agree to that. These kids…damn.

These days, my older teenager is so over her parents actually, you know, parenting her. She wants to know why she can’t make her own decisions and learn from her own mistakes.

Natural consequences and all that.

Sigh.

I get it.

I really do. Her friends are older (N and her friends are definitely older, as in two+ years older, so there’s that.)

Also, most of her friends are the baby of their families. These kids have parents who are my and Tom’s ages and yet, these parents have been there and done that parenting thing and they’re just sort of over it.

I’m not over parenting. I started late and feel like all these seventeen years later, I’m just now finding my parenting groove. But she’s over me and Tom setting rules.

Let me back up. She’s a really great person. She obeys rules, she likes to make people happy. She’s not being rebellious or difficult. She just wants to enjoy her summer and if she’s tired the next day at band camp because she stayed out too late the night before, well, that’s on her.

At least, that’s how she feels it should go.

None of her friends are expected to be home by 10 on a Tuesday night, for Pete Sakes! Even those friends who also have to be at the school the next day at 8am for band camp. Those friends can just waltz in whenever they want. Heck, Tessa got home recently at 6am.

I did remind this daughter of mine that Tessa’s mom is SO over parenting. I love Tessa’s mom but I also know this woman is done. So, Tessa coming home at 6am is fine. But my daughter rolling in at 6am is not fine.

And of course, I know she’s not asking for that kind of freedom. I do. She’s a reasonable person. She’d just like to be able to make her own educated decision about what time she should be home because that’s what her friends get to do. She’s always the one who has to leave just when the fun is starting.

But see, if we, her parents, can help her by imposing rules that will stop her from reaping the natural consequences of her own less than brilliant decisions, shouldn’t we? At what point are we smothering her?

I am so torn by all this. I see her side. I also want to protect her. She’s chomping at the bit for independence. But I also can’t help but wonder how much of this is at her girlfriend’s suggestions. I don’t think N is a bad person. But she’s going to be 20 in November. She’s had a year and a half of freedom and I get why she’d be frustrated with us for insisting that A continue to act like a minor living in her parents’ house with her parents’ rules.

At this point, I’m babbling. I’m just so…frustrated isn’t the word. Alyssa is frustrated. Tom is frustrated.

I’m mostly sad because I can’t figure out how to make them both happy.

One funny thing that happened after all this is one Saturday we (the girls, my mom and I) were doing our usual Saturday fun. Olivia and I were bickering as we do. She can just be such a pill. My mom said to Lyss, who was SO over her sister, "Just think if your mom didn't have Livie to parent. All that parenting attention would focused on you."

It gave Alyssa just a little appreciation for the mere existence of her sister.