Decide Now

When we told her about Jme coming to live with us, our good friend C.P. made the comment that raising a teenager is a whole other volume in the encyclopedia of parenting. She is exactly right. For the past two years, we’ve been looking to What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Healthy Sleeping Habits, etc. for info on our two newborns. I have no doubt that had we raised her from birth and experienced the incremental growth of our own parenting experience, Wifey and I would be on the same page regarding discipline and life with a teenager as we are on the same page regarding most things. We would have had fourteen years to come to consensus one small event or situation at a time. Now with Jme, however, we are having to make all of those decisions and take those positions all right now.

And it’s becoming apparent that Wifey and I have different ideas about what is right for a fourteen year old. Not different ideas about the fundamentals of life, but about the daily nuts and bolts like how often friends can sleep over, whether she can be dropped off at the movies, and who she can and cannot hang out with. It’s obvious that as we look for a guide to what a fourteen year old girl can do, Wifey and I both both look back to our own experiences as teenagers and what we did or were allowed to do when we were her age. And what she and I did was very different.

We also understand that Jme is coming from a position of having very little in the way of boundaries, and that those whom she calls friends also have had very little in the way of boundaries. It’s gonna be culture shock to suddenly have to answer to two adults who want to know where she is going to be, for how long, with whom, and doing what for every minute of the day. One thing at a time, I suppose, but we gotta figure this thing out.

So this post is the product of some ongoing whispers between Wifey and I as we get our game plan ready. Really, though, Jme has been great. She is very conscientious, and it is pretty obvious that she is trying really hard to do the right thing while she is with us. And we appreciate her effort.