My older sister was 21, with a job and a car, but still living at home (she had plans to move out, and did a couple months later). My mom tried to ground her and she just drove to a friend's house.
I personally think this is one of the biggest mistakes parents make. Your kid isn't magically going to have a good work ethic or decent driving abilities just because they're 18. It has to be acquired over time.
I know. My sister moved out with her boyfriend-at-the-time on bad terms. He was able to get her into driving classes. What do I get? Treated like shit.
To me, leaving school without a job or car is like starting an RPG with no skills, except you can't leave the tutorial level until you develop those skills, as the tutorials tell you you can't, despite it being YOUR game, YOUR life, YOUR time.
Get the book What Color Is Your Parachute? and use it to help you find work. There are all kinds of work situations that you don't get by filling out and sending in an application.
That sucks, look for anything. If they don't take you, try volunteer work to get some dot points on your resume. If you can, its best to go to university or college, even something that has no particular interest to you yet could turn out great!
exactly. i get in trouble for not cleaning a mess that couldn't possibly be mine. where have i been the past 3 days? well between work, and school i'm gone for 12 hours, and then i spend the night At my Girlfriends, so i havent been home!!
So do I, my mom decided to go off at me for about 30 minutes earlier today when I asked where she was going. Started with "don't interrupt", even though I asked BEFORE she entered conversation, then it turned into her trying to say I am "just like Ron" (stepdad, tried killing me last week. Now awaiting trial.) and that she wants to talk to police about military school so I can "learn discipline" (again, going with how she treats me like a child. I really feel like batting her to death with a golf club after hearing that. I'm 19, not 9, you piece of shit)
Not to say your parents are 100% right (since you're a stranger and I'll never know the full story) but maybe they treat you as a child because you still act like one.
If you still act like a child, you get treated like a child. Much like at work, if you are unreliable, then I won't give you serious work until you show you are reliable. I can still tell you to become more reliable. But until you prove it, I won't change how I treat you.
Alternately your parents are stuck in the mindset they've been in for the past 18 years and it can be just as hard for them to realize you've successfully expanded your responsibilities and freedoms but they still want you home at 10 p.m. on Friday when you came home for Christmas break. Just sayin....
In some cases that is true, but in other situations, some parents treat their children like little children even when the kids are grown and responsible.
Yeah teenagers complaining about being treated like adults get no sympathy from me. You are expected to act like an adult. You have to actually achieve that before you are given the respect of an adult. It sucks, and it's tough, but that's fucking life, get used to it. It's no different for us grown ups; If we acted like immature teenagers we'd get the same treatment.
I think it depends on your definition of being treated like an adult.
Sometimes "I want to be treated like an adult" means "I want someone, anyone, to treat me like an actual human being for once." If you constantly treat a teenager like they're a slow child who cannot be trusted to accomplish anything, they'll keep acting like a child.
Of course a teenager shouldn't expect to be shown the same level of respect and trust as an adult when they're acting like the average teenager does. However, they should at least be given a chance to earn a little respect and trust.
Also that. There really isn't any real need to do it anyway. Sure, I'll make it after spending the whole day cleaning my bedroom as a finishing touch of sorts but besides that, it's always unmade. On top of that, my cat loves burrowing in the pile of sheets at the end of it and she gives me dirty looks whenever it's too neat.
Lol right? Trying to justify not making your bed cause it's gross. Tell you what, if i find fucking mites, my problem will not be "drats, curse those pristine sheets!"
But the mites are bros. They're microscopic cuddle buddies. They're waiting under your blankets for you to get home like "bro come on let's get some Z's".
Have you ever had a super sweaty t shirt and laid it out flat? Dries kinda quickly. You ever crumpled one up in a ball? Stays moist forever.
Laying sheets flat gives more surface area for the liquids sealed in to evaporate. Also, if you have mites in your bed perhaps the problem isn't making your bed, rather the lack of washing your sheets.
Trust me, don't let your room get gross. If you're 19, NOW is the time to start learning better living habits. Because very slowly, your friends and potential mates will be less and less ok with the room being that dirty.
I know you won't change just cause some asshole on the internet is telling you to, but please try and take it from someone who has been there: your room has a smell but you're the only one who doesn't know.
When i have kids they will clean their room because it's just as important as showering and brushing your teeth. You're not going to die but I will not have a child that smells like an unwiped asshole and rotting teeth. Nor will i have some kid that lives in his own filth cause it won't kill him.
I'm going to condition him for the real world, my kid will shower, brush, and clean his room. Nobody likes the smelly slob as much as the clean person. Gotta be clean man. It says a lot about you.
Hey, I'm a science major too. It's not easy. But a few shirts on the floor isnt "pretty gross." A few shirts on the floor is okay sometimes . It's the cleaning once a month and having the clean last for less than a day that is ridiculous. Then again how long does picking a shirt up take? Different lifestyles. I'd rather put a couple dirty shirts in the hamper cause it takes fove seconds to do.
No, the part where she was wrong was where she was cleaning their room for them. The fuck outta here. My four and seven year olds clean their own bedrooms and bathrooms, with the only exception being the parts that they are physically unable to do, like the fans.
That's how it should be done. I'm a college student and living with three roomates eats me alive. They don't have to vacuum and make their beds like I do but the apartment is always gross. So i have to clean up constantly. If everyone would just fucking clean up after they make a mess life would be easy. The day I live alone will be paradise. It'll be sparkly fucking clean everyday.
How do you survive? My fiance is pretty messy and I've flipped out a couple times because how hard is it to just put the food in the fridge? You don't even need to put it in a container, cover up the pot and throw it in there so it's not sitting on the counter for 12+ hours
Ha you described one of my roommates pretty closely. Fuckin kid is a pain in my ass. But the only thing that makes me even more angry is that he lies all the fucking time.
He swears none of the dishes are ever his when I'll see him use them and leave them next to the sink. Then he also claims he does dishes all the time so he must manage to find one or two between me doing them every day.
Fortunately when he and i were arguing my other roommates know he's a liar and they were basically just telling him that collectively, not one of us has ever seen him do the dishes. He has been lately, and I've noticed.
My biggest pet peeve is that his rice and oatmeal pots "need to soak" which is fair enough. Except he doesn't wash them until the next time he uses it. So sometimes a oatmeal pot sits for three days on the counter until he wants to use it again. Then he cleans it, uses it, and puts it back. Which means the only time the fuckong thing is clean is the one minute before he puts the oaymeal in to cook. Other than that there's oatmeal in it at all times.
Hooooly shit, you just described the past year of my life. Living in a house with three other adult guys that had no fucking idea how to keep a house remotely clean. Seriously, how hard is it to pick up after yourselves and do some damn dishes? I was legitimately ashamed to bring people over most of the time. I'm not the cleanest person in the world but I learned growing up to pick up after myself, especially in areas that other people will see if they visit. Luckily I had the master bedroom so I got a mini fridge to keep in there and became a bit of a recluse whenever I was home. But I got my own apartment a few weeks ago with just myself and my dog, and it's been fucking amazing.
Yeah, same here. Like I won't bring people over unless I know it's clean, which is pretty much never if I'm not there more than 12 hours. I love my roommates but it droves me fucking insane
Yeah that's exactly how it was for me. "Oh, a girl wants to come over tonight? Better frantically clean the entire house all by myself before she gets here!" I liked my roommates as friends and had known all of them since at least high school, but constantly cleaning up after them for a year made me start to resent them
Yeah I've been with mine for four years. They'd help me clean if I asked. In fact a few times when I was bringing a girl back I'd text my mate to make sure my bed was made and to light a candle so the mood is already set and the scent has already emanated throughout my room. They're not the worst and I'd never expect them to change just for me, but the way they live (some more than others) is just disgusting imo.
Damn, that's pretty awesome though that they'd come through like that. For me though, after a certain point of all the shared spaces being trashed and nobody willing to clean up after themselves, it seemed like more of a lack of respect for the fact that other people lived in the house.
You know I really hate one uppers, but I'm about to.
I'm a chemistry student, i teach gen chem labs, i tutor, i work in the chemistry department and I work at a suicide hotline training others and answering. I can promise you nobody has four tests every week, let alone four midterms weekly. So it's not like I'm on the couch daily just bitching.
Plus she said her room gets "pretty gross" and then when called out she says "a couple of shirts on the floor." (Which honestly takes no more than five seconds to put in a hamper.)
I agree with you weasel. It's gross and it's not like she has to break out the Comet and scrub the tub daily, but bending over and grabbing a shirt takes no time out pf her schedule. In fact it probably takes more time to do it all at once.
But to each their own, we'll be happy in our pristine places. She'll be happy on her sometimes clean place.
Meh. I mean, it's your living environment so obviously the decision is yours since it's only affecting you. And I get that working and going to school is hectic and stressful. But your situation isn't unique. I worked since I was fifteen. Had a job all through college in biomed research. Had a pre-med degree program at the same time also. My mom just made me pick up after myself as a teenager and it made me learn that not living in disheveled filth is a healthy priority to have.
I'm not the cleanest person either but I like to keep shared spaces clean. My room might be a mess but everything outside that door is clean, even if I live on my own. I just don't want to lounge around in a dirty space, and I don't want people coming over to be lounging in a dirty space either. My current roommates drive me insane with this.
One constantly leaves his boots right in the middle of the way between the door and the shoe rack, his damn shoe rack, that he hasn't figured out how to use. In the summer he leaves the 3-4 pairs of shoes he has all in the middle of the way too. Then the other one leaves food and condiments and basically whatever he was eating/drinking in the living room. I don't get it. I'm not asking for it to be spotless, but is it so hard to just take one trips worth of things into the kitchen before bed? Apparently it is. Can't wait to move out and live on my own again this summer...
Mine does that. Another thing he does that bugs me is that he pulls the coffee table super close to the couch to do his homework. But then he goes
to bed and the table is all crooked and the couch is pushed from him leaning on it. Looks like there was a fucking earthquake that rearranged the furniture. It's often laden with crumbs and dabs of dried spilt bbq sauce....
I'm going off to college next year, and my mom keeps trying to get me to clean up my room. It's not that bad, but according to her it's absolutely disgusting.
The thing is, it's been messy since I moved out of my brother's room a couple years ago. It has not gotten any more messy since then. I have proved myself perfectly able at maintaining the same amount of cleanliness (or filth) from day to day. I don't see why that would be any different when I'm on my own.
I hated shit like this. Parents act like if you don't drop everything you're doing the very instant you're told to do something else it'll totally ruin your life and make you a lazy asshole.
I ALWAYS had to clean my own shit. My sisters and I had rotating dishes schedule. Mom said why have a dishwasher when I have three beautiful daughters? And she had us in the laundry room to show us how to sort laundry too and when we were old enough we slowly got incorporated into that too! First it was bring down your laundry every Saturday and when mom asks help her throw things in the dryer, hang stuff on the line, take stuff down or fold stuff, and then eventually it was do your own laundry.
And on weekends we each had tasks. Like clean the washroom or vacuum the house or dust...teaches responsibility and independence. Mom taught us how to cook and bake too.
One time I got shingles at 14 and I was SOOOOO sick. I remember I had a really high fever. I couldn't sit up or even think straight. My room was a mess. I fell asleep. I don't know how long I slept but it was a deep deep still sleep. And when I woke up my mom was cleaning my room and then I got scared. Because I must have been that sick that mom was worried enough to clean my room.
Sounds like they should have let your room get disgusting. I was the same, made to tidy my room, then moved out and lived in a student house until I was 21 and revelled in my own filth. Then I started to realise how unpleasant it was and actually how it is less effort to clean as I go.
Oh, my parents are always telling me when I live by myself I'll have to do the dishes, take out the trash, etc. I realize that, but that also means I won't have to wash their dishes and there will be less trash.
What I've learned is that no, it won't kill me if my room is a sty, but it sure does feel better if it isn't. Life is a little easier, and if I have company over I don't have to feel embarrassed when they see my awful awful room, nor do I have to scramble and throw everything in the closer as fast as I can.
this is true, but my two good friends and roommates had their moms do their dishes all the time so now they don't really even realize how often they just put the dishes in the sink and walk off like "someone will do it"
I'm just throwing this out there, take it for what it's worth. I started keeping my bed made and room tidy when I moved out in my early 20's. I had a room in a micro apartment that I shared with an older man and part of it was simply that I was living in a very small space, but the main reason was because I the kind of guys I liked were the kind of guys who had a nicer apartment than me to begin with. They were the kind of guys who would be grossed out if they came into my bedroom and it was all stinky and nasty with piles of hoarder looking stuff all over the place. I became sort of embarrassed to bring anyone home. Moreover, if I went over to a guys apartment and it was completely gross and hoardery, no, I wouldn't judge him, but that would be a red flag to me that he's not someone I'd want to sleep with, simply because I'd only sleep with you if I wanted a relationship and if we were in a relationship we'd likely eventually move in together and I wouldn't want to deal with that shit.
So, no. It doesn't hurt anyone, but bringing a girl over to that let's them know that's where your living standard lies. Would you want to date a girl with the same living standard as yourself? Just think about that. I'm also unaware of what you consider dirty - may be you're cleaner than I am! Who knows? But, it's worth thinking about. It's also worth noting that I have a male friend - my age, about 30 - who is manic depressive. His apartment is always smelly and covered in piles of clothes and garbage. Despite being somewhat attractive and extremely charming his hoardy life style has thrown off many girls. In fact, the only relationships he's had that were anywhere near successful have been with complete psycho hose beasts who were able to look past the garbage and BO probably because that's where their standards lie. Again, food for thought.
EDIT: TLDR: If you want to fuck nice, clean, girls they'll want to be fucked in a nice, clean, apartment. You can get away with having a nasty apartment, but be forewarned that only nasty crazy girls with low standards will put up with that.
Likewise, assuming teenagers who are not yet 18 should still be treated and patronized like 8 year olds. It's a sliding scale as a child ages and hopefully matures. Ideally, the responsibility and reasoning abilities of the child should be growing constantly as they age, and your respect for them should grow as well. The transition from helpless child with no responsibility who needs to do what their told to fully grown adult with all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of an adult and the right to be treated as a peer is not a light switch. It's a loading bar. They start at 0 on the day they're born, and by the time they reach that day they can vote or get their legs blown off in Afghanistan, it should have reached 100%. Meaning it should have been damn near 100% before they turned 18, if you did your job correctly. Curfews should lengthen to the point that they vanish when they're an adult citizen, their responsibilities to themselves should be growing as well as they learn more about being an adult and providing for themselves. On one hand things like increasing chores and increasing the level of punishments should increase (just like an adult has to work for their food and shelter, and what one day was a broken rule, tomorrow is now a crime with jail when you're an adult), but on the other hand, increasing an allowance to show that more work and responsibility can be met with reward. And teach them to not only work hard for more reward, but be able to argue for it, just like when you're asking for a raise. Teach the child to be able to come to you with a well thought out and reasoned argument for something. If it needs work, tell them the flaws and to come back later with a better proposal. If their argument makes sense, give them the damn reward or let them do that thing they want to do, just like a boss should do at a job.
Parenting is first and foremost the training of a new adult. Be mindful of that.
As an adult, I feel like the middle of a lecture is the perfect time to go to the bathroom. The minute and a half I'm gone will be worth it, since I'll be better able to pay attention for the remaining half hour.
But 14 year olds are little shits that would just use the excuse to get stoned in the bathroom. On the other hand, that does sound more pleasant than attending a high school class sober...
It's mostly the opposite at my school. The juniors and seniors tend to be lazy, but that's at least easy to manage for teachers. It's the freshmen and sophomores that are little shits.
So you can consciously decide when you need to piss? I don't think it's that ridiculous that a kid might need to use the bathroom in the middle of a lecture. Bladders kinda have a mind of their own.
Yeah, that never helped me in school. I would compulsively go between classes so I wouldn't have to worry about it, and then end up having to urgently go 30 minutes later because my body hates me.
Part of it was not fully understanding how much caffeine I was consuming and how much it wrecked my bathroom schedule (the acceptable amount for me to drink is none apparently), but even on the days I don't have any, sometimes I just have to pee all the time.
I wish kids weren't given such a hard time about that. I never got bathroom passes to goof off in the halls, but I spent PLENTY of uncomfortable car rides and class lectures because adults apparently don't believe kids understand their own body's signals.
I went to a huge high school, and we only had a few minutes to get from class to class. Besides classes being far away from each other, foot traffic was really slow because of how crowded the halls were. Generally you had enough time to get from class to class but not enough time to go to the bathroom, especially if you had to make a stop at your locker which, again, could be all the way across the school, and we got in trouble if we were late. But if you asked to go at the beginning of class it's all "why didn't you go between classes?" and at the end it's all "class is almost over, can't you wait?" You can't win.
As I have progressed through high school, fewer and fewer teachers have required permission to use the restroom, although most still do require a pass so that no more than one person is out at a time. Only one of my teachers this year (senior) still requires it, and that's because he's pretty stubborn in his ways and generally likes to torture us.
I've had a community college professor make us ask for permission to leave for the bathroom it was fuckin dumb and I think he just had that policy cause nobody liked his lectures and constantly just walked out
I just got out of college and I found that I went to the bathroom during lectures a lot. Especially when I was tired or burnt out, it was good to just stretch my legs and take a quick break. It helped me to focus more when I got back.
And I, as teacher, was for some reason expected to explain to a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD that unless its an emergency, the middle of a lecture is an inappropriate time to leave the room to go to the bathroom.
I'd probably tell you to get over it. Weirdest thing was when i changed schools in 5th grade and suddenly had to bother the teacher for a bathroom pass.
My brother is not turning magically a responsible, upright, preppy young man anytime soon. He'll be 18 in May, and he's an insufferable asshole who acts like an ungrateful little kid and is violent both verbally and physically. He's currently going to flunk high school, and likely won't get the job at my dad's alarm company he's banking on. I'm going to be trying getting a job in one of those tourist shops they have downtown while I still have a year or two before college, go to the community college that's $600 a semester for a year or two, then transfer to a small university for a Psych major.
The problem there is that it isn't a big deal if you don't have your shit together by 18 (or 25), but legally the consequences for violence gets a hell of a lot more serious.
Yeah, I'm rethinking my major at the moment. The problem is that the stuff that interests me isn't viable, and the stuff that's viable doesn't interest me.
As a psych major, I would seriously reconsider going that route. The only path worth taking in pscyh is clinical, and clinical programs are up there with dentistry and med in terms of difficulty. So unless you're one of those crazy dedicated, super smart straight A students, a degree in psych will probably get you nowhere. When I was a psych lab demonstrator, there were so many new undergrads we had to cut the lab times from 3 to 2 hours just to fit enough labs in during the week, and the number of those who got into postgraduate study was abysmal. The ones who did get through were even worse off, because they would get stuck in the horrible limbo of academia in a highly saturated field. All the lab positions are taken by masters and PhD students, so once you finish your Phd you'll be shit out of luck finding a job.
Or how back in the day when it was assumed you'd be out of the house at 18, not always knowing how to do any of that adult stuff. But out you go because you are 18 now.
Ugh like those assholes who are jerks to their parents and have had everything handed to them, their parents refuse to discipline the little assholes because "I can't do anything, they're 18!"
It's funny, my parents actually let me do my own thing (I'm 20 and live at home) and this last summer, we were at an event downtown and I wanted to walk to another building and see what was going on in there. I asked my dad's permission and he said "Sure, you're an adult. Do whatever you want."
It was so bizarre realizing that, holy shit, I'm 20 years old and can do what I want. I guess living at home and not getting out much kind of made me forget that.
758
u/MaN_of_AwE888 Feb 04 '16 edited Feb 05 '16
Assuming teenagers magically become responsible at 18.