The Teenage Brain and the Nice Things about Cell Phones

Last night Sadie came to me distraught. John is coming for the weekend and she had promised that she would help us take Wilson Trick-or-Treating. He's very excited about it. But she had a friend who wanted her to come over. She spent 20-25 minutes describing her dilemma and telling me she was gong to cry because the decision was so hard. She didn't want her friend to be mad at her.

So I concluded that I would just tell her that she couldn't go to her friend's house. That way her friend wouldn't be mad because it wouldn't be her fault and her brothers could be happy.

Well, you can imagine how well that has gone. As soon as the decision was made, but not by her, she knew EXACTLY what she wanted to do. But she turned the whole thing into a long debate and refused to go to bed. This morning she has wanted to continue to argue the point.

The main reason that I'm being insistent though is that she consistently uses John whenever she is angry with me. "John and Salinda are the only family I have. He means everything in the world to me." He hasn't been home to spend the night for a year, and hasn't been home for two nights for two years. And yet she wants to leave... just like Salinda who does the same thing. With Salinda I am trying to be gracious and help her enjoy her confirmation weekend -- and we want her boyfriend here for that special day -- so i'm being a little more flexible. But with Sadie she just gets all caught up in the drama.

Which leads me to why I love cell phones (sometimes). She told me she wasn't going to come home after school so I texted her:

If you aren't home by 4:00 your cell phone will be off.

Her response:

What the heck y r bein so stupid.

I respond:

Have a great day. I love you.

She responds:

I don't love u I dont get y i cant my friend wants me to go really bad

I didn't respond.

She responds:

Whatever y cant I go over to my friennds house she really wants me to go over.

I did not respond.

I'm not going to respond. She's not supposed to have her phone at school anyway.

Text messages can be ignored. That's one of the reasons why I like them.

But all this drama from the teenage brain can get exhausting. Hopefully she'll pull her attitude together and we can have a nice night. Or not.

i told her that. "You can choose to have a bad attitude and attempt to ruin the weekend -- or you can have a nice weekend. I've learned I can't control which one you choose. Guess