{"id":3506,"date":"2012-04-04T20:26:06","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T03:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3506"},"modified":"2025-11-02T17:35:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T00:35:59","slug":"finding-yourself-or-how-to-drive-a-parent-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=3506","title":{"rendered":"Finding Yourself.. or “How to Drive a Parent NUTS!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

*sorry for the week off.\u00a0 combination of a cold & being super busy at work.\u00a0 hopefully back to our regularly scheduled snarking.*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Every teen goes through about 2-100 years of “finding themselves”.\u00a0 Most average about 4 years of this before they feel comfortable or satisfied with “who they are”.\u00a0\u00a0 (Some never finish it… i.e, check your basement.\u00a0 Is your kid in there?\u00a0 Is he technically an adult?\u00a0 Begin. Panic. Now.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Even as adults we tend to continue the process of self-exploration on some level.\u00a0 Whether its spiritual, skill-level, education, relationship or sexual; in some way we are always learning ourselves.\u00a0 Or at least, in my opinion, we SHOULD always be learning about ourselves.\u00a0 Truthfully, do you really find ANYONE more interesting than yourself?\u00a0 (or is that just me? ha!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the moment they were born, I’ve watched and guided and encouraged my kids to grow and learn.\u00a0 Granted, a lot of that was wrapped up in what they COULD learn at each age and then wrapped up in what they HAD to learn due to school!\u00a0 But as an incredibly introspective person, I’ve been looking forward to sharing that part of life with my kids.\u00a0 The self growth discovery, my gleaned knowledge, etc.<\/p>\n

Ah… but, of course, I don’t really have run-of-the-mill kids.<\/p>\n

The oldest, my Luke, is now 14.5 years old.\u00a0 And he is in full swing Self-Discovery Mode.\u00a0 He is finding A LOT of things that interest him.\u00a0 And because he doesn’t have friends he can talk to about this, nor his father in his life….\u00a0 he talks to the one person he has… me.<\/p>\n

Now in some ways that is every parents joy.\u00a0 “My teenager talks to me!” has been the triumphant cry of many.\u00a0 Ah, but those parents do not have a friendless Aspergers male teen!\u00a0\u00a0 (With three other children, a job and a social life.!)\u00a0 The Aspergers male will obsess on a subject and explore it into infinity!\u00a0 Which is why they make such great scientists.. or uni-bombers, whatever.<\/p>\n

So the first thing Luke discovers about himself (about a year ago) is that he likes history.\u00a0 Great!\u00a0 Makes that subject infinitely easy for him in school.\u00a0 And I try to get him to read Michener books.\u00a0\u00a0 (he manages one then loses interest in the fiction aspect)\u00a0 Almost immediately he segways into politics.\u00a0 This being an election year, the news is full of it!\u00a0 And after much online research, he proclaims himself a democrat.\u00a0 Which immediately somehow turns my life into an annoying defense of the Republican Party.\u00a0 See, I’m desperately trying to help him see both sides of it all.\u00a0 To get past his righteous indignation of the “spin” of what he’s reading on Yahoo news.\u00a0 As a Democrat myself, you can imagine how annoying this is to have to try to explain the other party!<\/p>\n

During this stage, I would go to surprise the teen and see what he’s looking at on his computer and I find he’s got the Wikipedia pages up on the founding fathers (he’s developed a real hatred of Hamilton… and I’m thinking… George?\u00a0 The Tan guy?)\u00a0 And on YouTube he’s not watching cats or crashing skateboarders.. no he’s watching Conan & Jon Steward & the news.\u00a0 Michael Moore has become his film idol.<\/p>\n

THEN, my mother started taking him to her Protestant church.\u00a0 And he loves it!\u00a0 He’s found a new place to sort out right and wrong, in people, in himself, in his world.\u00a0 And my mother is ecstatic.\u00a0 Proudly sitting next to her grandson who is avidly soaking up everything the pastor says.\u00a0 Then the two of them go out to lunch at any new exotic restaurant that strikes their fancy and they talk about the sermon.<\/p>\n

This went on for almost 2 months, until one day Luke comes back from church and he’s very, very upset.\u00a0 It takes him a few days but he tells me church makes it seem like “God is perfect and he expect mankind to be his sheep!”\u00a0\u00a0 He is, of course, transferring his anxiety over his father’s approval to the bigger father figure, God.\u00a0 And he and I sit down and have a long, long talk about religion.\u00a0\u00a0 And the difference between organized religion, spirituality, and the unknown of it all.\u00a0 Mostly trying to impress on him this is “faith” not “fact” because he believes that God is about to strike him down like in the bible.<\/p>\n

Halfway through this discussion my mother comes into the room.\u00a0 I’m now trying to explain the gray area of the fact religion is a belief and not a fact and how its a personal choice.\u00a0 And I’m holding back on dousing his fear with the calm balm of my own beliefs.\u00a0 Because this is HIS self growth, not mine, and he needs to come to conclusions that work for him.\u00a0 Plus he’s too susceptible to blind faith in whatever I tell him, so I try to keep it low key.\u00a0 But I also watch my mother during this.\u00a0 This is HER religion that has left him so upset.\u00a0 And I can see that thought truly troubling her.<\/p>\n

The discussion has turned into a vent\/calm\/tear fest, so I end discussion with the announcement that church should be a place you WANT to go and if that has changed, then he doesn’t have to go.\u00a0 He looks at his grandmother and whines, “But I want to make Grandma happy and going to church does that.”\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, my mother explains it would make her UNhappy to make him go when it makes him so unhappy.\u00a0 (Wish she’d have realized that with US when WE were growing up!!)\u00a0 <\/em>Luckily this seems to help calm him down.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Bottom line, Luke isn’t going to church anymore, and I think my mother got a small dose of how the negative aspects of Christianity can seem to some kids.\u00a0 I know how distressed it & confused is sometimes made me.\u00a0 Probably why so many Aspergers males end up Atheists, too!<\/p>\n

Oh… but that is not the end of it all (and I’m sure there will\u00a0 be many, many MORE “explorations” in the future!\u00a0 yippee…).\u00a0\u00a0 Nooooo…. my son has been taking Health class this semester and he’s being crammed full of scary food information.\u00a0 So now I get hijacked with statements like, “Mom!\u00a0 Did you know red meat causes cancer!”\u00a0\u00a0 “Mom!\u00a0 Do you know what Dairy does to the body!!” “Mom, we need to eat more healthy food… 7 servings of fruit and vegetables a day!”<\/p>\n

And once again, I’m defending my actions as a parent and trying to introduce to him the concept of the word qualifier!<\/em><\/strong>!<\/p>\n

“Luke,” I tell him, “The key word in these films is MODERATION.\u00a0 Over eating these foods is bad, eating them\u00a0 in moderation… probably not going to kill you!”<\/p>\n

“But I have to prevent heart disease!”<\/p>\n

“You’re 14!!!”<\/p>\n

“I want to be a vegetarian,” says my 14 year old, thin-as-a-rail son.<\/p>\n

“You can do that when you’re 18,” I reply.<\/p>\n

But ultimately I relent.\u00a0 Because this is self discovery and we compromise.\u00a0 I’ll buy tofu, but HE has to learn how to cook it on the weekends, when I don’t cook anyway.<\/p>\n

We’ll see how well reality clashes with these high ideals of his.\u00a0 Muahahaha<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*sorry for the week off.\u00a0 combination of a cold & being super busy at work.\u00a0 hopefully back to our regularly scheduled snarking.* Every teen goes through about 2-100 years of “finding themselves”.\u00a0 Most average about 4 years of this before … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-joy-of-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3513,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}