Teen Mom

When Hayley was pregnant, she somehow became aware of the show "16 and Pregnant." I watched it a couple of times, but it made me so angry at these stupid teenage kids that I finally had to tell her to watch it without me. The kids in the show have made decisions beyond their maturity level and demand to be treated like "adults," yet still live with their parents, don't pay bills, don't work, are in no way trying to better their situation, and still act like kids. The worst part, in my opinion, is that a new show blossomed from "16 and Pregnant" called "Teen Mom," which documents and follows the stories of the dumbass kids that can't figure out how to be parents now that this baby has inconvenienced their lives. (On a related note, life is so unfair. These ill-equiped children have babies because they can't keep their legs crossed, yet friends of mine struggle months and years to have a baby. But that's another topic for another day.)

I'm not against teenagers acting like teenagers. When I was a teenager, I did many things that were completely stupid that I thought were perfectly rational. Like let girls put over 200 rubber bands in my hair on a tour bus just before a marching band competition, or ditch a school assembly to play Golden Eye in my parents' basement, or force my friends to jump out of my car as I slowed down in front if their houses so I wouldn't have to stop and worry that the engine would die because I didn't put enough oil in it. All of these things would (and did) make my parents shake their heads at me or want to ground me. In all fairness, they would have been within their rights to ground me--there ARE consequences to stupid teenage choices after all. You can teach all you want, but even if your kid farts rainbows, they're going to do some stupid thing as a teenager. It's part of life and growing.

But once you become a parent--teenaged or not--you're not the most important thing on the planet anymore. You have to make sacrifices so that tiny little human can survive. That means you don't get to go to late night parties and leave your child unsupervised in a crib. You have to give up some sleep so you can take care of the needs of a little person who can't take care of himself. Figuring out how to feed, clothe, care for, and keep that baby clean become priorities. If you decide to have a baby and keep it, that is a very grown up decision with very grown up consequences. All these dumb kids are so surprised when they figure it out. If they figure it out. And it's SO infuriating to watch!!

I don't know what my deal is these days... everything that seems to give kids a false sense of reality and promotes not only selfishness and bad morals, but blatant disregard for common sense just seems to get under my skin more and more. Who am I kidding, I know exactly what my deal is. His name is Mikey. It all just makes me more determined to teach him right from wrong and hopefully instill a moral code in him that will help him avoid the stupidest decisions (like alcohol, drugs, or premarital sex), and prepare me for the lesser stupid decisions (like jumping from trees, wearing pajamas to school, or giving himself blonde highlights Saturday night, and only telling me and Hayley about it an hour before church on Sunday).

And now to the inspiration for this post. I saw this graphic today. Alls I wanted to do was post it so you could laugh, too, but then this long blog post resulted. Again, brevity is not one of my strong suits. :)