Seven Teen Habits I Don’t Understand and Likely Never Will

My teens are driving me crazy and I don’t even feel like I need to start that sentence with an, “I love my teens but,…” they are just driving me nuts, period.

I don’t understand their ways of thinking sometimes and I swear when I was a teenager I did not walk around with my Walkman glued to my ears, or eat Ramen in my bedroom and let ten bowls and forks collect in the deep corners of my peach-painted walls until my mother ripped through the house demanding to know where all the dishes and utensils were so she could serve dinner.

Lately, I’ve been trying to get some points across and going hoarse in the process and if you are a parent of teens, you understand my frustrations about the following:

Annoying teen habits

1. Earbuds

For the love of all the things, please take the earbuds out of your ears for at least a microsecond so you can communicate and join in on the family discussions. My teens feel unsettled without these little white buds stuck in their ears practically touching their eardrums. I’ve regressed to talking with the tiled wall in my kitchen because I’ve got some things to say and I can only watch my kids walk around the house, oblivious to all the commotion, and me telling them to clean up after themselves for so long.

2. Wearing the same hoodie day after day.

My son got a black hoodie at the beginning of the year and I knew it was a mistake. He is so in love with it if I try to pry it off his body he acts like it’s physically hurting him.

The other day there was something blossoming on the back of it (I don’t want to know) and he’d spilled chocolate milk down the front of it after dinner, wiped it with his hand, and slept in it that night. If they want to walk around in filth I realized I’m not capable of tackling them and changing them since they tower over me, but I don’t understand this way of life. Like, at all.

3. Thinking deodorant and body spray equals a shower

Every morning I sit and sip on my smoothie with a side of Old Spice deodorant as the fumes from the Axe Body Spray make my nostrils flare. Then I start choking. My oldest son is like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown only instead of a dust/dirt cloud behind him, there is a cloud of body spray behind him. I’m not kidding you can literally see (and taste) it.

4. Not sleeping with a flat sheet

All three of my teens refuse to sleep with a flat sheet saying it’s unnecessary and there are many times the fitted sheet isn’t pulled tight around all four corners of their bed. Their rooms are theirs to abuse as they want but I’m puzzled here — how does one actually fall asleep while surrounded by such a disaster?

5. Eating in their bed

Maybe every once in a while if I’m feeling reckless, I’ll eat in bed. I’ll bring a bag of chips to bed or have chicken soup under my covers if I’m sick. For the most part, though, eating in bed makes me feel strange, exposed, and my toes curl. Crumbs in my bed would be enough to make me have to change sheets before falling asleep and who wants to do that?

The other day my son brought down half of my bowl collection and two glasses because he likes to have a glass of milk before bed and leave enough in the glass to make his own block of cheese. Cue everyone’s gag reflex. How is it humanly possible to share of room with that nastiness?

6. Making the mess of 10 men.

Teens can have their room or bathroom sparkling one minute, then you turn around and it looks like the eye of a storm. It’s funny that they don’t appear to be fast movers when you need something from them, but when it comes to making a mess they can get that done in 2.2 seconds.

7. Drinking from the faucet.

Apparently, it’s too much work to reach in the cupboard for a glass but craning your neck underneath the faucet to get a sub-par drink is easier. I’ve told my kids how nasty this is, it spreads germs and they really should never put their mouth that close to the faucet since they have no idea how clean it is.

Keeping their germs to themselves and dodging nasty gunk isn’t an issue but I guess reaching for a glass and filling it with water is.

Yes, these things are driving me mad, and no, I literally don’t understand any of them considering I never did such things.

But I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t have the energy to fight any of them and if I am going to have energy for anything else in my life, I’m going to let my teens live in their earbuds and sleep in a messy bed that has no order whatsoever so I can have some sense of peace.

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