Why is it that people don’t hesitate to give out unsolicited parenting advice, no matter how much it offends the recipient?

I am probably the only parent looking at a child’s grades and saying, “A’s & B’s? HOW CAN THAT BE? I want answers!” My stepson is in the 6^th grade. He comes home each night and struggles with his homework. We have determined that he skims — everything. He skims the directions. He skims the reading assignment. He guesses at multiple choice. He will copy sentences the teacher wrote, word for word, as an answer. If asked to reword in is own words, he will change one word. If asked to write 3-5 sentences, you can be sure he will write 3, but say the same thing, 3 different ways. He cannot spell; he mixes capital letters with lower case. He writes above the line and over top of other letters below. He has no clue how to use punctuation. The curious thing is that his work is considered acceptable.

Did you ever stop to think that what you say to your child’s teacher might be something incredibly frustrating for him or her to hear? And if you knew that, wouldn’t you want to know how to rephrase your statement or question?

It was meant to be an innocent question, but when my son E asked it to a friend of mine who is already sensitive about the topic, I could feel the blood drain out of my face. (I will not say what he said to protect this friend’s privacy, but it was not something he should say to ANYONE!) After they left, we had a talk with him about things he should and should not ask other people. I also wrote my friend an e-mail to apologize and they accepted my apology, saying they knew he didn’t mean it to be harmful.

If it came down to it, would you ever call the police on your child? And if so, what would be the last straw — the motivating factor — for you, personally?

Ask any child of any age where they are most likely to get bullied and the answer is almost always the school bus. Think about it. It’s the perfect venue for that form of torture. Kids of varying ages are virtually unsupervised except for a bus driver who is trying to focus on driving the kids home safely. The role of the bus driver is to deliver our kids to and from school safely, not to mediate conflicts and create harmony.

I’ve worked with hundreds of adolescents and they list the following as the most likely places where bullying occurs:
1. On the school bus
2. In the hallways of school while walking to a different classroom
3. During recess
4. In the lunch room

My son gave me a backhanded compliment recently. I was planning our annual family Channukah party at the end of last year, trying to coordinate it with our children’s visitation schedules. Both my children and my stepchildren spend Christmas with their other parent. Since Channukah falls at different times each December, we sometimes have to wait until Winter break, when all of the boys are at home, to have our party. This past holiday was especially hectic – we realized with a shock that on any given night we would be short one child. My oldest son said, “I know you like to do everything perfect and be organized and you always pull it off, but this year I think you have to give that up.” I was so touched. It was a backhanded way of telling me he appreciated my hard work in keeping everything organized. (Compliments and thank you’s are hard to come by from teenagers, so I grab them when I can!)

Have you noticed that your teen walks out of the house everyday wearing the same thing? Some seem to change multiple times a day, but there is a sizable portion of the teen population that wears the same article of clothing, usually a hoody or a jacket, no matter what the temperature, occasion, or soiled condition of the item. This can frustrate parents a great deal: “He has a closet full of clothes and he wears that?” If you’ve ever thought this, you’re not alone. Let’s consider the mindset of a teen that dresses in a singular fashion.