Dealing with Fifteen: The Sound of Silence

Oh my God! Can a fifteen-year-old talk or what? I mean about anything and everything and nothing all at the same time. And no matter what you say they have an argument for it, about it, against it, and around it. Ryan is no exception. The worst part is he talks like he knows what he’s talking about but doesn’t realize how blatantly obvious it is that he doesn’t have a clue.

I’ve been that mom, the one who corrects him. Foolish me thinking the boy was looking into his brain and trying to carry on an intelligent conversation but had misinformation. He wasn’t interested in information or even what he was saying. He was interested in sounding like an adult. He is interested in people thinking he is worldly and experienced and has some basis of knowledge from which he is speaking. How dare I wound his pride, his very passage to manhood, by calling his prowess into question.

While most parents wonder if their child is lying about where they are going, who they are going with, and what they are doing when they get there I’m worrying about stepping on my son’s pride by informing him that it’s not a Camaro from the sixties but a Firebird from the seventies. I must consider if it is beneficial for him to know it would take more than a 45 minute shop period to bore out the cylinders and rebuild the engine in a Ford F-150. Should I tell him the chances of the forestry class catching a chipmunk by chasing it through the underbrush along the stone wall at the edge of the school is less than a million to one? Could it be true that no less than seven girls in his class consider him a serious love interest? And the other day when he put in his contacts for the first time and had his hair cut four inches shorter that his teacher who has been looking at him for the last six weeks thought he was a transfer student from another school and gave him all of the class material again and informed him he would have to change his seat because the one he was in was taken by a young man who wasn’t in class yet?