Summer

It's 90 degrees at 10:30 in the morning, but with the humidity it feels like 98 degrees (according to The Weather Channel app). We are barely into the third week of summer and already I sense mutiny is on the horizon. I don't think there are any correct answers on how best to occupy your kids throughout the months of June - August. If you ask my kids, who are in the throes of/approaching adolescence, they'd tell you this is their ideal schedule:
A) stay up till 12-1 am every night
B) wake up at noon everyday
C) spend the 12 hours in between either playing Black Ops, Minecraft or watching movies on Amazon. (9 yo sister would request play dates with a different friend everyday and want you to do things like, take her ice skating)


I have a problem with their schedule. Maybe it's my mom's fault because she didn't tolerate slothfulness and now I'm conditioned to be the same or more likely, I'm just mean.
I don't mind being mean, because I figure that my popularity as a parent is inversely proportional to my effectiveness. But it can be exhausting, especially since everyone has an opinion now. I had no idea how easy I had it 5 years ago when they did what they were told, more or less.


I see myself as drill sergeant and they are in my boot camp. The really terrifying thing is I have morphed into my parents: "as long as you live under my roof...."
Yesterday as my almost 13 year old was complaining about some injustice, I told him not to worry because he only had to suffer through his father and my rules for 6 more years and then he could make up his own. He was surprised at the relatively little time he has left living with us and suddenly he was little again, "Mom, don't some kids still live with their parents after college?"


Speaking of which, we have the pleasure of my 20 yo niece living with us this summer. She's finished her first 2 years of college and a decade worth of teen years and she is not that much closer to maturity than my 12 year old. Don't get me wrong, she is absolutely lovely, and a joy to have in our home and I can only hope that my kids will be as successful, academically, but adolescence seems to extend into the mid 20s. The next 15 years look bleak for us.


I think I understand why parents want to live long enough to see their own kids struggle through parenthood. There is no price tag on vindication.
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