My 16yo son ignored Mother's Day.

The BBQ Pit
221

This. I am only girl raised with all brothers, I had boys, and so far all my grandsons are boys. Mothers day “as advertised” is a painfully girly once a boy hits those larval teen years.

They see flowers, cards, hugs, breakfast in bed or girly brunches modeled as “how it’s done” and those things might feel really embarrassing and awkward at this age.

When my boys got a certain age I had to have a private talk with my husband and explain that he needed to not just “model” appropriate mothers day, but actively “teach” them how to find their way to let mom know she is remembered on a day that in our culture is important to many moms. (Even i it does seemed contrived for profit.)

Over the years they went from choosing which flowers, to making noodle necklaces or taking their money to a jewelry store in the mall ($7) and come home with what they thought were “real” pearl earrings, one year it was a punch of outrageous promises, not to wrestle all day,not to fart in front of company, promise to remember to “never, ever” walk in the house in cleats again, not to leave wet towels on their bathroom floor, later it was stuff like they’d pack the picnic for the lake or take me to a major league baseball game which I never would have chosen but enjoyed anyway because they were so excited. This year, he left a small but thoughtful gift for mothers day when he was here with his family around the holidays. Then called in the morning and then in the evening after dinner called again for skype time to see the boys play a bit before their bedtime.

My point is, even though your son has two loving moms and it’s not a lesbian issue, it is a boy thing, he might still benefit from suggestions from the men in his life on how he can honor his mothers in a way that doesn’t make him feel uncomfortable. He might just need a man to remind or model for him that it is a manly thing to do to be a tiny bit mushy and thoughtful towards moms and wives on mothers day.

When did I realize how much my son had tried to show me he loved me in his own way while he was a teenager? It wasn’t on a mothers day.

About a week after he left home and was going to be out of the country for awhile and then off to college. I had to pull into a gas station on a Monday morning on the way to work to fill up and didn’t know what side of the car to pull to the pump. I realized as I pumped that first tank in three or four years that we’d bought a new to me car around the time that he got his learner permit. It dawned on me I had never had to fill up this car in the three almost four years I’d had it. He had always made sure mom’s car was filled up for the week and clean. He had his own 15 year old hand me down truck from his dad, so he was going out of his way to do this for my car. Of course I knew he loved me but in that moment, I realized that in his way he been showing he loved me by taking care of the fueling of my car. It would be another five or six years before it came out that as a young child he had remembered seeing me always be squicky about my hands and needing to use a travel wipe or wash my hands after using the fuel handle so he had decided that he would take that over when he was big. I remember him always volunteering to do it from about the age of 8, but I thought it was like a boy fun thing, I didn’t know it was because he was sparing me the ickiness of the chore. So when he started driving he continued to take that on and I really did not notice this thoughtful loving act until he left home.

TLDR My points are

  1. It’s probably not a two moms thing, it’s probably a boy figuring out how to be a man thing. He’s got great moms, that love him but he might still benefit from a bit of a nudge from a man he admires telling him that it’s a thing that thought men do for the moms and wives in their lives when it is important to those moms and wives.

  2. Since he’s a good a young man and family life is as loving as you say, then he might be showing you he loves you in a way that you’re not yet seeing, but I think you’ll realize it someday. Keep the faith in your young man.

222

ALL possibilities. In that spirit, tapu, may I suggest:

  1. Your son has been mind-controlled by a nest of vampires who are using him to spread their sinister religion, and he didn’t have time to buy a card.
  2. Your son bought a lovely potted plant for each of you, but starving rabbits nibbled them both out of his hands, and he was too embarrassed to admit it.
  3. Your son cooked you a delicious mother’s day dinner, which you ate, but then a car crashed through your living room wall and hit you, giving you highly specific amnesia and the inability to notice that walls have holes in them.

Oh–wait–maybe you only want to consider possibilities that are not extra stupid. In which case, all of my theories and urbanredneck’s theories gotta get tossed.

223

Interesting but futile thread. A bunch of people say, “It may be X.” Another bunch of people say, “Don’t even consider that it may be X.” And meanwhile the 16 year old boy who knows whether or not is is X hasn’t posted here. I don’t even know if he’s been asked.

224

Well, there goes my “your son has suffered brain damage due to the GAY COOTIES he caught from his TWO MOMS and that’s why he forgot” theory. A pity, as for a while this thread seemed to be headed in that direction.

225

The only thing about this situation that’s relatively new to human history is Mother’s Day.

226

This. If someone is going to complain whether you do something or not, then why should you consider their opinion when deciding whether or not to do it? You’re going to get complained at no matter what you do, there’s no way to avoid that, so you might as well do what you want.

227

Seriously. Women have been living together and raising kids - with or without the lesbian aspect - since the dawn of fucking time. Men go off. They die in wars. They leave their wives and children. Whatever.

Hell my aunt and her “friend” live together. I put friend in quotes not because they are a lesbian couple - which I don’t think they are - but because even though she is not a relative she is treated like one. She’s been in the family since before I was born. They are not in a particularly gay friendly area and yet, other than a few strange glances, no one really says anything.

People live together. Humans make societies, and within these societies, we break up even further into factions. We, on the whole, like each other, and like company. And fact of the matter is, it is easier to raise kids with another adult in the household, even if you are not in a relationship.

Don’t even try to tell me this is some kind of fancy schmancy new thing.

228

Mothers day is the norm throughout thousands of years of human history and development? Wow, I’m further behind than I thought.

229

Do try to keep up, outlierRN.

230

Step 1 - Identify the actual problem.

The problem for tapu and tapu II is the fact that their 15, now 16, and probably when he’s 17, year old son doesn’t remember to celebrate Mother’s Day by buying them a gift.

There is quite a variety of reasons why a 16 year old boy doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do. People can share their personal experiences surviving their teenage years, or surviving living with teenagers, or pass along what they think it’s like living with teenagers, but someone still has to actually address ALL of the POSSIBLE ISSUES with a teenager. It’s not a gay issue, it’s basic trouble-shooting. What does the teenager actually think of Mother’s Day? Why is the teenager so adamant about forgetting/avoiding Mother’s Day, or 2-Mom’s Day? Does he feel the same way about his birthday, or Christmas?

Adults are free to say it’s “NO BIG DEAL”, or “are JUST EXACTLY LIKE straight families”, or “I can’t even fathom suggesting …”, but that is not going to help understand what the teenager’s lack of motivation is.

Maybe family counseling is called for? Maybe some good olde fashion guilt should be administered? Maybe the kid just needs a boot in the ass?

Step 2 - Fix the actual problem.

231

That’s a lot of cards, man.

232

Joining the bunch of people saying it sounds like it’s because he’s 16 and you gave him some guilt about it last year, and he’s feeling rubbed up the wrong way and doesn’t FEEL like demonstrating love on command, so there - and he’s not old enough to know when or how to put his own feelings in second place and do something nice for someone else’s sake. I remember the same prickly set of emotions at that age, about different situations. (And my parents are straight. So I should’ve been perfect at 16. Maybe they had too many gay friends or something.)

233

Ok doorhinge, you have finally convinced me. Tapu’s teenager forgot Mothers’ Day because he has 2 moms, which clearly creates “issues”. The teenage son of my asian friend married to a white guy forgot Mother’s Day because mom is Asian, which as we all know causes issues. And my teenage son forgot Mother’s Day because his parents chose a school for him with same sex parents & interracial parents, which causes him issues when he looks around school and sees what kind of school his parents enrolled him in.

As far as fixing the problem (Step 2), the solution is clearly that 2 women or 2 men should not have children, nor should interracial couples. And families like mine should not enroll their children in schools where children of same sex or interracial families attend, since their issues could rub off. I’m sure that if my son attended a school without such riffraff, he would have totally remembered Mother’s Day. Thanks for fighting my ignorance!!!

234

Gotcha. There were only a couple msgs after the one asking for the thread to be closed so I thought maybe those people, like me, hadn’t yet seen the request, meaning maybe those couple msgs weren’t “legitimate discussion”. I don’t really know what counts as legitimate or not, haven’t been here very long so was trying to err on the side of respecting OP’s wishes. I see today that there are quite a number of additional msgs, including from OP, plus someone else letting me know that threads are rarely shut down by mods for such reasons. Noted on all counts!

235

It wasn’t explicitly stated as far as whether there was screaming and crying on the mothers’ part, but for whatever reason I got the sense that would NOT have been the case. Neither was it on the phone. The part that stood out to me was that the OP said they were all (the mothers and the son) “very very close”. Different people can mean different things by “close” of course but to my mind you are not very close, much less “very very close” if one of you says absolutely nothing when told by the other that you have hurt them.

I understand scenarios like you describe where it seems best to say nothing at all, but I think context is everything. For instance, if I am very very close to someone I will probably know after 16 years that their way of coping with emotionally stressful situations, like say your mom letting you know you forgot mother’s day and her feelings are hurt, is to clam up. If I know this, I will not take it personally. For that matter, I will probably also take a different approach to letting them know I wish they hadn’t forgotten – or for that matter will just let the whole thing go without so much as a mention.

236

No, no, no, no, no, no, etc., etc., etc. You haven’t solved anything. And your trouble-shooting technique still sux. I have not tried to convince you, or tapu, that gayness is a problem, or the problem. :smack:

Even though you clearly do not understand what I’ve actually said, it’s still possible for you to accomplish step 1. Assuming that the actual problem isn’t something that you have already chosen to ignore, or chose to deny.

237

I never said I did not like gay people ! And I will talk about gay people as much as I please! I just don’t agree in making a kid feel bad forgetting mother day . The OP is making a big deal out of a mother’s day which I feel was made up for Hallmark to sell more cards and businesses to made $$$!
You know nothing about me so go screwed yourself!

238

It seems very unlikely the issue has anything to do with having two mothers, but as several have suggested, it might be related to not having a dad. I’m surprised no single moms have chimed in, because I would think they would have a lot of the same dynamics of not having a non-mom-parent to tell the kid “you need to go to the mall this afternoon and buy a present for mother’s day”.

But mostly I’m still in the camp of “It doesn’t seem like a big deal that a teenager forgot mother’s day, or choose not to embrace it for any of the myriad reasons suggested above.”

Still, I’m curious how single moms handle this.

239

Despite your calm and unemotional post, I must disagree with you:

True, it became commercialized pretty quickly, but it’s inaccurate to say it was made up by Hallmark; it was made up by an early 20th-century feminist.

This point, however, is irrefutable in its substance or style. Miller, acknowledge the burn.

240

You didn’t need to. It was self evident from what you wrote.

Well, if you must, can you at least learn to write coherently?

Sorry, but the way message boards work is, when you write something, it stays there for everyone to see. And what you originally wrote was:

That’s not about Mother’s Day being a bullshit corporate holiday (which I agree with) or about tapu not nagging her son (which is something that’s been pointed out about two dozen times before you showed up). It’s about insinuating that having gay parents is damaging to children. Which is fucked up, bigoted, and pointedly counterfactual.

Interesting approach to verb tenses you’ve got there, Oscar Wilde.