When I was a teenager, I had two sets of friends. One crowd was a Metallica T-shirt wearing, long haired, stoner crowd and the other was a Preppy, clean cut crowd. At the time, my Mom, expressed to me that she didn’t much care for my Stoner friends. OTOH though she loved my prepy friends.
The other day I was telling my mother that in retrospect; it was kind of amusing. Simply because I got in to waaayyy more mischief with my Prepy friends than I ever did with my Stoner friends. Mainly because my Prepy friends (and I) all had cars and money.
After telling my mother this, she didn’t seem at all amused. I mean she did that polite fake smile thing, but I could tell she was bothered. Which surprised me because I tend to think I know my mother’s personality pretty well.
So parents, are you put off by stories your kids tell you they got away with?
It probably wasn’t the fact that you did mischievous stuff and got by with it that was bothering her. I mean, would you be amused if someone came to you and said, “Hey, you know that time you totally stereotyped people based on their appearance? You were sooooooooooooo wrong; the people you liked were actually assholes and the ones you hated were pretty good folks. HAHAHAHAHAHA, isn’t that funny?” I sure as shit wouldn’t be laughing.
Nobody likes to be wrong, nobody likes to think they were judgmental without a good reason, and nobody likes to think someone is laughing at them.
Hell, I can’t answer this question from a parent perspective, but no matter your age, your parents are always your parents.
I’m about a thousand years old, and there are still things I got away with that I would never tell either of them.
Not because they’re not good people, and not because it’s-history-so-what-can it matter? I wouldn’t tell them because they were doing the best they could do, and all in all it was a pretty good job.
For me to splatter the idea they have of themselves as being interested, caring parents instilling freedom with responsibility, is to be a bit unfair I think.
It would be pointless to bring up things I was up to when I was young. I suppose a parent has to go through life on blind faith thinking they are sending the young ones out into the world like properly brought up little robots. Sometimes life intervenes to mess that worldview up. Ask any preacher’s kid.
I dunno about the “properly brought up little robots” salinqmind.
I think most parents are proud to know the natures and idiosyncrasies of their kids, and do their best to appropriately encourage, or curb them.
I don’t think most parents think their kids are perfect - or that they haven’t gotten away with stuff; I just don’t think they have to know about the things that would upset them. They’d see it as a bad reflection on their awareness; not a good reflection on how crafty a kid can be.
As a parent of adult children, I can tell you nobody likes being reminded that their little angels lied, misled and went behind their backs.
Yeah, we knew you got into mischief with your friends. We figured it was your Metallica-wearing stoner friends. Now you tell us that you and your preppy friends were pulling an Eddie Haskell on us.
If my kids told me that because I was prejudiced and judgmental, they and their “straight” friends were able to play me, I don’t think I would be able to pull off even a fake smile.
My parents generally find it amusing when I tell stories of escapades in my youth. I’m sure it helps considerably that they were all relatively minor and in the end there was no harm and my sister turned out fine.
How would you feel if your mother said, “You know all that porn you had stashed under your mattress? Yeah, your dad and I knew about that all the time. In fact, we used to go in there occasionally while you were at school and look at it. Most of the time, we’d laugh about it, but sometimes we’d get turned on and have sex right there on your bed.”?
There are certain fictions one maintains as a parent. There are certain fictions one maintains as a child. Please keep them up into adulthood, unless you want your parents to start telling you all the times they pulled one over on you, too.
I hate hearing about the time my kids almost killed themselves doing something stupid or drank until they threw up. This is my own children rubbing my failures in my face.
It’s sometimes slightly amusing when they think they are revealing some big secret when they are actually misremembering or exaggerating something I already knew about.
For example:
My oldest recently told the story, to my youngest, of when he happened to bump someone’s car on Prom night and his date’s Mom smoothed the whole thing over. He was so clever to get away with it!
The true story is that he hit a van and drove off. The owner of the van tacked him down and threatened to call the police if he didn’t make it right. After many tears and pleading on his part, I paid the understanding man for the damages and my son escaped a hit-and-run charge.
One of my friends told his daughter, “Remember two nights ago, when you were out having fun with your friends? Well your mom and I were having sex right where you’re sitting now. Why do you think we let you go out so much and stay out sort of late? So we can have sex. Remember this.” This was in response to her opinion of them being so square and boring.
I am generally glad to finally know the truth. Although I will say, I knew, or at least strongly suspected, the truth about the stoner vs. preppy guys at the time, much the same truth as the OP’s. Interesting note: One of the preppy guys was earnestly explaining to my husband how he thought it was wrong to even KISS a girl if you were not going to marry her, and he didn’t really date because most girls thought this was too weird, but the right one would understand. I asked my son if his friend really believed that. He shrugged and said he thought so.
So this guy now has three kids. But he hasn’t gotten married yet!
Actually though I did stereotype a lot of them. It’s interesting to see how wrong I was about some of them, although not threatening (I can handle being wrong; I have lots of experience at it). For instance, the slacker stoner is running his own business and doing well. The genius is still in school and it’s looking like he always will be. Well, I shouldn’t say that, he’s only 29. But seriously, he graduated from HS at 16!
Ok. Point well taken from you guys. I think it should be known though that it didn’t play out like CrazyCatLady suggests. My family has always been the type to poke lite fun at each other anyway. (I’m sure if you’re reading this from outside the box, that might seem slightly dysfunctional. but I don’t think so.) At the time, we were all talking about our “Back in the day” stories. So, when I said what I said, it just seemed like a natural flow of the conversation.
Also, I made sure give my Mom a big hug and told her that I loved her before I left that day. (Just like I always do.) So I’m not a complete monster.
It’s not really a good analogy at all. If your parents are actually having sex in your bed, or even gawking at porn in your bed, then you were raised by people with serious boundary issues (As in: “I should be more embarassed about taking off my clothes in front of people but I’m not because my stepfather had boundary issues”). Having friends that your parents trusted, but shouldn’t have, is a real phenomenon.
I don’t see how kids getting up to no good should be a reflection on the parent. From what I’ve seen, both as a kid and as a parent, the kids will be who they will be for the most part, irrespective of parenting. “Good” 'rents sometimes spawn pricks, and some kids toe the line despite their parents.
Last year both of my parents were sick with pretty bad colds on and off. Mom mentioned they kept running out of boxes of tissues “just like we did when you were in high school”. o:o:o:o:o I wanted to crawl into a hole in the floor and die.
o:o:o:o:o I wanted to crawl into a hole in the floor and die.