So, my parents are taking my niece and nephews (long, boring)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

Well, I don’t think my parents really overreacted - there was some stern talking to from both of them, but I don’t think it was more than warranted - no punishment, no remnants of it afterwards, etc. I do think it’s very important to set the boundaries right now BEFORE she’s driving herself everywhere - you do not lie about where you’re going, period. Because once cars are in the picture it’s a hell of a lot harder to enforce the rules - they need to be set now, you know?

And trust me, the park is residential, the Hardees is definitely not. If they’d asked to go there, I’d have said no but been fine with the service station or the Target down the road even (in daylight.) The point is, they knew they were doing something wrong - it was obvious that it wasn’t an innocent mistake. I think it may have been a boundary push, in which case we handled it right. (And I found out I have a great snitch.)

I’ve never actually known the boy to lie about things - he’ll tell you right out even if it doesn’t reflect well on him, if you actually ask the question. The girl is so much like her dad that I really do worry about any little falsehood, yes. (And yes, I mostly went where I said I was going as a teenager but once we went to Myrtle Beach for the day when we were theoretically at the library.) I am trying not to let that influence my treatment of her while simultaneously making the rules clear.

And we did make it clear that what we were upset about was the lie.

I do think it’s best while my niece seems to have some sense about this other girl to let her figure out on her own that this isn’t the most positive companion to be hanging around. If I thought otherwise (or especially if, say, I’d thought the other girl masterminded this stupid Hardees bullshit) I’d be taking more subtly proactive methods against her. But they’re not in school together now (evidently my mom was told she’s homeschooled because of ADD and hyperactivity, which as far as I could tell this girl didn’t have in the slightest) and they’ll probably just grow apart naturally.

On the whole, no, not a big deal - but everything had been going so well and this was the first little incident, you know? And it really is the dad-like behavior that’s the problem.

102

Bringing their parents into this, even tactfully, seems like a bad idea, to me. It would probably be more likely for that to hurt things, rather than help, in my opinion, even if the kids know it’s a true statement.

103

Yeah, I was thinking “lead by example” is probably best. “These are the rules here”, etc.

The middle boy said the sweetest, saddest thing to me a few days ago - he was telling me about how their dad might come home in a month or so (although after this he landed back in the ICU, but anyway) and I tried to say gently that people like to give kids dates they can’t really back up, because you want to tell a kid something, so they really shouldn’t get their hearts set on going back home any time soon, definitely not any specific time. And he said, “I know, I’m not really planning on playing Guild Wars this summer.” I think it was Guild Wars, I don’t know - I don’t do any of that MMORPG stuff. Anyway, he explained that whatever game it is has been pushed back three or four times now, so while if it does come out he’ll be happy, but he isn’t setting his watch by it or anything, so he gets that he shouldn’t put too much stock in any dates anybody gives him about going back home or his dad being out of the hospital. I said, “Oh, like Daikatana or Duke Nukem Forever!” and realized how ancient I am. But I told him that was a really great analogy.

My brother and his wife have, god knows, never really encouraged extracurriculars (more work, you know) but they each do something - Scouts, and theater, and the girl does chorus but I assume that’s not so much an after school thing. I did some of the running around this week and realized just how much of my childhood my mom spent in a car with a book - Christ, you get them there and before you know it they have to be picked up again, and they’re never out on time!

104

Erg - double post.

105

That’s a nice theory. Unfortunately, it might impede her ability to make friends. If she becomes known as the girl who has to check in and out every time she goes anywhere, and can’t accept a spontaneous invitation, people will simply stop including her in their plans.

106

Just because you have to call home and okay it doesn’t mean you “can’t accept a spontaneous invitation” - when I was in high school I had a curfew (and NOBODY ELSE had one) which I thought was just the most oppressive thing ever, but if I called my mom and told her where we were going she was fine with me staying out later. Although it was a rather long phone call when I called to tell her we were going to go play roller hockey on the parking deck roof of the Computer Sciences building. “Seriously, it’s not locked! It’s not illegal!” (And back then I had to find a pay phone!)

107

Yeah, in the day and age of cell phones, all it requires is a phone call, or even a text. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing at all. Littlest Bluth drops my Mom (or sometimes me) a text “hey, is it okay if we leave Justin’s house and go to Marc’s?” the understanding that it’s okay already, he’s just letting her know. If he doesn’t get an answer in 5 minutes, he calls. He’d call and truly ask if it were “Can we go to a place we’ve never gone to before to a house with parents you don’t know of a friend I haven’t spoken about yet”. Or, you know, roller hockey :p.

Obviously the dynamic begins to change when the kids are seniors in high school and nearly out the door to college.

108

Mom did say yes to roller hockey, by the way. Which, thinking back, sort of surprises me. (She knew all the people I was with, of course.)

Which is another thing that bugs me - she’s always texting this boyfriend we have never met. I think a dinner will happen soon.

109

Calling or texting is okay; I had to call when I was that age. I’m just not down with a teenager having to be driven everywhere, which is what you said. That’ll keep her out of trouble by default, because it’ll lead to her having no social life. Who wants to hang out with Miss Priss, who has to wait for her grandparents or aunt to drive her like a baby. That is how she’ll be seen. Not so if all she has to do is call, but it will be so if she has to constantly wait around for a ride.

110

Maybe in NYC this is a big deal to have a car ride everywhere, but in the suburbs kids get driven everywhere anyways. Hardly any sidewalks make it unsafe to walk most places; the sole exception being within the same development/street. The kids you see walking around areas without sidewalks are latchkey kids who smoke, get into trouble and generally get bad grades.

I also think you’re definitely out of touch with the “uncool, won’t get invitations” thing. The Littlest Bluth was school president last year.

You also took umbrage with checking in and out part, not the driving part initially.

Good call on the mystery boyfriend Zsofia.

111

Well, if all things go well she’ll be getting her license in a few months and we have an old car she’ll get. I’m okay with that, assuming we don’t have more “lied about where you are” moments, for several reasons:

  1. There are three of them and having another driver would make things a hell of a lot easier
  2. A car is a privilege you have to earn and keep on earning if you want to keep it
  3. Also a financial responsibility

Obviously if we don’t think she’s mature enough for the responsibility she won’t be getting the car. And I’m sure we’ll definitely pull a spot check or two. But in general, given good behavior AND demonstrated trustworthiness, I think it’s important for a girl in her increasingly late teens to at least have access to the independence you get with a car - this is the part of the US where cars are the first experience of adulthood kids get. But it’s definitely not something we’d give her unless we were pretty damned certain she was sufficiently reliable.

112

All right, I guess it’s different in the Valley. Where are you, btw?

113

And having a car, and the freedom to drive herself places, is really enjoyed by teenagers. And really missed if it is then lost.

So that makes it a real big consequence to use – if misbehavior results in losing her driving privileges for a while, she will work hard to not misbehave (or not get caught). Make sure to talk about (negotiate) what the responsibilities are, and what the consequences are. Even put it in writing. Signed contracts have meaning: we negotiated an agreement, we are both expected to follow the agreement, and there are defined penalties for not meeting the agreement.

Also, there are services that can track her physical location from her cell phone, And GPS mapping devices for cars, that also can track and report to you where she was with the car. I would not do that at once, it seems to indicate a lack of trust (plus I’m too cheap to spend money on this until needed). But if she betrays that trust with the car, these are a possible option to consider. Or even something to use as a threat if the misbehavior is repeated.

114

I wouldn’t phrase it as a threat, if you ever bring the GPS up - it’s not a punishment, it’s a way to know where to find her if you need to do so in a hurry and she’s not answering her phone. If she’s good at giving you that info, then there’s no need for the additional expense, which you’d much rather save and have available for other uses.

115

Ah, yes – that’s a much better way to phrase it.

116

Zsofia is in/around Charleston, IIRC. I’m in Western PA, raised in suburbia and now live in Pittsburgh.

117

Columbia, actually. But yes, South Carolina.

I don’t know if it’s relevant, but my mom’s family lives in Pittsburgh and their public transportation seems at least adequate. No such thing here. (Also, how the hell do you yinzers tell a bad neighborhood from a good one? They all look exactly the same to me except for the places with really sweet houses like the gorgeous ones on the main Mount Lebanon road. Also there are only two kinds of houses. One assumes there were exactly two building booms and no more? Pittsburgh is like a foreign country to me.)

118

:smack: sorry for confusing them. One of my good friends actually went to the University of South Carolina, so I don’t know how I confused that.

Bus service was actually quite adequate up until the recent service cuts last month (I didn’t grow up in Pittsburgh though, grew up 90 minutes away, suburbia/small townish). Now the routes are still pretty good but often in peak hours you get passed up by full buses. If I had a kid and lived in the city they could get to all the major, desirable neighborhoods fairly easily. Transit is still pretty good from the “South Hills” suburbs into Oakland, Shadyside, or Downtown for 8-4, 9-5 9-6 workers.

How do you define what you mean by “good” neighborhood? I will admit it’s very difficult to tell a good one from a bad one because all the houses are universally very, very old, and that can often mean run down in other cities. Good city neighborhoods that I’d live in, keeping in mind I’m a moderate snob, from best to worse: Shadyside, North Oakland, Regent Square, Lawrencevile (LoLa, within 1-2 blocks of Butler), Southside, the Strip, Bloomfield, parts of Friendship, Squirrel Hill (fallen in the past 5 years from the #2 slot), parts of Greenfield, parts of Brookline. My loose criteria is does it have ethnic and $15/plate and more restaurants, does it have an Sundance-y theater, does it have museums, bakeries and people under 35 (fairly rare in pittsburgh) and general safety.

I live in North Oakland and will live in Lawrenceville next year because I want to rent a house so I have a yard. Nearly impossible to find a full 3 bedroom house to rent in Shadyside that’s not very large (4-6 bedrooms) or very expensive and most of Regent Square’s and North Oakland’s have been subdivided into apartments.

Good suburbs (not in order): Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair, Bethel Park, Fox Chapel, O’Hara, Indiana Twp, Aspinwall. I hate the North Hills with the fire of a thousand suns. Ditto Cranberry. Way too much traffic, zero character. Just a typical “newish” suburb with miles and miles of Kohls and stay at home moms and cheap Ryan homes.

But yeah, lots of houses look very similar in certain city neighborhoods and the suburbs. Sometimes the houses clash with the cost and vibe of the neighborhood, like Lawrenceville, which was once very working class (complete with row houses) and is now little bohemia/hipstery, with nice restaurants and galleries and yoga studios etc.

119

As far as I can tell, there are old-breathing-down-each-other’s-neck neighborhoods, often with duplexes and such, and split level ranches. I’m assuming it lines up with the post-war boom and with explosive steel grown in the late 19th century (and maybe early 20th, I dunno.) My mom’s family all live in the split level ranches - some of them are cute on the inside, but those neighborhoods just don’t look nice to me. You could take me blindfolded to anywhere in the south and take off the blindfold and I could tell you a ton about the kind of people who live in the houses I can see - socioeconomics, kind of job, age range, etc.

I can do that in Pittsburgh too, I guess, since you can’t go wrong with “fat middle aged ladies who draw their eyebrows in”, right? :slight_smile:

I don’t think it’s that the houses are old, per se - some of the nicest neighborhoods here are dominated by 20’s Craftsman bungalows - but that everything just kind of looks run down all the time. Maybe it’s the dirty snow. I can’t put my finger on it, but my aunt from DC knows what I’m talking about. (Plus it’s the most de-facto segregated city I’ve ever been in.)

Also, you guys do hideous things to hedges. What’s up with that? Please tell them it’s cruel to shear them into little bobbles like that.

Interesting town, though - it’s changed so much even from when I was a kid, let alone when my mom was little and they’d watch the slag heap pouring at night through their windows. It seems to really want to improve itself. And it’s got to be tough to find a place with more cool ethnic restaurants outside of New York or somewhere (unfortunately I never get to eat at them, since until my grandparents died we mostly just visited them, so most of my experience with Pittsburgh food comes from an assisted living kitchen.) We took my cousin to visit the University of Pittsburgh a few years ago, and if I’d been offered the chance then and there to do college over again with the same lack of financial obligations I had the first time around only knowing what I do now I’d have taken them up on it then and there - even though it was totally snowing at the time.

120

snicker I hear ya on the eybrows. Yeah, since the weather is so rough here and the housing code is so bizarre (it’s prohibitively expensive to build new) all housing looks universally old. $400k homes in Squirrel Hill look beat up; inside they are meticulous but the outside looks old and weather beaten.

Oh, without a doubt.

Actually because of the university we have plenty of excellent ethnic places; usually one person in a couple comes for their phD or masters and the spouse opens a restaurant.

The snow sucks, it’s easily the worst part of Pittsburgh. I liked Pitt well enough. But you can’t beat the cost of living and the amenities, like the symphony and the theaters and museums. During the housing crisis we suffered the least of all top 50 cities in the US, so things are stable.

The biggest issue I forsee are town/gown in the form of those with and without college degrees. Lots of people in the working class suburbs look down upon and even actively resent the eds/meds economy in Oakland and Shadyside. Hate the immigrants, even though 99% of them in Pittsburgh are legal.

Anyway, enough of the tangent :slight_smile: How are your parents holding up?