Why are teenagers so stupid?

The BBQ Pit
61

I think everyone has missed the really significant thing here – that the OP will get to hold this over his little brother for the rest of their lives. Wild, teenage party stories are great dirt to rehash at any festive occasion; hours of fun!

I was the responsible older brother who didn’t get into trouble (as far as my family knew), and my brother was the irresponsible troublemaker. Also, more popular.

My parents were going out of town to visit relatives one weekend, and called me at college and suggested my brother “might be lonely his first weekend on his own,” and maybe I should visit. Naïvely, I did so… and arrived home to find The Mother Of All Parties going on. The subdivision was packed with misparked cars, from one end to the other. On entering my booming house, some tartlet with blue eyeshadow to her temples and really big hair (this was the '80s), informed me it was a “private party,” and that I wasn’t invited. As our poor little doggy ran up then, seeking sanctuary, I grinned and informed her “oh, I think the party’s over.”

I found my brother, worked out a brotherly agreement – I wouldn’t snitch, he’d have a couple hours to bring everything under control, it would be over when I got back, and I’d leave before mom & dad got home that weekend so he could explain however he wanted. The dog and I vamoosed, he kicked out the chaos, and by the time I got back there were only beer bottles as far as the eye could see, and the sour smells left by teenagers who couldn’t hold their liquer.

I’m still hazy on the details of how he explained the stained rugs, the hole in the wall, etc. to my parents. But since I’m the older brother, I revel in bringing out that old chestnut at every opportunity. Such as at family reunions, or his marriage. He’s a lawyer now,* with two kids, and I’ve already told him that the first time he overreacts to my nephews when they reach teenaged stupid, The Mother Of All Parties story will be polished off and paraded around for the amusement of all. :smiley:

  • I don’t even have to make the “well, he was familiar with the legal system” jokes. His friends usually beat me to 'em. Damn (mid-30s) rugrats.
62

I call bullshit on the whole “well, at least he’s at home” line. It just seems silly - children are not supposed to drink, ever. If you go out of town, you get a sitter or leave him at Grandma’s. If he’s not spending the night somewhere, his curfew is reasonable, but not so late that he has time to get drunk. If he is spending the night somewhere, make sure the parents are trusted, etc. etc.

Don’t get me wrong - I am not for shackling your kids to your apron. And I certainly did plenty wrong when I was a teenager (boy howdy!). But, since my mother set reasonable (in retrospect) limits on my freedom, I could never really get in bad, bad trouble. I also got sips of beer and drinks growing up, but I for sure wanted to drink. You know why? Because it was the coolest thing ever!!

My mom was a good mom, and I never really got the opportunity until I was 17. And I had the party, which included a chocolate chip fight, which ruined the couch. But, it was under control, because myself and my peers (and even the hangers-on) were not 15. No thefts, no sex stains, and puking was limited to the bathroom.

And also - teenagers always want to do the opposite of what you tell them. Like skipping homework, ditching class and, yes, drinking. But why would you condone drinking and still make them do homework?

63

As a couple of my old high school classmates can tell you, it turns out that the bathroom is not a risk-free alternative. (I was never stupid enough to do that, but a couple of people were. In a school that was 100% indoors! Idiots.)

I imagine there would have been more suckage in one way, and less suckage in another.

64

If he had gone to drink at someone else’s house, he might have come back with some cool video games.

65

There’s this weird thing that happens when you’re a parent: you realize, at some point, that you’re now the one responsible for punishing a person who is doing the same exact thing you did. It’s an odd disconnect, because there’s this part of you thinking, “Well, hell, at least no one cut down a tree,” (which happened to my husband when he threw a party in high school), and at the same time, “But I have to send the message that this isn’t okay, or I’m going to lose control of my household and my kid might die.” (See drugs, drunk driving, etc.)

So what ends up happening is that you put on a show of anger and outrage, then you and your spouse go into your bedroom and laugh hysterically into your pillows.

Yes, kids need to learn to rebel. It’s how they learn to think for themselves and make their own decisions. But for that process to happen, they need something to rebel against. Saying, “Well, that’s okay son, I know you need to rebel as part of the normal maturation process,” undermines that very process.

So yeah, I agree with Rubystreak. I also agree with Happy Scrappy Hero Pup. It’s both a huge deal *and *entirely normal. The kid needs to learn to cover up better, because that’s what adults in our society do: they plan things so that no one gets hurt, and they clean up their mess so it doesn’t affect other people.

66

Sounds like what Jennfier Grey needs is a good sit-down with Charlie Sheen in the police station.

67

Vote #65.

WhyNot has it. Yes, it is normal for the kids to try to pull those stunts, and yes it is expected from the parents to be stiffs about it. This is how growth happens. This kid would have missed a lot if he hadn’t tried it, but among those things he would have missed has to be the ton of trouble and punishment that comes with these things. With it, the notion that while some things are fun, maybe they are not fun enough for the cost they have.

68

My older brother was the ‘bad’ kid and also way more popular than I was in high school. Mom and dad learned quick to send him somewhere else when they went on vacation. (He’s 5 years older - I’d go to grandma’s and he’d go to a friends’) When he was a senior, however, he broke into the house to throw a party. Back then him and I typed in a code on the garage to get in after school, we didn’t use keys. Mom and dad changed the code right before they left, and only told me (in case I needed to get something from the house, it’s a fifteen minute walk from grandma’s and where my bus stop was) Brother didn’t even try getting the code out of me, he just kicked in a basement window.

I found out about the party because my best friend at the time lived around the corner. At 13, my friends and I walked EVERYWHERE, and IIRC I was going to spend the night at said friend’s house. Her and another friend walked to my grandma’s to come get me, and when we reached our small neighborhood I noticed there were a lot of cars parked on the street. Like everywhere. Sure enough, we walk up on my house and it’s swarming with kids.

This was eight years ago, but I still remember the 100+ drunk kids all over my house. In the yard, the garage, basement, kitchen, everywhere. I knew a lot of my brother’s friends quite well, and after bro gave me a stern warning not to snitch, they told us to come in and hang out. While I don’t condone this at all - my friends and I drank a bit with the older kids, not to point of inebriation, more to just look cool. I didn’t get drunk until I was 15 or 16, which is still early for some people, but at least my friends and I did it somewhat safely - no driving, no hard alcohol until we were older.

But anyway, of course my brother got caught. The house was ‘too clean’ and stuff was moved around a bit. Our house is not even dog friendly, and our dad is a psycho cleaner and arranger. And I think mom found a bottle of rum stashed in the coat closet from when the cops showed up.

But no one stole anything (parents learned to lock their room when they weren’t home after bro got old enough to have people over, only I had a key) and no one broke anything. Brother cleaned the puke from the bathroom very well. No one died.

If you leave your teenagers in the house alone, and they have/want friends, it’s likely they’re gonna have a party. It’s the risk parents take when they leave 'em behind. I had a lot of friends, but we weren’t crazy. So yes, mom and dad let me, the ‘good kid’ stay home when they went on vacation, and yes I had parties. But I was smart about them and only invited my very best friends and people from work. And my brother and his friends, so I’d have older guys around in case for some reason it got out of hand (never did).

Just sucks your brother didn’t plan for his party better. If he was smart, he would’ve locked up the video games and stayed sober enough to keep an eye out on stuff that couldn’t be locked up, and maybe he could have designated a trustful friend or two to do the same. I bet it was a fun party minus the damages.

But yeah, I mean while your brother shouldn’t have had a party, your parents shouldn’t have let a 15 year old boy stay home alone. If I were seventeen and had the house to myself again like I did when I was a senior, hell yeah I’d do it again. It was a fun party! We still talk about it.

69

Princeton could use a man like the OP.

70

I would go so far as to say that if he isn’t punished very seriously, then his parents aren’t doing their jobs. Kids want to push, to see how far they can go. Unconsciously, they want to find the boundaries, to know they’re there and that their parents aren’t going to let them fuck up without consequences. It’s good practice for the real world, where the consequences are usually much harsher and less personally tailored and compassionate.

I hope Yumblie’s parents bring the hammer down. It’ll be good for the little shit to find out that his parents’ stuff is worth some respect; maybe he’ll realize that other people’s stuff in general is worthy of respect, and that trusting people who aren’t really your friends with the run of your home is a bad idea.

I also don’t get why people are giving Yumblie such a hard time in this thread. I’d be disappointed to find out my younger brother behaved like an inconsiderate asshole. Sadly, for me that ship has sailed long ago. :wink:

71

Because he’s not the kid’s parent. If he was the parent, if he’d put time and effort into raising the kid and was reponsible for him, this reaction would be understandable. But he didn’t, and he’s asking “How in the world did he turn out like this?” when it was not his job to “turn out” his brother.

And what is “like this” in aggregate, anyway? OP’s brother may have had a lot of positive moments that the OP doesn’t know about it, and their parents may not be ready to throw in the towel on him, because of that.

ETA: Yumblie, how much older are you than him?

72

So he has no right to care about the kind of person his brother is, how he behaves towards their parents, presumably in the house in which they both grew up? What? Are you serious?!? I didn’t think you had to raise a kid to have an interest in how he turns out. You might have been raised along side him and wonder how, with the same parenting and values, your sibling could be such a jerk to your parents. People wonder in threads on this message board all the time about the upbringing of other people’s children who aren’t even related to them. If it’s your sibling, you have MORE right and reason to care, not less, and more reason to be appalled when he acts like an ass.

I think it’s totally within the OP’s right to have feelings about his brother’s choices and how his brother is treating their parents. To suggest otherwise is fucking ridiculous. Typical Pit bullshit, being argumentative and attacking the OP for specious reasons, IMO.

Really, this thread has been quite full of BS. People defending the kid’s right to party, scoffing at the idea that the kid did something worthy of anger and censure, as if “harmless” partying = wrecking his parents’ house, which is his right and privilege as a teenager-- if it was your house, you would be THRILLED to have it trashed and robbed by drunk teenagers, I’m sure. And giving the OP shit for having an opinion about his sibling is absurd. Anyone here who has a sibling and doesn’t have and has never had an opinion about him/her… cast the first stone.

Did the OP advocate his parents throwing in the towel on the kid? No, he is expressing surprise, disappointment, and outrage that his brother has behaved so badly. I bet the reason for his reaction is that his brother is overall a decent kid and this incident is showing a new, negative side of him. It’s tough when you’re watching someone grow up and they fuck up bigtime. Doesn’t mean you give up on them or hate them, but you might be angry about it. And then you might vent, and get shit on in the Pit I guess.

73

And what are you growing in that greenhouse, young man? :wink:

No, seriously, that’s a good point. I mean, I don’t smoke, but come to think of it, there are other normal teenage diversions that I wouldn’t mind trying in a greenhouse. Might need a blanket, though.

74

Rubystreak, I’m just saying that at 15, a person is not “turned out.” And I’m not defending the kid’s right to party. I’m just saying that what happened may lead to a change for the better. Now he’ll show what he’s made of. It’s too early to call “turned out.”

75

For the record, a day later I do think I overreacted in the OP (but hey that’s what the pit’s all about, isn’t it?) and recognize that I might’ve come across as an elitist prude. I’m expressing parental type disappointment since I almost feel like a parent to this kid. He’s 9 years younger than me, so whenever the parents went out for the evening I was the babysitter. Usually there wasn’t any trouble but every once in a while I’d have to lay down the law. It’s been apparent for quite a few years that he’s much different than the rest of us, but I always felt he was a responsible kid. I’m sure he is still responsible, he just screwed up this time. Maybe he didn’t intend it to get out of hand; I know parties can start out small but draw in uninvited people and quickly spiral out of control. I don’t know the whole story, I just heard a brief run-down from my parents, so I’m making a lot of assumptions. Since the parents left me and my sister at home all the time with no problem, I guess they assumed they could trust my brother. Hopefully this will be an isolated incident.

I just hope nothing…happened…in my old room…yeugh…

76

There’s one thing I’m not entirely settled with here.

Parties while parents out of town? hell yes.
Cleanup, get caught? Only once, sort of.
Learn house improvement projects repairing said house after parties? yeah, was pretty fun.
while 15? Hell no.

I’m right in line with a well-executed (as suggested above, some serious execution flaws apparently, with the noted lack of stashing valuables, etc.) party for fun and all that. Teens doing silly stuff (hell even in college I do some fairly strange things still) is fine. What I’m not getting here is FIFTEEN. I know a lot of people start drinking at that age, but DAMN. Senior year of HS, maybe, who knows, but fifteen just seems so damn young, even to me and I’m only 21.

ETA: also, stop being a stick in the mud and buy him some beer next time. Then smack him and show him how to ACTUALLY throw a party.

77

I understand that you’re worried about the direction he’s taking and will take from now on. Nothing wrong with that. Also nothing wrong with worrying about the effect of this on your parents.

However,

That’s not parenting, though. You were not responsible for his upbringing, just his welfare in the short term.

The law was a law that your parents set, not you. You didn’t have to decide what the rules were, how they were enforced, what constituted a violation of the rules, and so forth. You followed your parents’ lead; you were not a parent yourself.

Perhaps he feels that your shoes, and your sister’s, are too big to fill. Perhaps not, though; just speculating.

Entirely possible. Do you think maybe you could establish something where he can call/email/whatever you if he has some problem he can’t discuss with your parents? I’m not saying run interference for him, just be a sounding board. Offer advice without judging.

Who got left, though? Just you? Just you and your sister, and they took l’il bro with them? All three of you? Just curious.

78

One of the things that used to constantly disappoint me as a parent was how transparent my kids were. How easy it was to seem like the all-seeing, all-knowing Svengali to them. They would constantly be bemused by my apparent universal knowledge; the eyes, not only in the back of my head, but in other cities as well. I used to think that it was because they were dumb but really it turned out that they simply weren’t all that interested in being accomplished liars.

I remember leaving the elder one when he was about 15 or 16 to look after the place for the weekend - his first weekend at home alone. We allowed him to invite a friend to stay the weekend with him and offered the usual admonishments - no other visitors, no girls, no drinking, no girls, no drugs, no girls, no loud music, no girls and also no gay activity…you get the gist.

When we got home I parked the car and, as my wife went inside, I chucked out all the rubbish in the car - coffee cups, beer bottles, roaches, used condoms etc and noticed in the bin the remnants of a couple of nights of teenage decadence - pizza boxes, piles of variagated cigarette butts, beer cans and a few premixed spirits.

Inside I checked things out. He had left the chairs out on the deck in a circle, just as the 6 of them had sat eating, drinking and smoking. I could tell by the moved furniture in the family room that his friends had stayed overnight watching DVDs.

Mind you the house was cleaner than when we left and his mates hadn’t been driving so it was hard to even get mildly angry. However I was surprised that he was surprised when I suggested to him that if he wanted to have 5 friends around next time, just ask. I’m sure he thought that putting the rubbish in the bin and cleaning up would completely confound his poor old parents.

79

I’m always impressed with both parents’ insight in these matters and what they miss. My sister got busted for one of these not because the house was too clean, not because there were cigarette butts in the (dry, scrubbrush, begging-for-a-brush-fire) yard, not because of the beer bottles in the recycling, but because she didn’t empty the dishwasher (as usual) and there were a bunch of wine glasses in it.

I’ve always enjoyed that she was the wild one- with her to compare with, I came across as a golden child. Missed curfew? No big deal. Oh, your girlfriend came over while we weren’t home? How is she? How are her parents? So much easier than sneaking around.

80

This thread reminds me of a wild party I threw while in High School. My parents were out of town, and I invited a bunch of my friends over for some of our usual wild shenanigans. When my parents came home early, they discovered about 10 of us seating around the table, drinking Mt. Dew, listening to Ride of the Valkyries and playing a massive game of Risk.

Yeah, we were a wild bunch…