Mild rant!

Pollycat

duggo1 wrote: »

Can I just say I'm not a parent, so maybe have unrealistic expectations, but what should a 13 year old be capable of?

Trimming his own fingernails?
Mixing his own food together on his plate?!
Sitting at a restaurant with an adult group without gadgets and join in the conversation?
Making a bed?

Ames wrote: »

What do you mean by mixing food together on a plate?

It would have been nice for the OP to come back and clarify this.

pelirocco wrote: »

The OP sounds like someone I work with, they have given a home to husbands orphaned teenage nephew , who apparently never does anything right. The latest Issue is he doesn't mix his food when he eats but likes to eat his meal item by item ......

If this ^^^ is what the OP meant, I'd have to ask what it has to do with him/her how this teenager eats.

My teenage niece eats her food like this. When she's eaten all of one type of food (I have no idea how she decides which is first) she moves on to the next.

It's not how I eat my food but why would I expect everybody else to be the same as me.

The OP sounds a tad intolerant and as other posters have mentioned, it would be nice to have some context to this 'rant'.

duggo1

Apologies everyone for my absence. I've been spending some time with said 13 year old and didn't have time to post. It's a relative so not an option to disown!
I was genuinely curious about my expectations, as I don't have children. I certainly didn't attempt to parent the child or pass on any opinions, although I did ask him to stop throwing a bean bag around and not to sit in the arms of my brand new sofa. Hope that wasn't rude of me.
Re the food mixing, he asked his parent to mix his curry and rice together on his plate for him and parent did so. I felt like saying your thirteen not three, but managed to think it, not say it!
I do feel that said parent is probably the problem, but hey ho, I don't want to start any family feuds, or as people have suggested, maybe I'm just intolerant.

Pollycat

duggo1 wrote: »

Apologies everyone for my absence. I've been spending some time with said 13 year old and didn't have time to post. It's a relative so not an option to disown!
I was genuinely curious about my expectations, as I don't have children. I certainly didn't attempt to parent the child or pass on any opinions, although I did ask him to stop throwing a bean bag around and not to sit in the arms of my brand new sofa. Hope that wasn't rude of me.
Re the food mixing, he asked his parent to mix his curry and rice together on his plate for him and parent did so. I felt like saying your thirteen not three, but managed to think it, not say it!
I do feel that said parent is probably the problem, but hey ho, I don't want to start any family feuds, or as people have suggested, maybe I'm just intolerant.

So we were wrong about the 'food mixing'!

I'm not a parent either but I think most (unless they have health issues such as on the autism scale) 13 year olds should be capable of mixing curry and rice together on their own plate.

I would also have told anyone - not just a 13 year old - not to sit on the arm of my sofa.
But I'd expect an adult to know not to do that because of potential damage, but not necessarily a 13 year old.

I think if you'd said the above in your first post, the thread would have gone down a different route.
People start to hypothesise what someone else means in the absence of information.

Money_maker

Think I would have said it or something along the lines of 'do it yourself you lazy whatnot'. Cant believe parent did that for him. Nuts!

Spendless

The mixing food is a different matter to the one we guessed at. I've got a 13yo and a 16yo and both can be incredibly lazy if they think they can get away with it. As a parent I find I need to switch off from the auto-pilot I went on when younger and they couldn't do things for themselves. Eg mine will ask if I will get them a (cold) drink, years ago they couldn't do this themselves as they weren't tall enough to reach. Once they were tall and capable enough I found I had to tell them to get their own as they continued to ask me to get it for them. They will still sometimes try stuff like this on. In the mixing food scenario you've described, the parent could have refused and said child was to do it themselves.

Pollycat

Money_maker wrote: »

Think I would have said it or something along the lines of 'do it yourself you lazy whatnot'. Cant believe parent did that for him. Nuts!

I guess if the parent does it for him, he'll continue expecting it to be done.

I think I'd have kept quiet and then asked the Mum if it's something she does regularly for him and try to tactfully say that it's maybe babying him a bit too much.

mark5

I can't see the problem with them playing with a phone at the table, if they were interested in the conversation they would join in, the adults are probably talking about something they have no interest in.

My nephew who's 14 will chat for ages about football, rugby, films, music, his last Holiday etc but once someone starts chatting about houses, schools, nails, hairdressers, car running costs, diets, etc he just picks up his phone and keeps quiet.

suki1964

duggo1 wrote: »

Apologies everyone for my absence. I've been spending some time with said 13 year old and didn't have time to post. It's a relative so not an option to disown!
I was genuinely curious about my expectations, as I don't have children. I certainly didn't attempt to parent the child or pass on any opinions, although I did ask him to stop throwing a bean bag around and not to sit in the arms of my brand new sofa. Hope that wasn't rude of me.
Re the food mixing, he asked his parent to mix his curry and rice together on his plate for him and parent did so. I felt like saying your thirteen not three, but managed to think it, not say it!
I do feel that said parent is probably the problem, but hey ho, I don't want to start any family feuds, or as people have suggested, maybe I'm just intolerant.

I don't think you are intolerant at all

I too have never been a parent I have step children ( since they were 2 and 4) that I cared for for short periods of time ( holidays etc) and now I have grandchildren ( 2 and 9 )

I'm a lot more laid back now

When you aren't used to children in your life it can be a bit of a shock how lazy/incapable/messy they are.

The 9 yo does know better, but mum is a sahm and spends the day picking after after them. All I seem to hear myself say the week is ' put that away/shoes off the sofa/get off the arms/have you brushed your teeth yet.......:)

The 2 yo is a wee minx and I darent turn my back for 2 mins, but she's learning also when the bin is and that her bottle sits on the table and not the floor


but then I also turn a blind eye to her using the spare bed as a trampoline if she's giving me peace enough to do something around the house

Love being grandma, I have them here till Sunday and whilst I love them to bits and am enjoying having them, roll on Sunday

duggo1

Parent was criticised once before, (not by me) for the parenting style and it didn't go down well.
It's almost as if they have become oblivious to it. The 13 year old usually forgets to flush the toilet after using it. We noticed this years ago, and she still hasn't resolved it.

Pollycat

duggo1 wrote: »

Parent was criticised once before, (not by me) for the parenting style and it didn't go down well.
It's almost as if they have become oblivious to it. The 13 year old usually forgets to flush the toilet after using it. We noticed this years ago, and she still hasn't resolved it.

I guess it depends how it's worded.

Or maybe the mother knows that she's mollycoddling her child but doesn't want it pointed out to her.

If I saw my sister doing that for one of her kids (one is 15 other is 11), I'm sure I could manage to word it so that it didn't come across as critical.
But then again. my sister is very reasonable and always open to my opinions and observations.

If the relative wasn't that close to me, I'd probably just ignore it as none of my business.