10 Signs You Might Be the Parent of a Teenager

Yesterday they were a squishy ball of Johnson and Johnson’s scented newborn perfection, setting off the “need to have a baby right now pheromones” of women within a hundred miles.

And now, just ten minutes later, they’ve become one of those eye-rolling, eternally oversleeping monsters called a teenager. 

Here are 10 signs you’re raising one of them. (Solidarity, sister)

1. You go through a box of cereal and a gallon of milk a day. You might as well tell the delivery truck to skip the grocery store and come straight to your house. Your kid packs three lunches and a snack to eat when the teachers aren’t looking but still manages to clear out the entire pantry after school each day.
2. Everything smells bad. There’s a faint stale odor wafting down the hall from their room at all times. Their shoes are a biohazard. The dirty clothes hamper is a threat even to the wild vermin in their room who dare to approach it.
3. The world is coming to an end. Regularly. You’ve only just recovered from the last catastrophe when the next one hits. “She did what?!! He likes who?!!?” At this rate, you’ll have a degree in counseling in no time.
4. You spend your whole life in the car. Driving the kid places is your full-time J-O-B. When you’re not playing the role of chauffeur, you’re co-pilot for driving practice, while praying God spares your life as you watch it flash before your eyes. Just for the record, yielding to oncoming traffic is not a suggestion. You’re welcome.
5. You have never been more uncool. Your yoga pants are lame. Your contouring is a joke, but that twenty-dollar bill in your purse would look great on them.
6. You sometimes confuse yourself with a bank. You could swear you do nothing but sign important papers and pass out money all day.
7. If the cops arrested people based on exasperated responses you’d be doing life.  Asking them to make their bed is equivalent to asking for a pound of flesh. You are one, sick, sick chic.
8. You laugh a lot. Your kids might smell like goat breath, but they are seriously funny.
9. You haven’t seen them before noon in years. Like hibernating bears, you know better than to wake them. And like cockroaches, they scurry when the lights come on.
10. You can’t figure out how it happened this fast. How did they get so big? And how did you get so old? It’s probably time to order that miracle anti-aging cream you saw on T.V. and look at baby pictures again.

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Articles by Stacey Philpot

Stacey Philpot

Stacey is an author, goofball and avid reader. You can find her blog at http://chronicallywhole.com/ where she endeavors to encourage other warriors like herself along in their journey of battling for health and discovering wholeness. She is mom to Hayden and Avery, stepmom to Julie and wife to Ryan (a smarty pants who works at NASA and logs their whole life on spreadsheets and pie charts, true story!) She has a strange affinity for eating whole meals in bed (don’t tell anyone) and is convinced smelling old books will make her smarter.

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