You don't remember what it was like to be my age!

Once you reach parenthood, you apparently repress all memories of puberty. How often do you hear parents complaining about teenagers? "You're so hateful/moody/depressing, I wasn't like that when I was your age!"

Except you probably were. Puberty is -religious deity of your choice here-'s middle finger to the human race. It's nothing but pure hell. You're up, you're down, you're happy, you're sad, you're angry, and then bam! You feel like humping everything like a puppy in heat.

I don't understand why parents don't think of what they went through at the age of their kid, how moody and hormonal they were. Is it easier to yell and complain than it is to try and relate to your kid?

Yes. People find it easier to complain about another's actions rather than consider possible justification.

This thread would be the very perfect time for me to mention my father, but dammit, I have a whole thread dedicated to that already. >_>; Just.. he has mentioned to me that he went through similar situations to what I'm going through (though honestly, he doesn't even realize how different his situation was), and that he handled it even worse than I'm handling mine, so he says, in fairness, he shouldn't get mad at me.

..but he does. Topic Creator, I completely agree with you.

tout est sacré pour un sacreur (Avatar by Rappu!)

Well, speaking as an older person, but not a parent, I do remember my teen years, but not in all the bloody details. I'm sure that they were, at times, horrible, but the human mind has a way of toning down and even completely forgetting things that were unpleasant to experience.

Hmm. That sounds rather dismissive. Let me try again. I can remember how awful it was to be a teenager — but I have to make a conscious effort to do so. I'm not usually making that conscious effort when I'm upset with someone. Maybe later, when I look back at how I acted or reacted, but not in the moment.

But that's just me. I'm not pretending to speak for all older folks.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Been there, for sure.

I think part of it is that people are different, so the frustrations and difficulties you face will be different than the ones your parents faced, and the things you do that annoy your parents will not be the things they did that annoyed their parents.

So I'm a night person but my mom is a morning person, so she can be all like "I never had trouble getting up in the morning when I was your age!"

Time has a great way of warping memories.

Like, I know that I had a few times in my 12-18 years where I felt like I just wanted to curl up and die. Including one depression episode that lasted 3 days. But for the most part, I view my teenage years in a positive light, and hell, I'm not even out of them yet! Imagine what I'll think when I'm in the 30s!

...Wait, where was I going with this? Ah, right. Parents misremember their teenage years, assume you're just as happy as they remember they were, and tell you to fuck off.

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander

I recall thinking much like the OP does now. But that was about sixteen years ago. I've aged, to put it bluntly. Looking back now, I realize that my parents were just trying to do what they thought was right. And that I got out of line a few times and got what I pretty much deserved, given the circumstances. I can talk to them now on more or less equal footing these days, though, and that's refreshing.

I'm a thirty-something parent - but my oldest is only four. I certainly don't remember anything about being four years old.

Give me another eight or nine years and we'll see how much of a jerk I turn out to be - or don't turn out to be; not all parents turn out to be total jerks with their kids, right? Gosh, I'll be in my forties by then. Think I'll retain crystal clear memories of all the junk I had to go through with my dad? Probably not. At that point, I would have spent more time living as a functional adult than my daughter will have been alive.

Oh and here's a thought - the majority of every generation has said this, at one time or another, in some variation of "you don't understand me" or "grow up already". Your experience is nothing new under the sun, just like it as nothing new when I went through it.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I'm still a teen, and I can't remember ever having a mood swing.

Not everyone goes through the exact same things.

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I don't think I'm likely to forget what my teens were like. Half of them were lasting damage to my social skills, and the other half were much-needed and appreciated therapeutic help from my friends. Given the choice to forget though, I'm...honestly not sure what I'd do.

edited 18th Jan '11 10:36:01 PM by Pykrete

My teens were awkward since I started puberty well ever everyone else did. I was surrounded in high school by blossoming young adults acting weird, strange, and unfathomable. And then for the first couple years of college everyone got to deal with weird, strange unfathomable me.

When my Dad talks about when he was a teen it's about 1) how he'd get out of detention every Friday by claiming his step-mother's food had given him diarrhea and then going down to the pool hall or 2) the time he and his friends fixed the student council elections.

...I wish I had stories like that. By his standards I was the most well-behaved boring kid ever.

edited 18th Jan '11 9:38:30 PM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.

I know the feeling. Between my mom working on a ranch and having to deal with or adopt wildlife, and my dad coming from an Everyone Knows Everyone Midwest town where he and his buddies were known for being quite raucous, I feel a bit overwhelmed

edited 18th Jan '11 9:46:12 PM by Pykrete

Like I kind of said elsewhere, you get to forget them all? Sweet; I wanna be a parent now!

Not really; I only wish memory worked that way.

whoever wrote this shit needs to step on a rake in a comedic fashion

I had far more depression than any other emotion, or so I remember.

Fight smart, not fair.

It's like this. You learn a lot of painful lessons during your adolescence. Most people tend to remember the lessons and forget the pain. They don't want to remember the awkward moments, the unfulfilled urges, the mood swings, the raw emotions, the inability to articulate. I remember it all, and I'm old enough to be a grandparent, so I must be an exception.

Under World. It rocks!

Puberty was nothing but depression? Odd, I never had any real depression growing up despite having a bullied background until I was 15 and a handful of fights ended that.

I dare somebody to try and prove me otherwise.

Puberty was never a big deal for me. My mother attests that I was never particularly difficult as a teenager; in fact, I remember myself as being more of a pain than she does, because my own standards have risen since then.

Honestly, I think that raging hormones are more of an excuse than an unavoidable source of bad behavior. If you know in advance what sort of problems you're likely to face, don't assume your case is going to be different simply by virtue of being you, and make a conscious effort to avoid or correct those problems, puberty doesn't have to be so difficult. I recommend reading a book on raising a teenager to every preteen.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

I don't know, I just repressed most of those feelings and dealt with them myself, while doing everything I could to give an outward impression of stability and maturity.

Despite all that though, I didn't really go through mood swings. I consistently hated certain things that as an adult I now hate to a lesser degree, I have most of the same problems, only I disregarded some as trivial, and better deal with the others than I did as a teenager.

I just hate when Teens go and pull the "OMG YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT'S SO FUCKING HARD" to their parents. I had a great relationship with my mom as a teen, and usually had long and calm discussions about whatever was going on, if I felt like talking about it. We never really got into fights.

Then again I was the man of the house for a few years after my dad died, so I guess we were kind of in it together. That or I was a bit of an early bloomer, my mom says I was an asshole in junior high and never learned to watch my mouth, and that I was a pretty awesome teen.

There's also the factor that all the things that meant the world to a teenager seem so petty and retarded as an adult, that you can't help but mock teenagers for it a little. "DETENTION! OMFG AN HOUR WHERE I HAVE TO SHUT UP AND SIT IN A CLASSROOM AND POSSIBLY DO HOMEWORK! ARRRRRGH!"

In comparison to 12 hour shifts of sitting in a truck and watching planes, making sure that they don't grow legs and walk away... Well, when that's what it takes to toss your world upside down, life is pretty damn good.

P.S. My mom is awesome. Had lots to do with it, though I'd never tell her. -Sticks out tongue-

edited 19th Jan '11 7:01:44 AM by Barkey

Looking back, I don't think I was ever actually a 'teenager', I was just someone who happened to have an age between 12 and 20. I wasn't the only one like that either, there was a guy in the same form as me who had apparently skipped straight to forty. In my case though it was sort of the opposite since I generally acted younger then I was, with the occasional 'old fart' moment thrown in for variety. Actually come to think of it I'm still like that now, just with better emotional control and judgement. Then again I wasn't normal to begin with (I've got dyspraxia which is basically the point where many developmental disorders meet) so I'm probably not the best example.

To be fair, though, although a teenager may have the knowledge that their problems are fairly small in the scale of things, the fact that they've not experienced anything worse than maybe detention, it can seem like a lot.

Obviously a death of a parent, or something equally life-changing, may put these kinds of things into perspective for someone young.

And yeah, I was a berk. I wasn't a rebel in any sense of the word as a teen, but I was a berk.

What's a berk?

An idiot. It's rhyming slang, short for "Berkshire hunt".

I think I was brattier and moodier as a kid than as a teen, to be honest. Teenagerhood had some unpleasant moments, but I don't know what was supposed to be so exceptionally difficult about it compared to the life that preceded it. Or followed, for that matter.

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Now, I DO think it's stupid to say the topic title to your parent. I've said many things to my dad, but the worst was "I hate you." And I made sure to only say that once. I can even remember the exact date that I said it. >.>

But most of my friends are teenagers. Typical teenagers. I have to go on Facebook every day and read all this stuff about "omg skool 2marrow dis is so unfair" and "My parents took my phone away for a week. I think I might just kill myself," and my least favourite: "We've had a week off of school due to snow. I think I'm getting cabin fever." Personally, all three of those just insult me to the core. I wish I had school. I wish I had a phone that could be taken away. I wish I only had a week away from school, instead of eight freaking months, and counting. Dammit, I've only just turned sixteen. >.<

..so yeah, I correct my earlier statement. Some kids have the justification to say the topic title. But honestly? Most kids these days don't even realize what it's actually like to be their own age.

tout est sacré pour un sacreur (Avatar by Rappu!)

There's another part of it, too. To some degree, we adults really can't know what it's like to be a teenager now, because the world really was different when we were teenagers. How different depends on how long ago our teenage years were, of course, but even for a thirty-year-old, it was a different world.

I can't relate to a teen being upset about not having the coolest cellphone because, well, there weren't any cellphones when I was a teen. I can make a guess at how it compares to not having the right jeans, but that's all I can do — Guess. I don't have any data on where "the model of your phone" falls in the Sorting Algorithm of Stuff That It's Important Be Cool. Higher than The Right Shoes but lower than The Right Music? Lower than The Right Interests but higher then The Right Youtube Favorites? Where does it go? How important is it really?

edited 19th Jan '11 8:00:22 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Do I get some sort of free reign to use that line if I become a parent? I really wasn't moody as a teenager, though I'll grant I was probably immature and annoying for different reasons.

Of the issues I had, puberty was not one of them. My voice cracking was pretty much small fry compared to the rest of it.

When I have kids I'm just going to top whatever they tell me about how bad things are for them as a Teenager with "The internet wasn't created yet, shut it. No facebook, no twitter, no google, no email. Just snail mail and telephones, no texting either. I. Don't. Want. To. Hear. It."

I did get 56k dialup access when I was a sophomore in high school, but the internet as we know it now was nowhere near. Just games of Quake and Duke Nukem 3d with 4 player maximums and this odd thing.. What was it... Polite folks, because over 2/3rds of the people on the internet were usually adults in their late 20's to early 40's.

edited 19th Jan '11 8:16:36 AM by Barkey