Somehow this is my fault.

First Born came over to do some college planning. Praise God, only 2 years after graduating she’s thinking college. And she wants to start out at the community college to ease back into academic life. OK, cool.

But all of you with teenagers know that a simple conversation, a routine task can suddenly crash and burn right in front of you, running off its rails and plowing through the hills in a jackknifed mess like the opening scene of “The Fugitive”. And then there’s the blood and the screaming. Here’s how it went.

While she watched CSI NY and I tried to get her interested in the college website, I went over her skills and the things I know she enjoys doing. None of them actually sparked her interest and she started getting irritated. 

Me: Well, the best thing for us to do then is go in and talk to an advisor. They can give you a few suggestions about careers and then help you enroll. They can even suggest the classes that you should take.

FB: I don’t want to go to the school. I just want to take classes online.

Me: OK, they have lots of classes online.

FB: How’s an advisor going to know what I want to do when I don’t know what I want?

Me: (internally: I DON’T KNOW, IT’S JUST WHAT THEY DO!) I don’t know, but we could go find out.

FB: I was thinking about culinary studies.

Me: I don’t think you’re going to be able to study that online.

By the time CSI was over, she’d gotten worked up over my inability to understand that she doesn’t ever want to enter the community college building and that she doesn’t understand why she can’t just start taking classes without going through this big admissions process. I decided not to mention the skills test she’d have to take because in her junior year of high school she decided she was never going to college and therefore she didn’t need to take any SATs or ACTs.  I don’t think I could have said that without saying, “You shoulda listened to your mother. Who knows everything.”

This is all my fault. I should have found some way around all the admissions crap and “what do I want to do with my life” decision-making for her. Which is why she wouldn’t say she loved me when she left in irritation.

Published by angelawd on September 24th, 2007 tagged Mom of Teens

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