waking my teen

Waking my teen

Ok, my son has had a 6-grade orientation camp this week that I’ve turned into a little mini-vacation. It’s 9 to noon, so I’ve been taking the afternoons off from work to pick him up and spend some time with him. It’s been really nice. Just the two guys on the town, spending some time together without the little sister, it has been great. We’ve had lunch together, got haircuts together – just good son and dad stuff.

But today he didn’t get up when I woke him as I was heading out the door to work. When I came back to pick him up for his day camp, he was still in bed. Oh, I was upset. I was more disappointed, because I was having such a good time with him. I felt he let us down. I grounded him from his computer and cartoons for the day. I was just mad.

I’d already had a bad morning at work, between suppliers that can’t read a purchase order and follow instructions, to warehouse crew that has no attention to detail, at least today they didn’t. So when Eli wasn’t ready, it just sent me over the edge.

After work we decided that he needed to go to bed earlier, and to actually wake up and get ready for the day when I do. He’ll need to get use to it anyway; school starts in a week or so.
So is this the future scene for all the teenage years? And when I’m done with him I’ll have a teenage girl to repeat the process with. I don’t know if I’ll have the energy.

There should be some kind of preschool for parents of teenagers. We shouldn’t be left to learn this stuff on our own. Ugh!