I m a survivor ----?

A possible preview advert for a new season of "I m a survivor". 

In our new season, dads talk about surviving being alone with their teenage daughters and sons.  a weekend, 5 days,  2 weeks!  Dad Max has a 15 year old teenage daughter (in the background said daughter is singing along with a new tik tok video which uses some sort of cat lyrics.  She is singing  "meow meow meow meomeomeomeo mee yow...") and he has to spend two weeks, no, more than two weeks alone with her as the other half of the family is going on an extended spring vacation.  Dad couldnt. He had to work and be home with the other daughter.  "oh lord give me strength" we heard Max mutter as daughter was singing the cat song again, and then going to some "ye" song.   ("Kane" West, doh).  

Back to reality now.  Yeah, that was what I was thinking at the beginning of the two weeks as the other two left for vacation and my daughter started singing the cat song. I immediately thought of a new season of Im a survivor featuring,... Me. 

Then I was going to write again after two weeks and give the "survival view".   That would be close to today, tomorrow or Monday.  

So far, it looks like, as Gloria Gaynor sings, "I will survive."  (bad dad joke). Except my back is still worse even though I tried to start up my back exercises again.  It feels better just to stand all day.  Sitting wrecks it up. But I divert or divest. Not sure which.  

The ROYAL pain is that she doesnt like most of the food I make, or just doesnt eat it. Seriously its not my fault, I ask her what she will eat? What I can make, but she just makes herself some stupid noodle dish.  Which meant I had to do regular shopping AND I stocked up on other foods AND I still had to give her money to buy her own food.  So you would think I could have saved some money with only the two of us, but it didnt really work out that way. It came out just about the same as when the whole family is here.  Strange. Strange brew in fact.  

So economically, I survived, but didnt thrive. I wasnt even able to climb my way out of some debt with fewer food payments, as i was hoping.  No. 

She had vacation and I had work so she was mostly still sleeping when I left for work. And I go to work later than others.  But it was a pain because she stayed up till 2 or 3 am (actually it is 1.30 am now, but Saturday night, so I am allowed to stay up too).I sleep like a deer so i would hear her padding around and eating cereal at 1am and doing this and that.  Sleep ..... was bad.  I get my "cleaning brain" deep sleep from midnight or  1am to 5.30 am after which I have my worse REM sleep where I dream too much.  So she was making noise just in my deep sleep time which messed it up and my brain didnt get cleaned out as well.  This means I can blame my alzheimer on her later in my life because my amyloids (sp?) werent cleaned out as well living with a teen ager who went to bed at 3am. 

SHE yelled at me.  "Well, without Mom home, someone has to yell at you,"  She said.  (I dont get no respect in this home, not even Donald Trump could maintain his ego in this household, let alone my lower self esteem hubris).  Granted I did nag her.  Parents have to nag.  But she threw it back in my face. Last Sunday: Please clean the bathroom before you go on your trip on Wednesday and can you do a dark laundry?  Yeah I ll do it.  She actually did it Thursday as she didnt go so she slept on Wednesday and did it Thursday.  

But all I asked was to please put away the paired socks I did that are on the couch. How that caused her to have a complete tyrannical, unhinged shout at me, I really dont know.  She sometimes has a short temper, like her mother.  ugh.  So then she refused to cook the dinner.  Well, ok.  Too bad I mean, but I ve been cooking anyway.  

She did clean the bathroom really well though and did the laundry.  I appreciated that. 

We did have some nice times. Although I was hoping we could go see a movie together. We stayed at home instead and watched.  Twice.  Once she fell asleep.  The second one she stayed awake.  Uncharted movie.  We have interesting conversations on occasion.  Better than when there are other people in the house.  She is able to have an intelligent conversation.  Even though she doesnt study much, she seems to have a lot of information.  I wish her head would get in order and she could find a direction with her information, but I suppose that will come.  I really am not going to push her ON THAT.  Seeing as I had no idea myself for most of my life and still sometimes now.  

She did feel regret that she hadnt been productive enough one day. So she suddenly got up from the couch at midnight after watching 5 hours of tik tok or whatever and did the i-roning, the laundry and cleaned her room till 3am in the morning!  I too was "lazy" and just felt like watching late night programming and reading the newspaper every night till 1am instead of writing or working or doing something productive. I too was very tired.  So... I shouldnt be hypocritical.  

Dismayed

The point is... well, I am kind of dismayed that nothing turned out well enough. Not the money, not the sleep, and not the going out with my daughter.  But... it wasnt a fiasco.  I think a total failure would have been nagging and yelling every day, really badly.  Occasionally it happened, but then it worked out and we got back to talking with each other. Even after I said out in the open that 15 year old teen agers are ... really ... bad. I am not sure I used those nice words.  She said, "so I am bad?" I said, well no, and yes, its just that your brain cant put things in a good order and often just acts out of impulse and doesnt choose well.  In a couple years it will be able to manage things better, and hopefully make better choices.  

But I guess I have survived the ordeal.  I am a survivor

But actually this is not how I thought this post would be written. I thought it would have a lot more survivor emotion and intensity and then we battled and then she yelled at me and turned up her hip hop.  Some of that did happen, but really it just was a going along life is life.  Why I have people in China reading my blog is beyond me, but thats cool.  It really is just down to earth banal even possibly boring little incidents.  But thanks in China and even in Russia for reading. I kind of think they must be robots. Who else would read this tripe? 

hahahahahahahahhahahah

Car bomb and Spoke. 

Again I have been listening to this band  CAR BOMB. This album "Meta" will just give you brain melt or will rattle you from your toes to the hair on your head. Or rattle your spine.  Incredible.  Maybe it is good for my back, or bad.

Just "refound" SPOKE S  other cd album.  "done" in the store warehouse.  Last one.  I love their chord changes. 90s melodic hard core. From 1994.  I m going to buy it myself.   

Afterword

On the next day after I wrote the above. She really ripped into me and said I dont know how to cook. I should get a real cookbook (my wife got me the one I use to cook)and  learn how to cook MEALS not vegetarian chili or curry thai chicken.  Cook.... I dont know, get a different cook book. I was confused.  I was deeply hurt and offended. I wanted to give everything up. I should have asked her, "well how would you do it?  Can you give me help on how to make it better?"  But I think she would have repeated to get another cook book.  I had to get out of the house it really hurt. After I gave her money to buy some fast food crap because she wouldnt eat my food.   Surviving, but not very well.  I might make another mix of this post.  Write it again like a real survival show.   

  

  

Its the little things.

 I tell ya, I dont get no respect.   

I know, its a famous line from Rodney Dangerfield, but one which seems appropriate for this post.  You try to be the best dad possible, but people usually complain about something and basically say your attempts were "less than satisfactory".    I guess it is criticism which I should accept and improve upon. 

However, the criticism amounts to, "do things exactly the way you have done them all the time and dont change a thing."   Even small things can upset the overall product. In fact it is the small things which often screw up your efforts, or bring complaints.  

Examples come mostly from cooking and food.  

After I have established several recipes of dinner foods I have to stick to them like iron and can not improvise or change at all.

Lasagne.  No black olives.  Only green.  Ham, not any other meat.  I once tried to substitute my famous spaghetti sauce to make a bolognese lasagne.  But after two tries, that brought "Dad, can you go back to the original recipe and stop with the spaghetti sauce recipe?"   No ricotta cheese. I want to try that, but ... not with my kids.  Spinach lasagne?  Are you kidding?  My one daughter recently repeated AGAIN that she does not eat anything green.  

Tuna spaghetti.  Made with black olives only.  Not green.  And with the twisty bowtie noodles, not any other.  

When I got my recipe fine tuned on the family spaghetti sauce, they loved it, until at one time I tried it with ground pork and not ground beef.  Wrong. Failure.  I only did that once.  

The worst one I have to say myself was a bit bad, though my intentions were good, was trying to make the Buffalo Hot wings better.  I only strive for crispier and spicier hot sauce.   I only looked for another recipe on the internet which could help with this, but admittedly I dont see how adding honey to the sauce can make the sauce spicier hotter.  I made the wings last night again and my daughter who loves them said, "yes they were fine, except..."   the song remains the same: they were not spicy hot enough.  So, I have to change the recipe without changing the recipe.  Go figger.  

I guess it is mostly food making which draws the criticism of, "You changed it, why did you change it?", but there is another area which brings great ire to my daughter.  Fashion.  Though my wife could throw me out of the house on that issue alone, I have to point out two fashion faux pax which "trouble" my younger daughter.  In these cases it is not a matter of "keep them the same," but in fact "they are strictly NOT ALLOWED".   

Currently I only have one pair of pajama bottoms.  When they get dirty I have to resort to these swim pants warmers I rescued from my archives and brought to my current apartment.  They were in storage before, but that storage had to be liquidated or transferred.  I was on the swim team in high school and for warm up pants worn when we werent swimming we got bright orange sweat pants.  Bright orange.  You know, sports colors.  I have them still.  I found them in my storage and was sentimentally nostalgic and brought them to my current house.  And they are my only other pajama pants I have.  

My daughter hates them so much, in fact my whole family does, that I have to put them on after everyone is asleep and change to my clothes in the morning before i even do my morning pee.  I wore them once or twice and got such derision that I was scarred.   Nobody can stand the sight of them.  I always feel comfortable and nostalgic in them, but, I have to hide them.  

Lastly, I am not allowed to wear t shirts in the US which have foreign writing on them.  I dont get that one, but I abide by that.  I mean people in the US often wear T shirts with Japanese characters on them or maybe some French.  But "es ist verboten"  (good joke) for me to wear other language t shirts in the US.  Stuff I got from not Paris or Tokyo.  

I guess the point being that I always think I need a big overhaul of my personality and have to rewire my entire being to make myself better.  When in fact my younger daughter says, "no dad," in fact, "dont change things one bit, not even one LITTLE bit."  That pertains mostly to food.  Once you get the recipe and the taste down, then you can not mess with it at all.  

However dads, if we want respect, we have to face up to the facts on another topic.  99.7 per cent of us know nothing about fashion and just have to let others tell us what is good or bad and what we should or should not wear.  Though I thought jeans and a t shirt were safe, dont resist at all if they are not.  Just go find the suitable clothes and change.   Its the little things that can save your life right?  

Or destroy it.  

I started listening to Tyler the Creator  "Igor" several months ago on advice from my daughter.  I finally got it in the store and sold it in one or two days.   Will get it again.  My daughter owns the vinyl courtesy of me.  I was listening to this more as i was editing as I cant write and listen to lyrical music so well. 

I was also listening to this band while editing upon recommendation of a customuer.  Wow, talk about Math metal.  This just does not let up.  10x Meshuggah.   CAR BOMB  "Mordial"  

"Poor Daddy" part 1. Sucker for the sick card?

 There must be some tool for measuring if you are being a sucker or being conned or not.   Dont they have something on the market?   

On Wednesday after Easter my older daughter was sick again.  Upset stomach.  That is the hardest sickness to confirm. A cough, they cough.  A runny nose, they blow their nose.  Maybe a headache too.  But an upset stomach?  Yeah yeah they are curled up and in pain.  "Dad, I cant make it to my first class".  Ok, ok.   sure sure. Skip that one and go later in the morning.  

Meanwhile I go to work.  I come back home.  "So, did you go to school at all?"   

"Well no.  See, I fell back asleep, woke up, got up at 11 and threw up.   Then I took a long shower and it was noon. I had a dental hygiene appointment at 2pm, so... just then I noticed that my room was a mess, that I had a big pile of clothes on the floor and my desk was messy.  So I spent over an hour cleaning it up."  

Ok.  Just one thing.  Well, maybe two.  Or maybe more.  Why does she suddenly notice now on Wednesday after we have been telling her on the weekend that she has clothes to put away?  And her  desk has been messy for months.  Suddenly she sees this, on Wednesday during school, and thinks that it would be a good idea to clean it up.  I have to say she really cleaned everything off her desk.  At least that part is good.  But it isnt too unobvious that it was an excuse.  And the throw up? Who knows.  No one was home.  She didnt take a picture of her spewing into the toilet bowl.  

Then of course she felt better.  She made it to her dental appointment with no problem and she even felt well enough and sunny to go out with some friends in the afternoon and come home for supper.   Fancy that.  

Now fine, maybe I am being unfair.  I dont know girls and womens pains coming on and how long they last. Many men dont.  Not their fault, but then men shouldnt second guess painful cramps and quick sicknesses, which in fact is what I am doing today.  So, my bad. 

I guess it boils down to whether your child has a good reputation or not.  If they are using the sick card quite often, you start to wonder how much and how many times they can really be sick, or in pain?   

But I think the father is between a rock and a hard place and will always lose.  1) If the dad says "no, this time you are going to school," you cant be certain you arent sending them into school to throw up someplace awkward or to send their germs all over, or just in general to suffer and be uncomfortable all day and in pain.   2) if the dad says, "yes yes, sure sure, you better stay home", you cant be sure that the child isnt calling him a sucker behind his back or something thereof and learning that the sick card can usually be used if asked of Dad.   Dad loses no matter what.  Poor Daddy.  

Cant we invent a thermometer that measures truth?  I guess a lie detector test which can be put under the tongue or shoved up the butt like a thermometer in the old days?   

Had this album when I was a kid.  Brother threw it away.  I "rebought" it this week used and have been listening to it endlessly.  

Books? -- TV -- Video Games - Tik Tok (unsocial nettwerk)?

I want to know was there ever a really big book reading audience?  How big was it? How big was the population (in the US) which read books regularly.  

In my life the local library always played a big role.  In both communities I lived in during the school year and in the summer regular trips to the library were a part of life, a fun place to go.  You could legally browse books. In fact that was the point

My children and I have kept up the tradition, our whole lives, ..... until my older

daughter reached puberty.  blah.  What happened?   Well? Maybe it is a natural progression???   

A hundred years ago Ernest Hemingway was a rock star.  Seriously.  His support acts were F Scott Fitzgerald and that Paris crowd.   They were really the sh... about town and the US.  

But by the 50s when Hemingway stopped publishing the golden age of Television had started.   Did TV really eclipse books?  Did everyone suddenly move over from books to watch television?  Or did the people who watched TV ever read books? Or did the people who read books stop reading books but also watched TV? Wasnt there, couldnt there have been space for both?   

Suddenly it started when I was growing up, this thing called video games came along.  I didnt get hooked because video games either cost a lot of quarters to play, that limited me usually to three games, or your parents had to buy you some little gameboy console as big as a big calculator.  I never got one.  I would have been addicted if I had had one. I spent a weekend at my cousins once and I couldnt get off their football gameboy game all weekend.  It was so wonderful.  

But did I stop reading books? Well I am not a good example. I couldnt get addicted because of lack of money, but NO, I did not stop reading books.  Other people could play video games endlessly.  By the 90s video games were serious time consumers and BIG, much bigger than when I was doing pac man in the 80s.  That s the time people who are fathers now spent their time as a nerd addicted to video games.   

Did the sale of books go down?   

Then we have to skip twenty years to the second decade of the 2000s, even mid 2010 - 2020 to see the next trend coming in.  Social networking and scrolling.  

Has social networks, scrolling networks, like Tik Tok permanently killed reading books which started dying from the onset of TV?   Are people still reading books? Or does the population have no cross over? In other words those who watch Tik Tok dont read books and vice versa.  

The problem is teenagers.  Teenagers start reading books.  Are they now lost to Tik tok?  I have to sadly add that while I only have anecdotal evidence which isnt worth much, my teen ager has stopped reading books.  Largely, I have to say, due to her addiction to Tik Tok and other short videos on internet. And still video games. 

You can blame me and say, well why dont you limit her phone, apps use?  Yes, I would have liked to and actually my wife did, but it didnt work. Our daughter usually found a way around the time limits.  Now all we can say is "time to shut it down."   "10pm, turn it off, time to get ready for bed." But it is self administered. Those people who say control it better.... it is difficult and there are other variables.  Ie, she can say she is doing homework.  Since a lot of the homework these days is done onliine, how can I doubt her?   So I cant take her phone away.  I wish we could put her on the app time limit.  But I am afraid to ask my wife to do that as she will just blow her top at me that we already tried that and I wasnt in favor of it or didnt care.  Which isnt true, I just was a bit oblivious at the time to the whole picture.  

Anyway, aside from that anecdote, I really want to know if the age group which

would be affected by all these new diversions, from TV to video games to apps, are they really leaving book reading? Were they ever there? Former president George W Bush never read books by his own account when he was growing up.  Or is the population always the same.  I am talking about teenagers now.  Or are they able to split their time properly between books and game addiction?    

These are the statistics, the charts I want to see.  For teenagers.   

Easter time.  Happy Easter. 

First I listened to an album just coming out at this time.  Its a cover of Slayer tracks done... slower.  I will get it for sale. And then when I was making corrections I listened to an old classic rock out. One of the best live Jams ever made.  Dark Star, on LIVE DEAD lp.  

15 year olds su... are not liked

 

Nobody likes 15 year olds.  A lot of people even hate them.  They still need help and guidance. 

When I was in my 20s and going to clubs with my mate, he told me a story that just happened.  He was sitting talking to a girl and finally he asked her how old she was and she said she was 15.  He ran away.  VERY quickly.  

Older people in clubs and meeting places dont like 15 year olds because they are dangerous.  Jailbait.  Stay away.  If you are a pedofile and like them, you still stay away from them. Pedofiles stay at home and just look at pictures, they dont often have physical contact, but you should not quote me on that (I am definitely not an expert on pedofiles).  Any and every male knows that the fastest way to get into trouble is to even walk within ten feet of a fifteen year old in a club.  "Can I buy you a drink?"   "Yes, sure but I cant drink, I am 15 years old"  "Fine, I ll get you a coca cola and I will never see you again," is the best answer.   Males in their twenties, unless you are R Kelley, stay away from mid teen girls.  Why are they even in clubs?  Well in Europe I guess they are allowed to be.  Or maybe all ages places, but if you are in your twenties, especially a male, but even a female, run away from them.  

Even older teenagers dont like 15 year olds.   If a couple older teen agers want to go to a coffee bar, but there are 15 year olds, they will say icily, "Lets not go there, there are 15 year olds there. I d rather stay away from them."  If 15 year olds frequent a place, all others stay away. Or sit on the other side of the room from them.  

And even kids younger than 15 stay away from them. "They think they are so cool, I dont want to go in there with them, lets stay away."  Nobody wants to be around them.  

15 year olds are on the cusp of both worlds and they mess it up in both of them.  They dont want to be kids anymore, but they dont understand what it is to be an adult.  They think they are adult or they want to be adults, but they are not. They are 15.   15 isnt even 17 and even 17 is young.  15 isnt 12 years old or even 13 and 13 used to be the age that girls could get married or "given away" in other traditonal societies.  But not anymore.  13 year olds have slipped back down to the pre teen group even though they are teen and 15 year olds have taken the place of the once marriageable 13 year old.  

But 15 is older than 13 and 13 year olds are young and small compared to 15 year olds.  15 year olds are bigger.  A lot of them CAN pass as adults if they watch some turd on instagram about how to put on make up and look older blah blah blah.   

And that is the problem.  

15 year olds want to get into being an adult.  So they will do anything, be more crazy, try to act way more mature than they are and just try to be what they think being an adult is.  But they dont know. And they mess it up. They go too far and they take it too far.  And that makes them dangerous, and everyone knows that except the 15 year olds. Stalkers and pedofiles know it.   The mid teenagers  just say to themselves, "I am an adult, I can do that."  But the thing is real adults wont do those things.  They will stop and think about what is being asked and ask themselves, "Do I really want to do that?  Should I be doing that?"   See 15 year olds dont ask themselves that question, they just dive into it and they think they are cool and adult like because they are going for it.  

But no.  

15 year olds are dangerous to others and to themselves.  Because the frontal cortex is not asking the questions, it is not assessing the risk.  It just runs in and jumps.  Usually off a very high building.  

If you have 15 year olds in your house, my take is that they still need coaching. They still need guidance from the parent, although they will not ask for it and they will hate the parent for offering it.  They need it.  You are going to have to bite your lip and tell them, that is not a good thing to be doing. I think you are going too far.  See, I know you are 15 and that is getting older, but it isnt there yet and you still need some guidance from us even though you dont want it. Sorry, sometimes we are going to say things you dont like and which will make you feel like you are a stupid kid, but yes, we have to tell you and instruct still, because, you are just 15 and we dont want you getting involved with R. Kelley and all the R. Kelleys who are still out there.    

Different perspectives : Present Me and Past Me.

 

Prefrontal Cortex

You might not know it but it is difficult to talk to my daughter and tell her she is making wrong decisions.  I have to step in often and help her make better decisions.   Let me map this out. 

The bad decisions stem from all the mayhem going on in the front part of her brain (see my two sides  of the coin from December 31st 2023 post).  This I know is happening because it is happening in all teen agers brains and even twenty something s brains.  Technically it doesnt stop till we are 26 years of age, but who knows, everyone is different.  

this is wrong

Anyway, my brain is done developing and I have no impulse decision making, nor "lets go for it" somewhat illogical temperaments.  Supposedly.   So I think it is fair to butt in to her affairs and tell her, "no that is not good, you really have to stop that and, no, doing that at your age is definitely not good".  I mean, come on, kids who smoke when they are 12... its a bit much.  And kids doing certain things at even 15 is too much too.  A fifteen year old girl can not get married without her parents consent.  There are just some (many) things that minors are not allowed to do, and for good reason.  

That is the law

This is me

When I see my daughter, I see her as young yet.  I think of songs with ages which she hasnt even hit yet, like "l saw her standing there" "you re 16", "I was just 17" by woman singer producer Pen Friend.... and others.  My daughter is just 15.  Not even close to most of the songs which still consider a girl young at 17, "Well she was just 17...".  She is just one year older than 14 which is really young. So when I hear about things my daughter is doing at her age, I say to myself AND to her, you cant do that stuff, you are too young.  No, not even drinking a full cup of coffee is good and I tell her I wish she would stay away from a cup of coffee let alone three a day.  Smoking, drinking, drugs, guns, sex, energy drinks, no none of them.  Too young.  Not good.  Not now.  Much later.  Much later.  Too young.  

Then I get myself into a problem.  I start to think of me when I was 15.  I was in 10th grade.  That was already pretty advanced and "old!.  Man, there were house parties every weekend somewhere. I wasnt really into that scene, but a lot of my classmates were and of course there was alcohol there.  I didnt smoke.  Cigarettes were for the burnouts. I knew it was bad and I didnt want to. BUT there was a group of burnouts smoking off of school propery down on the corner.  But I think everyone in the school thought the burnouts wouldnt go very far.  I grew apart from a good friend because he started smoking pot, geez, when were in sixth grade even. His brother smoked. So he got hooked.  By 15 there were weekend warrior types, even wake and bake kids.  Yes at 15.  I think 10th  graders thought they were pretty advanced..... and old enough.  

Now I am on the other side of the fence and I know it is totally hypocritical, but, they were too young.  We were too young for this stuff.   I know a lot of the kids who were into bad stuff didnt end up well. I am aware of two kids, one in my class and another an older brother of a friend, who committed suicide later on.  

I guess that is partly what it means to be a parent.  To have gotten older and be able to re assess our earlier perspectives with time and hopefully wisdom.  And as hypocritical as it is to say, no, that was not good what I did and I shouldnt have done it and I am going to tell you, nicely at first, but maybe more strictly later that no, you can not do this this or this.  Yes, you are too young.  Yes, I am going to nag you to not do it.  Yes, I want you home by midnight and no, you can not sleep over at a friends house because you have to come home and get good sleep.  And the list goes on, and yes it is a list.   

Me and bad younger me

So I have to say, "younger me, I am sorry, but I must rebuke you. Some of the things you did were wrong and I dont want my daughter repeating them at her age, hopefully not at all, but definitely not now.  So younger me, swallow your pride and stop remembering that you were so old, and knowledgeable because you werent."

Trying to catch on some bands that I either missed out on or are coming back after 30 years of disappearance.  

Duster is a slow core band I missed in the 90s which is getting its stuff re released right now.  

Slowdive was a shoegazer Brit band in the early 90s who is being asked for again by more and more people.  

Smoking Teenagers

 You know, I actually think the smart phones are the worst things for teenagers. I have written several posts on how they are terrible.  

But, what should be in the second place of terrible things for teenagers is all smoking and all types of cigarettes.  

Why after over 60 years of all the evidence of harm cigarette smoking causes do teenagers STILL want to try and start to smoke?  With all the details of the problems that will occur, I could ask why anyone would still smoke.  

1964 first Surgeon generals report on the dangers of smoking

I should say of course that I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist so all opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not come by scientific method. However, many of my opinions are based on long standing scientific information and I am a good reader and you too can read and find out about from the scientific sources which have been scientifically tested. 

To look at it with no emotions, I would say there are a couple things which still push teenagers to smoke

1. The most important is probably peer pressure and social dynamics among teenagers.  In other words their immediate school and friend and non friend environment.  Teenagers are greatly influenced by their social environment.

2. Again because teenagers' (see my two sides of the coin post here) brains are developing and it causes them to make often bad decisions. Yet decisions which they want to make to push or test the waters of "allowability".  In other words they want to do things which werent allowable as kids but now they feel they are older and want to try them.  Bad or good.  The more taboo it was, the better.

3. Parents smoke so the kids see that and figure its ok for them to smoke. Now they are teenagers and nearly adults they should do adult things, or things they perceive as adult --- good or bad or whether it is good or bad for them doesnt matter.  

So now I have to connect this with my life. This is my journal.  But I have to think back to my youth and remember that my brother started smoking when he was 14ish and it was a great great disappointment to my parents whom neither smoked.  I think at the time it was not prohibited for parents to hit their kids and my father may have struck my brother for smoking or at the very least yelled hard at him.  My brother was much more difficult than my daughter, and my father probably had to be very strict and tough with him.  Still I wonder if a good discussion sitting down and talking about it wouldnt have been better.  My brother moved out soon after he was 16. I dont think my fathers' yelling worked. 

So here is my older teenage daughter who started to smoke.  I am very very disappointed.  And obviously my third point above that teenagers see their parents smoking doesnt apply. Neither my wife nor I smoke. My wife DID smoke when she was a late teenager, so actually, my daughter refers to that, which is the same thing as point three above.  So ... there it is. 

Still I couldnt hit her, I didnt even really yell at her.  I simply told her my feelings that I think it is a very very bad thing especially for her body at this time.  It does terrible things to the body especially now in her growing time and her brain too. And that I was very very disappointed with her smoking.  I did tell her that she was not allowed to smoke in the house.  On occasion or once a week I tell her that if she is still smoking I am very very sorry that she is and that she should know how bad it is for her.  Whether or not that impresses her or on the contrary eggs her on to keep smoking is a question.  Again, point 2 above.  Bad doesnt matter.  Trying "taboo" things is good.  And if they are recognized as things adults do, even better.  

I AM disappointed that she is smoking.  But I think that it shows that number

one, her environment, is stronger than parental guidance, or can be. Maybe her mother can dissuade her better than I can.  I am not sure hitting as perhaps my father did (though he probably wouldnt have hit a daughter) or even yelling is the answer.  Though I can not quite say that serious discussion works either.  

To tell you the truth I am kind of at a loss and just have resigned to riding it out and keep telling her that it is bad and I am disappointed. But again, maybe her mother can persuade her and she will stop at her stronger bidding.  

I really cant say how I would have reacted if I had had a son. Probably just the same.  

If you are a parent who smokes and see your kids starting to smoke you should really educate yourself on how really bad smoking is for teenagers growth.  Just when they need their body in really good working order while it is making a huge growth spurt in the brain and the body, smoking causes probably irrepairable damage in the body and brain.  For instance, while I dont have a link here and should, smoking can stunt your growth, for boys moreso, and you wont reach your full height.  Smoking stunts all and damages all your body's growth. As a result you wont reach as good an endpoint if you hadnt smoked. In other words you as a person in body and knowledge wont reach the same heights that was meant for you. You stunted them by smoking.  Might I add that if you can persuade your kids to hold off as long as possible until they are past their teenage years, it wont be "as bad" to smoke.  But the younger they start the worse off they will be.  

This I believe quite strongly. That smoking of all sorts is a huge damage to teenagers, to all people and society, but even more to teenagers.  

And yet I cannot sit by my teenager 24 hours a day and make sure she doesnt smoke. Nor can I hit her, "knock some sense into her" so to speak as maybe my father thought he was doing to my brother.  I am at a loss for something which will definitely make her stop smoking.  My only tactic is discussion, education and strong persuasion, and the hope that maybe my wife can do better.  None of which I am confident will work. 

When I wrote this post idea down in my book of ideas, I thought it would have some conclusion and I thought it would have another direction.  But now in writing I have gone in another direction and have come to no conclusion.   All I can say is maybe you know something that can work better or that like life it is a work in progress.  Some of it is bad and some is quite good.  I guess that is parenting overall.  

I hope the new year is still new and fresh for you.  Try to keep it fresh and not slide into a winter blues depression. It is quite cold out in many many places and other world issues are not being resolved. If you made new years resolutions push yourself not to drop them yet nor get frustrated with them.  Give yourself a kick to keep yourself going forward.  Dont lie down for a winter hibernation.  It is tempting when the weather is so cold. But do make sure you get enough sleep to fight all the winter sicknesses out there.  Best to you all.