Thus far, my kid has been an unusually compliant teenager. We rarely argue, and she is very good at talking things out with me. But last week, VJ predicted that Manda was going to give me a run for my money the moment I said she was too young to do something.
The child must have been reading VJ's mind.
MIT has a fall seminar program for high school students that runs over a long weekend. As normal classes are in session, there is no dorm space, and out of town participants are being directed to a block of rooms in a Boston hotel.
Manda proposed that she and a friend share a room at the hotel, "to save the trouble of taking the trains back and forth."
Nice try. No way on this Earth am I letting two fourteen year old kids stay alone at a hotel, especially where the rest of the rooms in the hotel will be filled with other teenagers. Without supervision.
This did not go over well. "You don't trust me!" bellowed Manda, in that irate tone of a Person Who Has Been Unjustly Treated. "I know how to behave, and I have been in zillions of hotels. You just think that we'd invite boys into the room."
Actually, no - I hadn't thought that. Thanks for bringing it up. I won't let two fourteen year old kids stay alone in a hotel because it's a stupid idea. It has nothing to do with trust.
Then I got the "When you were fourteen, you got to do whatever you wanted!" line. Not true. If "whatever I wanted" included working two jobs and going to school, then it was a lot more accurate. If she was willing to take on such a life, more power to her.
After some pushing back and forth, Manda acquiesed. I told her that if her school offers a foreign exchange program, we can see about that. We are also sending her to an away from home science program next summer. She wants to know if she can "bum around Europe" between high school graduation and the beginning of college. I told her to get a job, start saving, and that we'd talk in four years.
I do believe we're in for a bit of a bumpy ride.
VJ, please - don't make any more predictions! ;-)
Kathy N-V