What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don’t

Putting Toothpaste Back in the Tube

April 10, 2013 By The Well Read Hostess 3 Comments

I spent some time this week substituting in a 2nd grade art classroom.

Not for the faint of heart or slow on the hoof.

It was much like herding cats or trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. But dang, did we crank out some mighty fine birdhouse collages.

And second graders know how to openly express gratitude like nobody else on the planet. Unabashedly and full throated Thank YOU MRS DUNNING!!!!

They are also excellent helpers. They will get their friends scissors or glue sticks or show them the very absolutely right and not the wrong way to draw a bird.

Second graders will not let you get away with bad behavior. If you are, say, trying to make a cootie catcher instead of drawing a sun and clouds on the background paper of your birdhouse collage, make no mistake, you will be dimed out. But it is for your own good. You are being encouraged to walk a righteous path.

If you are sad about the way your birdhouse roof pattern turned out, a second grader will know how to console you. Second graders are excellent at compliments.

Second graders are good at sharing. Songs. Tape. Germs. Hugs.

When second graders get too loud during art class, they have “silent art time,” when they just concentrate on making beautiful things. They don’t mind admitting that they actually really loooove silent art time.

I spend most of my work days trying to either motivate seventeen year olds or teach seventeen year olds how not to be anxious messes because they are too highly motivated. I’m thinking that once in a while, I should spend some time making birdhouse collages with them. Maybe they would recall all of those important lessons they used to know about helping and righteousness and consoling friends and giving compliments and sharing and being silent.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Keeping it Real, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't Tagged With: 2nd graders, birdhouse collages, teenagers

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

February 26, 2013 By The Well Read Hostess 2 Comments

I spend a good part of my work life trying to convince the under 18 set that they don’t need to know what they are going to do for the rest of their lives RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT, that it will all come in time, and that what they need to work on now is learning how to learn. Of course, I spend the rest of my work life trying to convince the under 18 set that, holy Hannah, they’d better get their butts in gear and figure out what the heck they are doing with themselves because the clock is ticking.

Clearly, I’m a pro.

I am lucky in my job, and I know it. Even though I come home tired and sometimes burned out, my days are never the same and most of the time I can honestly say I love what I do. I am rarely bored, and I am surrounded by smart people – most of them more than half my age and honest enough to tell me that my taste in music sucks but they like me anyway.

Wouldn’t it be great, though, if we could all live by that maxim that directs us to figure out what we truly love, then find a way to make a living at it? Nobody has yet to offer me a full salary to lie on the couch wearing pjs and reading, though I’m keeping hope alive.

How about writing and cheese eating? These people features in the New York Times food section nailed it. Click to read on… “In the Dairy Case, Ripe Prose.”

Filed Under: Facts of Life, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't, WRH Tagged With: cheese, Monty Python, New York Times

Straighten Up and Fly Right

June 6, 2012 By The Well Read Hostess 4 Comments

This year’s graduates are ready to go.

Actually, this year’s graduates were ready to go about six months ago.

Their parents, I believe, are in varying stages of readiness, however. I’m not anywhere near this part of my parenting life, so what do I know, but I imagine it’s very hard to reconcile the physical reality of your 18 year old leaving the nest with the emotional pull of the memories of the baby you once watched take his first steps or go off to her first day of kindergarten…those little people needed their parents so much and the painful truth is that they don’t need their parents in the same ways at all anymore. One thing is very clear right now about this cohort of seniors, in particular. It’s time. For everybody. And it will be great.

I wrote this a while ago for a different group, and I don’t want to try to pass it off as words of wisdom for this crew in specific because they are so very much not the same. But a lot of it still applies. Hell, a lot of it applies to adults.

Some of the most wonderful teenagers I’ve ever taught are graduating from high school tonight. In fact, some of the most wonderful teenagers I’ve never taught are graduating from high school tonight. They had a rehearsal for the ceremony this morning, but they’re still lurking around the building; as I write, they are playing games in a classroom, reluctant to leave to the building and all that the leaving represents, I reckon.

But they are ready. They’ve been ready for a few months. Subtle changes begin in the fall – fissures in friendships, shifting family relationships, and a sort of impatience with the status quo – but by now, there is no mistaking their need to get on with it, this business of living.

So,whirly girls, ready to head out on this great adventure, listen up for one more lecture. I know some stuff.

Get a job. Even a small one. Practice a hobby. Play a sport. Keep busy. If you spend time sitting around, you’ll think too much, and thinking too much is a bad habit for young, smart women. Trust me on this one.

You don’t have to know what you want to be when you grow up. Go to college and figure out who you are and what you love. The rest will work itself out.

Make friends with someone you never would have thought to make friends with in high school. You come from a small town. The world is big. There is so much you don’t know.

Along those lines, sometimes the family you are born into isn’t the family that supports and sustains you through the rest of your life. Sometimes you have to choose your own family.

I don’t know what the female equivalent of “Bros before Hos” is, but it ain’t that simple. Your friends are important, and you shouldn’t chuck them for a love interest, especially if it’s not The One. But ultimately, love is pretty damn important, not worth losing yourself, but worth some sacrifices.

You’ll know when it’s The One. You should try to go through some Not The Ones first, though, just to be sure.

Life is too short to spend time with anyone who doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. And nobody but you can make you happy.

Read. Anything. But Read.

Girls who don’t have other girls as friends are not to be trusted.

Don’t ever take a job just for the money. You’ll be miserable. And ultimately, spending 40+ hours a week doing something that makes you miserable is way worse than eating spaghetti four nights a week.

Stop feeling bad about your body. You will look back at pictures of yourself at this age and be furious that you wasted a single moment being critical about your own appearance.

Nine times out of ten, your mother is right.

The tenth? You’re not allowed to say, “I told you so.” But you will anyway.

Even if it’s not fully developed, you have a picture in your head of what your life will be when you’re grown up. It won’t be like that. And that’s OK. Because what it will be is better than fine.

When bad things happen, you have to grieve for whatever it is you lost. If you don’t, it’ll come back and get you in weird ways.

Dress your age.

Teach yourself how to be comfortable alone. Work up to being able to request a table for one in a restaurant. True fact: one of life’s great pleasures is going to a movie on your own.

If you wouldn’t want your mom to see it on the internet, don’t let anyone take a picture of it.

Laugh a lot. Seek out the absurd.

The right decision is usually the hard choice.

And, like Abby Sunderland, there will be people cheering you on, proud of you, and ready to come and help the moment you ask.

love,

Mrs. Dunning

Filed Under: Facts of Life, Keeping it Real, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't Tagged With: graduation