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Post by The Captain on Aug 23, 2019 8:01:40 GMT -5
Having my first "dad of a teenager" crisis today.
I believe I've written before about my older daughter and this boy on her swim team, and their apparent-to-everyone interest in one another. Yesterday afternoon, my daughter came to me and her mother and said that "the boy" (my codename for him) asked if she would be going to the HS football game Friday night (tonight) and that he was hoping she was. She hadn't been planning on it (she hadn't even mentioned it once previously), but she wanted to know if she could get some of her girlfriends together and go (sans parents, of course).
Yep, my little girl basically got asked out on a date, and I'm freaking out. I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would be further in the future, like when she's 30, not 13. He's a good kid, I know both his parents well, and I trust my daughter fully, but there's still something unnerving about knowing my firstborn is going out, even with girlfriends in tow, to meet a boy.
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Post by impulse on Aug 23, 2019 10:56:37 GMT -5
Fully agreed. I would not buy any overpriced veggie patty at the grocery store, though, because as far as taste and texture go a hamburger patty is darn easy to imitate in one’s own kitchen using little more than white beans, onions, sweet potatoes, oatmeal and steak spices. I don’t really need the thing to “bleed” or to be red (although I have great respect for the people who had the idea to use leghemoglobin to make their patties as meat-like as possible. That was pretty clever). As you say, it’s not exactly like meat... but it does make a convincing hamburger. One batch lasts for a week, too, and can be eaten cold (falafel-like)! Interesting. Care to share your recipe? And yeah, I'm not sure I care enough to go to the hassle to buy Impossible Burger patties from the store (they're expensive, too, like $10 for 4), but if I'm driving through anyway, might as well grab the veggie one. It's good enough and gets the job done. Fewer cow farts in the air and saves some trees being cut down for grassland maybe. Having my first "dad of a teenager" crisis today. I believe I've written before about my older daughter and this boy on her swim team, and their apparent-to-everyone interest in one another. Yesterday afternoon, my daughter came to me and her mother and said that "the boy" (my codename for him) asked if she would be going to the HS football game Friday night (tonight) and that he was hoping she was. She hadn't been planning on it (she hadn't even mentioned it once previously), but she wanted to know if she could get some of her girlfriends together and go (sans parents, of course). Yep, my little girl basically got asked out on a date, and I'm freaking out. I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would be further in the future, like when she's 30, not 13. He's a good kid, I know both his parents well, and I trust my daughter fully, but there's still something unnerving about knowing my firstborn is going out, even with girlfriends in tow, to meet a boy. Oh, God, that's terrifying. I don't have any advice as mine are still really young, but I'm with you in solidarity at being unnerved at the thought. Isn't 13 a little young to go to a high school event unchaperoned? Or am I way behind the times? Being interested in and/or invited to such an event at 13 would have been such a foreign concept to me at that time that I have no frame of reference.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2019 11:03:41 GMT -5
Having my first "dad of a teenager" crisis today. I believe I've written before about my older daughter and this boy on her swim team, and their apparent-to-everyone interest in one another. Yesterday afternoon, my daughter came to me and her mother and said that "the boy" (my codename for him) asked if she would be going to the HS football game Friday night (tonight) and that he was hoping she was. She hadn't been planning on it (she hadn't even mentioned it once previously), but she wanted to know if she could get some of her girlfriends together and go (sans parents, of course). Yep, my little girl basically got asked out on a date, and I'm freaking out. I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would be further in the future, like when she's 30, not 13. He's a good kid, I know both his parents well, and I trust my daughter fully, but there's still something unnerving about knowing my firstborn is going out, even with girlfriends in tow, to meet a boy. I have a 13 year grandniece and my nephew and his wife is freaking out that a boy at the age of 14 ask her out to go on a family (the boy's) picnic and the boy has a sister who is 17 and they are double dating and after the picnic is over they all go to Denny's for sundaes afterwards. That date happen last weekend when her grandfather (my brother) told me. I was freaking out learning my 13 year old grandniece went out on a date.
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Post by The Captain on Aug 23, 2019 11:34:06 GMT -5
impulse - it really isn't that young around here. Last year, we took her to a couple of games with her friends, and they hung out by the concession stand and "on the fence" by the one end zone for the majority of the game by themselves, and most of the other middle-school kids were doing the same. She has friends in 9th and 10th grades from band, her swim team, and her advanced literature class, and most of them have been going it alone for a few years. We're a smaller, sub-rural district, so it's pretty quiet out here and we don't have the same worries as larger schools or those in urban districts do; there's no way I would consider letting her do it in the district I graduated from. She's almost 14 (end of November), which I forget sometimes because she's still my little girl, but when I think back, I was going to games by myself with friends in 9th grade and I had just turned 14 a few weeks earlier.
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Post by impulse on Aug 23, 2019 11:38:14 GMT -5
Wow. I guess that all makes sense, but it still seems crazy to me.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Aug 23, 2019 13:24:35 GMT -5
I have no advice to give The Captain, since I have no children of my own, but for what it's worth, I was going out on dates (cinema, school dances, local coffee shop) with girls at 13 or 14...and the girls were the same age. And that was back in the late 80s. So, I guess your daughter's just kinda reached that age. I have to say that my dates at that age were all pretty innocent affairs really. But I don't know, kids just sound like one worry after another to me.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 23, 2019 14:38:44 GMT -5
Dropping number three son off at Boise State today. As of this evening will have an empty nest.
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Post by impulse on Aug 23, 2019 16:19:11 GMT -5
You gonna be okay Slam?
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Aug 23, 2019 16:21:24 GMT -5
Dropping number three son off at Boise State today. As of this evening will have an empty nest. Must seem weird. What are yours and the Missus' feelings about that? Relishing the thought of it, sad about it, or somewhere in-between?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 23, 2019 21:06:18 GMT -5
I’m okay. I’m a bit sad but will be okay. My wife is not doing well. She’s pretty much lived for the boys and defines herself as a Mom. We'll see how it goes.
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 23, 2019 21:58:20 GMT -5
I’m okay. I’m a bit sad but will be okay. My wife is not doing well. She’s pretty much lived for the boys and defines herself as a Mom. We'll see how it goes. I have a co-worker in a similar situation. Yesterday he wrote, "Why didn't anyone tell me that once the nest is empty, the mama bird starts pecking on YOU?"
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Aug 24, 2019 7:56:42 GMT -5
I’m okay. I’m a bit sad but will be okay. My wife is not doing well. She’s pretty much lived for the boys and defines herself as a Mom. We'll see how it goes. I guess it will just take some getting used to. As I say, it must feel weird. Hopefully your wife can settle into a new kind of motherly roll, as I'm sure your boys will still need her advice and wisdom for a long time to come (and yours too, of course). Wishing you and your wife all the best.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2019 8:08:34 GMT -5
I’m okay. I’m a bit sad but will be okay. My wife is not doing well. She’s pretty much lived for the boys and defines herself as a Mom. We'll see how it goes. I have a co-worker in a similar situation. Yesterday he wrote, "Why didn't anyone tell me that once the nest is empty, the mama bird starts pecking on YOU?" there is truth in this statement
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2019 8:25:12 GMT -5
I’m okay. I’m a bit sad but will be okay. My wife is not doing well. She’s pretty much lived for the boys and defines herself as a Mom. We'll see how it goes. for us it was the opposite. I took it harder than my wife after my daughters left home.
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 24, 2019 15:43:06 GMT -5
I don't want to think of what I was like at 13. There was a book titled Reviving Ophelia that might shed some light.
I thought kids leaving home sometimes meant a new media/crafts/cave room?
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