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my 13 y.o. boy is sure that I'm growing my hair to get back at him (for what? he's a good kid). around his friends, he'e embarassed to be seen with me. i've only been growing since august, but plan to continue for a while. any hints as to how to work this out with him? btw, because of the hood/school, he hangs with a bunch of new money snobs (of which i'm not either).
He's 13... it's his job to be embarassed with his parents. This can be the opportunity to teach him the value of being an individual... plus- if his 'friends' are going to judge him by what his dad looks like are they really his friends? Don't try too hard to be 'hip'... give him an option to grow his out or wear an alternative style- be cool if he decides on the buzz cut- conformity is often high on a 13 y/o's priority list. Above all- don't provide an audience if he starts making comments about your hair length. It's your hair, not his.
Well put John! Couldn't have said better myself.
Very reassurring thanks. This is pretty much the line that I stick to. Always looking for the silver bullet. Have you been thru this?
No, I haven't been through this- no kids here; just applying what I've observed in kids- and drawing off what I remember when I was that age.
Sorry didn't mean to pry. The advice was solid and appreciated.
When my younger boy was about 12, I bought a little Kawasaki dirt bike for him and his brother (and me, too). I insisted that before we so much as *tried* to ride it, we all had to have helmets. The Sunday before we were to pick up the bike, we went up to the local K-Mart to find a helmet for Dad (the boys already had theirs). I bought an inexpensive white helmet with a black stripe that looked like a tire tread had run over it. On the way home, driving our battered old '63 Valiant, I put the helmet on and started acting like I was Mario Andretti. Paul, my 12-year-old was absolutely mortified! He laid down on the floor of the back seat and started screaming at me to take the helmet off, lest I be seen by someone who knew *him*! Insensitive bastard that I was, I just laughed and kept up the game. He was so embarrassed, he wouldn't speak to me for a week afterward.
I knew, even then, that I probably took it too far and had pretty much behaved like a jerk. But even so, at various times through their early teen years, both boys let me know that I was inflicting lethal humiliation upon them:
because I wore a beard (none of their friends' dads did),
because I drove a crappy car (granted, but it was what we could afford),
because I used big words that their friends didn't understand, and because the music I liked should never be *heard* coming out of our house. At one point, two albums of Mexican Ranchera music went missing, and even a clueless dad like me could figure out what likely happened to them.
Well, now both boys are grown up. One of 'em drives a crappy car, they both listen to "geezer music" of various kinds, and they understand and sometimes even use a few big words. Neither one has a beard, but they're both (in my admittedly prejudiced eye) damn good men, one of whom is now busily engaged in embarrassing his *own* kids to death. My younger boy (prime suspect in disappearance of my musica ranchera albums) has written a book -- in Spanish, which he "just thought it would be cool to learn." Hang on, Rone; they'll get there.
. . . JP in san diego.
My son turned 15 on New Year's Day. A couple of years ago, when he was about the age your kid is now, we were at a local mall, and he was razzing me about something in a store where I was getting my glasses adjusted.
I turned to him and said something to the effect, "Stop giving me grief. You're getting close to the age when my very existence will be an embarrassment to you, and rest assured, I'm a mean enough SOB to USE it against you."
The clerk who was waiting on us promptly got hysterics. She thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. But I meant it, and the kid knew I meant it, even though he laughed, too.
Two years later, I'm still the eccentric dad, and the kid knows it, but he also knows that I won't deliberately humiliate him unless it's "necessary."
Moral of this parenting story: Always follow through with your threats.
With my daughter three years old at present (don't believe anything about terrible two's -- they're nothing) the sheer idea of getting on her nerves for a change or embarassing her inspires me. Keep the hair.
Chaeya