I mean...if the kids are 6 or 8, sure. But when they're teens?

I don't know. I think parenting only goes so far. I've seen lots of cases where parents were great and expected a lot and the kids were just super-resistant to it. Also, how do you explain kids who grew up in the foster system or without parents for one reason or another and still figured out how to do for themselves. I don't think anyone bears 'the ultimate blame' for our individual behavior other than ourselves...there's a limit to how long you can blame your parents for everything that's wrong with you, and I think it starts to hit around your mid-to-late teens...you start to become much more responsible for your own attitudes, behaviors, and abilities.

That said...yes. There are a lot of lazy parents...or just imperfect people doing their best and still messing up or forgetting something, in many cases...and a parenting boot camp couldn't hurt either. Not sure it would help parents of TEENS, which is what this post is about...as that ship has mostly sailed. But younger parents or parents-to-be...sure.

Okay, well, I'm going to hijack this thread and tell you our story, because I find it rather disturbing, and have been wondering about it for a while.

A couple years ago, I had a really really stressful job, the kind you pull over and puke otw to work. And meanwhile at home, I was being robbed of an hour of precious sleep every night by Killjoy. She was getting up at 5:30 so she could watch an hour of tv before school. Well, she'd act like getting ready for school was a top secret mission of the utmost urgency and importance, rushing back and forth from her bedroom to her bathroom right next door. She was in such a hurry, she couldn't grab the door handle and turn it like a normal person, she had to rattle it, and every time she left a room, she had to close the door behind her, and she was in such a hurry, she'd slam it every friggin time.

So every morning I heard:
rattle-rattle-wrench open rattle-rattle-wrench SLAM out of the bathroom
rattle-rattle-wrench open rattle-rattle-wrench SLAM into the bedroom
rattle-rattle-wrench open rattle-rattle-wrench SLAM out of the bedroom
rattle-rattle-wrench open rattle-rattle-wrench SLAM into the bathroom

It was like a door slamming party. A door slamming convention. A door slamming addiction. I pictured her going to sleep at night thinking, "I can't wait until morning for more slam-a-rama, my favorite thing, I love it!!" Okay, yeah, I'm a little crazy.

I can't make up my mind if she was doing this to make a big production out of getting ready for school, like, "LOOK AT MEEEE LOOK AT MEEEEEE I'M GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL!!! AREN'T I INTERESTING???" or if she's just plain stupid and inconsiderate, and doesn't realize other people exist. I tend to lean toward A because she seems that way about almost everything.

When I told DH about it I was lying, of course.

Well then one time he was awake while it was happening, and he counted 11 slams in 14 minutes, and he didn't even hear when it started. Like, wtf?? Is it possible for someone to be that annoying by accident?

So DH finally told her to stop slamming doors, and she denied slamming the doors. (":pout: No more slam-a-rama? :cry: But it's my favorite thing...") Does she live in an alternate reality?? I mean seriously, is she unaware that sound carries? Is she too perfect to make a mistake? Seriously, to me this is one of the many facets of her weirdness.

DH left for work and I was still home, right after he spoke to her, and I was sitting in the room directly across from her bedroom, and she came running up the stairs, wrenched her bedroom door open, ran inside, and then ten seconds later, came back out and slammed the door. What was so important? What was the top secret mission for? A hair tie. She emerged with a hair tie. And I just sat there with my jaw on the floor. DH had just spoken to her about this. And why does the door need to be closed, anyway? She's the only person living here besides me and DH, and our master suite is on the other side of the landing and always closed. What is so secret about a hair tie? And why the hurry? I was sitting there patiently waiting to drive her to school...

I never confront her because she always gaslights me and nothing gets accomplished, except I feel like slapping her.

She kept it up for another week, so I installed foam blocks on the two doors so she couldn't close them all the way, they stayed open 1 inch. She was pissed, she didn't understand. After a few weeks she asked to have them removed. We said No, because she denied slamming in the first place.

A year later, I removed the foam on the bathroom only, her bedroom still has the foam block to this day, two years later. And we still catch her slamming the bathroom door a lot, like five times in ten minutes some days. Someone needs their slam-a-rama fix. Now she doesn't get up at 5:30 anymore, but it is still annoying.

And I hardly ever see her, but I passed her room one night when she was still awake, and she was just getting out of the shower. She rushed back and forth between her bathroom and her bedroom four times in the time it took me to cross the landing, closing the doors each time. Boing boing boing boing. She looked like a crazy woodpecker in a shooting gallery.

This is by far not the only thing about her that is weird, but I still don't get it. Other things are similar in how she can deny facts like she is psychotic, and act like she is being abused for consequences she has been warned about, and how things just don't seem to sink in, and she continues to do random weird stuff without thinking about what she is doing, can never own doing anything wrong, cannot take responsibility for anything she does, and just plain ignores any feedback she gets that she doesn't like. It's not like she hasn't had plenty of time to think about this. She doesn't think about anything, I really wonder how she'll get around in life.

It's like the porch lights are on, but nobody is home.