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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Carolyn Hax: Mom too demanding for teen’s taste

Washington Post

Dear Carolyn: I am a generally happy, young teenage boy. I have recently been upset with my mother, because I feel she has been unfriendly. Whenever I ask her if I can do something, she replies that I have to mow the lawn first, or pull weeds out of the garden. I make simple requests, but it seems that I can’t have any fun unless she gets some benefit out of it.

I have a good relationship with the rest of my family, and I get good grades. My mother doesn’t give me any allowance, and I have to do the dishes twice a week.

I am fine with this arrangement, but she seems to want much more out of me. I am willing to change my actions, and I think she is too, but neither of us will budge until it seems logical to.

Right now I am not doing what she wants, and I am sitting around the house watching television (which isn’t normally my favorite thing to do). I don’t want to keep this up longer, but I am not sure if I am being too demanding of her, or if she is being too demanding of me. – Wondering Teen

Watching TV in protest! You’ve really shown her.

Your mother wants your contribution to the household to grow as you do. At birth, you relied on your parents to do everything for you. As soon as possible after you complete your formal education, you want to rely on your parents to do nothing for you – besides root for you, be happy to see you and offer occasional, asked-for advice.

To get there, I suppose in theory you can stretch the infancy arrangement (minus diaper changes, please) to your graduation day and then take over your own housing, food, laundry and bills from there. But launches into adulthood go a lot better if you start the independence process at toddlerhood, and build your skills from there: for example, from putting your own clothes in the hamper to putting clean ones away to folding them to washing them to handling the whole family’s laundry when it’s your turn to.

As in, grasping on your own that family dynamics are … dynamic. The top-down, parents-help-kids structure goes through a roughly two-decade evolution into a vehicle for all members to support each other. Your mom’s message, whether you like its tone or not, is a great one: Your give-to-take ratio is too heavy on the take, so don’t expect much taking till you fix that.

You’re quite capable, I imagine, not just of mowing lawns, but also of noticing leggy grass and mowing it before you can be asked to. Or doing dishes one night beyond your contractually dictated two, just because. Or just saying thanks, and meaning it, for something Mom does that you’ve come to take for granted. If you’ve been conditioned not to notice, then train yourself to notice. When you see chores in progress, start asking, “Can I help?”

And if you’re not so inclined, why not? Mom didn’t ask you nicely enough?

I obviously don’t know her, but I suspect that if you take some initiative instead of fuming at the flat-screen, then she’ll stop forcing you to jump through chore hoops whenever you want something. Another great, incremental step toward maturity: Learn that if you don’t like being bossed around, then you can either pout, or take step by possible step toward independence. I recommend Door No. 2.