(Potentially running) thread: Help! My daughter is a tween and the Mean Girls Era has begun!

I have a co-worker who is very well-off, has a son at an SEC school and seems to do well in classes, but in his 2 years in college, has a DUI, minor-in-possession charges in his college town and during a Florida spring break trip, and lost a roommate because they had a handgun (violating the lease) and it went off, going through the wall of another apartment.

When he's had the legal issues, Mommy and Daddy always ride in to buy him out of trouble. I have to bite my tongue when Mommy talks about how much she worries about him when he's off at school or otherwise away from home. Let the little fucker figure out his own way out of his legal entanglements, and maybe he'll learn a lesson.

 

I get the sentiment, but as someone who has worked in the criminal justice system, this is terrible advice.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to watch as an unrepresented teenager or early 20-something came into court and pleaded guilty to a criminal charge when they could have had a deferred prosecution resulting in a dismissal. The prosecutor and judge will nudge them as much as they can toward a deferred prosecution without crossing into giving legal advice. The ones who are quick at decifering cues will get it and change course, but plenty don't and end up with a conviction - and all the consequences that come with that - on their record.

Get your kid a lawyer if they're in legal trouble and you can afford it. They need help to minimize the consequences. Punish them in some other way, but not by withholding that help.

 

I have a family member who is the personification of this. His father refused to help and get him a decent lawyer. Ended up a convicted felon for something that all my lawyer friends say should have been a misdemeanor at worst and it has clouded his whole life. This happened almost 40 years ago and it still plagues him. Like frantic said, punish the kid in some other way.

 

100 percent this. One of the most important jobs of a parent is to keep your kids out of The System by any means necessary, at least when it comes to relatively petty offenses.

 

Same with my wife after our oldest got his first apartment after college:

Wife: “He wants his own apartment so he can bring girls over.”

Me: “He’s 23. We were living together when we were his age.”

 

We’ve been binging mostly old movies when my daughter spends the weekend here and tonight’s selection was 13 Going On 30.

During the part where the airhead hockey boyfriend does a partial striptease, my 13 year old and Jennifer Gardner’s time-warped 13 year old grimaced and covered their eyes and pretty much the exact same points. I took it as a good sign.

 

I love those movies. (Inside out and 13 Going on 30 to clarify.) re. the Disney flick... Peter Doctor has a way of creating these smaller side trips that go straight to the heart of love and loss. Another film by him, Onward, is a bit darker. It addresses how our fathers' presence (or lack thereof) shapes us. Going out on a limb here and say it speaks to the emotional lives of boys more than girls

 

We just watched Inside Out 2 over the weekend with both kids and watched 13 going on 30 with the 9-year old.
Both kids liked IO2, only the younger one watched 13.

 

I was just talking to my wife about this. When I was a kid, where many of us was latchkey kids, there was very much an attitude from parents to kids of, "figure it out." Mom and dad were at work, you're home for the summer, you're hungry? There's the kitchen. Figure it out. You're bored? Cool. You know where your friends are. You know where the ball fields and the pool are. figure it out. If it was noon in the summer on a weekend, my mom swung the front door open and said, "If you think you're going to sit around and watch TV all day, you're nuts. Find something to do." Armed with a season pass to the pool, where all of my friends were anyways, I gladly did this once I hit age 12 on.

Now? Our 13-year-old comes down on a Saturday morning and says, "what are we doing today? I'm bored," as if we're the cruise directors on the Love Boat.

The other thing I've noticed is, at that age I knew every kid that lived near me that I could hang out with, and usually did. My next door neighbor and I would walk to the pool together every day. Now? They have their little bubble of friends from school that they communicate with and that's it. We probably have a half dozen or so kids around her age in our development and I don't think they've interacted once.

 

I've never seen Onward, but I think you are right about Doctor. I'm not sure if anybody here has seen the Pixar in a Box shorts, but he has one about storytelling that I like. It focuses on why it is so important that storytellers incorporate their own experience into the work and it uses Monsters, Inc. as an example.

I knew Doctor directed Monsters, Inc, but didn't realize he also directed Inside Out, Soul, and Up. Yup. He was running the show when they made that tearjerker montage in Up. Bastard. lol

 

I swear to God if I could I’d take a tack hammer to my daughter’s phone. An 11-year-old killed herself in Talladega after some boys started bullying her about her weight via FaceTime. If the mom’s version holds up, her parents were supportive and regularly kept an eye on what she was doing online, but things spiraled in a giant hurry.

https://www.al.com/news/2024/10/cha...a-teach-your-kids-to-be-kind-family-says.html

 

Jesus, that’s awful.