Clarifying the Message
From a father’s letter to a son in college: “Am enclosing $10 as you requested in your letter. Incidentally, $10 is spelled with one zero, not two.”
Father’s Advice
Maybe you should start shifting for yourself now while you still know everything.
Teen Independence
A mother was overheard talking about her teenage daughter: “She’s very independent—she lives alone at our house.”
Wise Youth
The best substitute for experience is being sixteen.
Grim Warning
Sign seen in an orthopedic physician’s office: Give your son a motorcycle for his last birthday.
Timing
Why can’t life’s big problems come when we are twenty and know everything?
Those Rotten Kids
Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority—they show disrespect for their elders and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food, and tyrannize teachers. –Socrates, c 400 BC
Poster Wisdom
Attention Teenagers—If you are tired of being hassled by unreasonable parents, now is the time for action! Leave home and pay your own way while you still know everything!
Learning from Deprivation
Sending a youngster to college these days is very educational. It teaches parents how to do without a lot of things.
The Handicaps of Youth
Parents of two teenagers are worried about their failing eyesight. The daughter can’t find anything to wear in a closet full of clothes and the son can’t find anything good to eat in a refrigerator full of food.
Slipping with Age
It seldom occurs to teenagers that someday they will know as little as their parents.
Parenting Teens
I’m tempted to believe Mark Twain’s philosophy: When a kid turns thirteen, stick him in a barrel, nail the lid shut, and feed him through the knot hole. When he turns sixteen, plug the hole.
Getting It Done
There are three ways to get something done:
- Do it yourself.
- Hire someone to do it.
- Forbid your kids to do it.
Teenage Awareness
First mother of a teenager: “My daughter doesn’t tell me anything. I’m a nervous wreck!”
Second mother of a teenager: “My daughter tells me everything, and I’m a nervous wreck!”
Value of Education
Friend: “Has your son’s education proved to be of any real value?”
Father: “Yes, indeed. It has entirely cured his mother of bragging about his brains and accomplishments.”
Not Logical
There’s nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won’t aggravate.
Motivating Teenagers
A community club was discussing the proposed establishment of a youth center. A youthful member of the club spoke out in favor of having a young person oversee the center; someone young enough, she said, to know what teenagers really like to do.
“Yes,” agreed an older member, “but also old enough to see that they don’t.”
Write Back?
As the mother said good-bye to her son who was returning to school after spring vacation, she reminded him to write often. Another woman standing nearby heard the plea and gave this advice: “The surest way to get your son to write home is to send him a letter saying, ‘Here’s fifty dollars, spend it any way you life.’” “And that will make my son write home?” “Yes, indeed. You forget to enclose the money.”