Raising teenagers is profoundly disorienting. Parents can get lost just as easily as our kids. In lieu of actual guideposts along our route, we look for signs to help us find our way. Help, advice, road-signs and perspective can come in many forms.
I was struck recently, for example, by the simplicity and wisdom of this bon mot. Thanks to cynical, bitter, post-modern anti-hero (and more-than-questionable parenting role model) Hank Moody for this most Shakespearean warning about his teenaged daughter. A label like this should be affixed to every fourteen-year-old head out there. Because it's true.
[Apologia: Listen, I'm an English teacher. Our need for stories is atavistic and ancient (didn't Aristotle, way back in the fourth century BC, call it "catharsis?"). At their best, stories reflect our lives back to us, give us a safe place to release emotions, and teach us about ourselves. Modern entertainment, at its best, gives us just such stories. The ubiquity of parents-struggling-with-teenagers in television programming reminds us just how real and awful that struggle is. And I take comfort there. Which is my way of rationalizing my tendency to watch way too much tv than I should. . . including stuff like this. :-) ~LLF]