Why Are My Daughter's Friends Annoying With Bad Manners?

I want my teenage daughter to have friends. I want her to spend time with people other than me, this I can’t stress enough, but why do all her friends have to be so lame and annoying with bad manners?

During the last week of school, all the 7^th graders in our district had finals so they had a half day. BTW, half the school day should technically be 3 hours. Releasing them after just 90 minutes is really not a half day. No wonder American children don’t excel at math, our schools don’t even seem to understand the concept of a half. Any rate, I digress. So by 10:30 a.m. my house was full of teenagers: 3 girls; one boy. They all came for a swim with no towels, no snacks, no drinks and no one was wearing a watch because the concept of time and limits is something these children have yet to be introduced to - hello bad manners!

So of course, two enormous bags of Doritos later, they were all thirsty. I left a huge pitcher of lemonade on the table for them but apparently it wasn’t cold enough. Aaaawwww. Poor babies. So they came inside looking for cold lemonade. It’s like they’re all brain damaged - including my own daughter. No one asked for ice they just kept asking for cold lemonade. It’s like they couldn’t put the two together: ice makes cold. So now, they’re all trudging through my clean house with their bad manners dripping wet all over my hard wood floors with their huge, teenage feet. Meanwhile, I just instructed them not to come in whilst they were still wet! I swear they were all moping about like zombies, like something out of Night Of The Living Dead, I was waiting for one of them to shout out “Brains, need more brains”…which they’re obviously not using.

When I told them to please go back outdoors they all responded with the usual grunts, uummphs and whines that are so common amongst the teenage of our species. They dragged themselves back outside and then claimed to be “too tired” for more swimming, now they wanted TV time. NFW!

When they collectively asked what was for lunch I responded: I don’t know, what are you making? To which they replied once again with grunts and whines and pleas for “something hot like pizza”. I left bread and cold cuts on the counter but that was just too difficult for them to master. So, I advised them to take a break because they were all ‘so tired’ from their 45 minutes of swimming. I instructed them to go home, have lunch, take a nap, rest up, study for the next final and then come back for a late afternoon swim. Magic. It worked. They were all gone by 1:30….sadly, they did return at about 4:00pm but I was ready this time. I made sure to tell them that I needed everyone gone by 5 so I could prepare for dinner.

What struck me about my daughter’s friends, and they’re all good kids mind you, good students, athletes, blah blah, was the complete absence of “please” and “thank you” in their vocabularies. Not one of them said thank you to me on their way out the door nor please when they wanted anything. Even when I prompted them, for example; “Oh is it cold lemonade you’d like please Ms. Davey?” That didn’t seem to jog their memory either. It was a frustrating, isolating afternoon.

What kills me even more is that two of the girls that came over are ones that I encouraged her to befriend as her former BFFs were real trouble makers both in school and out. These girls are in the Honor Society and fellow swim team members (and they were tired after just 45 minutes of swimming?! No wonder their team lost consecutively.) They’ve been a great influence but when they come over, I just want to hang myself. Thank goodness for my sweet 8 year old.

Our own teenagers are work as it is but when you add their teenage friends look out! I often wonder is my child the one other parents are complaining about? Is she also forgetting her manners and completely annoying the parents when she goes to visit her friends? We make sure to review the list of appropriate behaviors every time she leaves for a friends’ house: say please and thank you; don’t interrupt; don’t use their telephone(s) to prank; don’t dominate the Wii; leave at the specified time; wear a watch; don’t ask for snacks; only eat when it’s offered; appropriately dispose of sanitary napkins; etc. I realize this may sound obsessive to some but try being on the receiving end of a child whose parents have not reviewed or perhaps don’t even teach their children guidelines for appropriate behavior. It’s rough.

Do your kids have friends that you just don’t care for? How do you deal? Do you encourage them to make other friends or do you just encourage one-way visits – aka THO or their house only? OMG, it’s going to be a long summer.