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A New Hope: Losing Influence with My Teenage Daughter
I’m pretty sure I’m losing influence on my kid.
She’s a wonderful young lady and I wouldn’t trade her for the world but she has a disease that will only be cured with time:
TEENAGEROUS.
Fourteen-agerous to be exact so we’re really only starting this epic ride. She has developed selective hearing & spends an increasing amount of time in her room with the door SHUT. But she’d not alone in there! Ohhhhh noooooo! Facetime with her friends in the mode of communication in her world (this minute, anyway.) When I was a kid, telephones attached to the wall (gasp) with a rotary dial on the front, so don’t mess up the sequence of the phone number ( that you had MEMORIZED) or you start allll over. My parents knew when I was on the phone because the extra long cord would be stretched all the way to the bathroom where a girl could talk in private. When do I know when my daughter is on the phone with a friend? When I knock (oh yes, trying to show respect) and come into her room. Then ask her in an unfiltered-I’m-in-my-own-house kind of way, ” Hey can you look at this thing on the back of my leg? Is it a pimple or a bug bite?”
Insert sound of crickets here with deer-in-the-headlights emoji for my daughter’s face.
Mom does a slow turn to see same deer-in-the-headlights emoji for daughter’s friend’s face as her FaceTime screen fades to dark.
I’m pretty sure I’m losing influence on my kid.
But not all is lost.
She wants pajamas for Christmas. And the pajamas she wants are a brown fleece hooded Chewbacca onesie.
Now if you don’t know who or what Chewbacca is or you think Star Wars and Star Trek are terms that can be used interchangeably, you might want to just skip to the end.
Because Jesus is my #1 but Star Wars has to be in the top 10. Maaaaaybe top 5. And I am hard core. Possibly evangelical, if I don’t get into to much trouble with those who guard Christian language.
The FIRST Star Wars movie is Episode 4: A New Hope released in 1977.
The best one? Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back!
Cinematography? Check. Peril? Check. Witty banter? Check. ( “I love you.” “I know.”)
I barely recognize Episodes 1-3 but will not discuss the cartoon Clone Wars as part of the Star Wars cannon.
Digital Remastering of the originals with “added CGI”? I’ll point out everyone and scream, “NO!” at the screen.
And those heathens (more Christian language abuse) changed of music during the Ewoks Celebration at the end of episode 5: Return of the Jedi! People: Han. Shot. First.
Now it’s a Disney thing. Thank goodness Yoda is dead because that would have killed him for sure.
Wait. This was going somewhere. Oh yea…..
I’m pretty sure I’m losing influence on my kid.
She spends more time with her phone.
She spends more time studying (on her phone?)
She spends more time at water polo practice, church, football games, friends houses, on her phone (I already said that)….
I have mixed emotions about the driver’s license thing.
But she wants a Chewbacca onesie for Christmas. If she has listened and internalized my love of Star Wars could I dare hope she has also listened and internalized my love of Jesus?
Start children off on the way they should go,
and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
Provers 22:6
(all of Proverbs 22 is great! Full of wisdom! Stop reading this dribble and read that!)
They’re suppose to take responsibility, right? For brushing their teeth, doing their homework, bringing their dishes to the sink…all with decreasingly loud reminders from mama. I want, I need, we all need, my children to be functional adults. So at some point, the training stops or at least slows down ( I still need my mama from time to time and I’m 5-O ) and they apply the knowledge. Not perfectly but with direction.
I’m pretty sure I’m SUPOSE TO BE losing influence on my kid.
Because she has to love Jesus ( and Star Wars) on her own.
(2023 - and she does❤️)
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