Dopey Parents Are Getting Bitched Around By Their Asshole Kids During Quarantine

(WaPo)---They are sticky notes of surrender, scattered around the house by the anxious mother of a teenager — on the bathroom mirror, the kitchen sink, the cutlery drawer.

“Julian: Wash your hands. 20 sec so we all are fine,” reads the blue one on the microwave. Every now and then, as she has done all his life, she’ll throw in a Bible verse; this week, Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.... He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”

Not that her son needs comfort. The Northern Virginia high school senior is still living his best life, largely ignoring the surging pandemic. On Thursday, the 18-year-old got out of bed around 11:30 a.m., showered, ate and jumped into his 2004 red Audi station wagon, paid for with money he saved from a part-time job at a trampoline park. Then he headed for the woods 45 minutes away.

For two weeks now, since Loudoun County closed its schools March 12, Julian has been building a fort near the Potomac River with “my boys,” he says, about two dozen seniors who show up randomly, bringing free pallets of wood they’ve spotted on Craigslist and building supplies from Home Depot. Rather than socially distancing, they’ve hammered away for hours before grilling hot dogs and fish they catch in a nearby pond and huddling together “to chill.”

Last week, just a few days before Virginia Ralph Northam (D) issued a mandatory stay-at-home order for the state’s 8.5 million residents, Julian arrived first to the clearing and offered a tour of the fort. It rose from the wooded landscape like a hermit’s dream with its frame of poles set in quick cement, covered by a blue tarp to keep out the rain. In recent days, the crowd had been dwindling as news of the coronavirus contagion grew more alarming and parents began putting their collective feet down.

Many teens in the Washington region and across the country are gradually moving past anger and depression to acceptance, at least for the time being, as they grieve the social losses that come with self-quarantining. But Julian — his mother wanted his last name withheld to protect his privacy — has been stuck in denial.

I know every generation has been complaining about the generations that follow since time immemorial. "When I was your age" and "back in my day" have been causing eyes to roll for just as long. But this isn't a complaint about Gen Y or Millennials or Gen Z or whatever the fuck people are calling kids born in the last 40 years. Rather it's a fact. Because I've watched it happen. And the fact is that kids have never walked all over their parents like they've been doing for the last 20-25 years and this article in the Washington Post crystallizes it (yeah, I know #NotAllParents. Settle down). 

After several paragraphs detailing one teen's selfish behavior, the Post drops this nugget: 

Julian knows he is supposed to keep his distance from his mother, who takes a medication that compromises her immune system. He calls her concerns “100 percent valid,” and said “it freaked me out” when she recently had a small cold. Even so, he sheepishly tries to duck into her space. “Staying six feet apart from my mom is hard,” Julian says. “I like to go up and hug her all the time.”

First off, talk about burying the goddamn lede. Second, what an asshole this kid is. His own mother is immunocompromised and he still pulls this shit. But that because he's probably been bitching her around since his first "time-out".

Now, parenting did need a correction and needed to swing the other way after the corporal punishment and emotional withholding that Baby Boomers grew up with under their "Greatest Generation" parents. Boomer parents weren't as hard on their own kids but there were still rules to follow and adults to answer to. There might have been the occasional dope slap. And "because I said so" were four words that still actually meant something.

But the pendulum has swung too far to the other side. It started in the '80s when a more touchy-feely style of parenting sprouted up because of doctors and shrinks who pushed it in "parenting books". Soon enough, parenting became negotiating. Kids went from having no say to way too much. For the last several years, too many parents are more concerned with being the "cool mom" or "cool dad" than being a disciplinarian. Instead of "what did you do?", we get "my kid would never".

I know there are still parents who raise their kids the same way they were raised in the '70s and '80s and it's refreshing to see it when you do. Becuase that's the sweet spot between abusive and babying. But it's more of an anomaly than the norm. At the end of the day, I don't have kids so I really don't give a fuck. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with the asshole ones or their enabling parents. #TeamVasectomy