My roof, my rules

It is normal for your teens to spend all their free time with their friends and sometimes they will seem to be joined at the hip. When there is a fight between them, it is serious. They may act as if their world is crumbling around them. To your brokenhearted teen, it is! Do not be surprised if they are best friends again in two days; it happens.

How do you judge their friends? Is it your place to judge them? First of all, do not judge them purely on their appearance. That gothic freak, dressed all in black, may have just received a full scholarship to a prestigious college and that cute little friend of your daughter’s may be a thief. It is your place to protect your teen and if that means making judgments about their friends, so be it. Look for manners and respect in your teen’s friends.
We ran into a few of our oldest daughter’s school friends at a local festival. We were having a small gathering of our own friends over for a cookout that evening and she wanted to invite her friends as well.
“That is fine,” we told her, but her one friend, I’ll refer to him as Joe, was wearing rather unsuitable clothing for our affair. We politely asked him to change his clothing before arriving for dinner and he said he would. Really it was just his pants that were offensive. They were filthy, literally falling off him; the bottoms were torn and tattered and his underwear was showing. (Trip pants, maybe you have heard of them? I think the phrase stuck because the kids wearing them are always tripping over their own pants.) Well, Joe decided to show up at our home without first having changed his pants as we requested. My husband hit the roof and demanded that he leave. I walked outside with Joe and explained how he had disrespected our home and our rules. “My roof – my rules!”
The next time I saw Joe, he had quit school and was shuffling up the street in the same baggy jeans, with a cigarette hanging from his lips. I can only imagine where Joe is today! The point is Joe showed no respect, and if you don’t give respect, you surely will never receive it!