Would your teenager be understanding of this?

[Anonymous 1]

My daughter is a social butterfly. If it were up to her, she would never be home. Every day, she wants to go hang out with friends, go to the gym, join a study group, etc.

She is responsible and makes good grades so I have no problem with her going out often. However, she is not driving yet and her friend's parents are super flaky about giving rides so we don't depend on them. That leaves a lot of driving on the table for my husband and I. When we say no because we are too tired or don't want to drive, she will usually try to convince us otherwise.

For example, today after work, I have an appointment. I won't get home until around 5:20. She has a class I have to take her to at 6 pm and it is far enough away from our house that I can't just go home while she's there. I pick her back up from the class at 8 pm, we will get home around 8:30 or 8:45.

Her bus stop is about 2 miles away from our house so if she took the bus home, she would get off the bus at 4:15 and it takes her about 30 minutes to walk those two miles so she wouldn't reach home until 4:45.

She asked instead if she can take the bus to her friend's house and then have a study date at her friend's house until I can pick her up for the class. (She has a million other reasons why she wants to do this, too; she really needs to study and if she comes home, she'll fall asleep; no matter what you say, she will come up with something.)

But if I pick her up from her friend's house rather than our house, that adds an additional 10 miles to my commute. My days right now are 5 am-8:30 pm. While 10 miles may not seem like that big of a deal in general, it is a big deal when you're already on 15 hour days.

Are my kids just particularly selfish? Does she just not care about how things affect me? Or is she a typical teenager who doesn't understand how big of a deal this is?

[Anonymous 2]

Very typical.

[Olioxenfree]

I would say it’s normal, teenagers are old enough to want the independence but not old enough to fully understand adult life or to have compete control over their own schedules. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t still work on helping her build that understanding and hold her accountable. I have two teens, both have active days and one is extremely social. Neither are old enough to drive. Luckily a lot of things they can bike/walk to and they car pool to a lot of their extra curricular, but they do still want frequent sleep overs, going to friends houses to do their homework, etc. I’m not saying they always like it when we say no, but they do tend to be understanding. We’ve always been consistent that when we say no, it’s because it’s not an option that day, so it’s not going to change. They know arguing after we’ve explained will only increase that no. They also know that we will always try our best to do what we can. We also have always worked with all of our kids to help them view us as individuals with lives outside of being parents, and our wants and activities have just as much worth as theirs.

[Slimshandy]

Super normal…
They won’t get it until they’ve lived being exhausted and driving an extra ten miles…


They’ll understand in their own adulthood lol, but they just won’t get it until then…

[Anonymous 3]

Normal but I'd totally do it for my kids. You're the parent though you have to do what works for you.

[PoplarGrove]

It's totally normal for a teenager. Most are naturally narcissistic at that age. In this case she really wants to go to her friends house and is finding every excuse in the book, that will make you feel guilty, to justify getting what she wants despite you having to do more work. In 10 years she'll probably apologize when she has that dawning realization of all that you did for her.

[Rosehawk]

My daughter is a social butterfly. If it were up to her, she would never be home. Every day, she wants to go hang out with friends, go to the gym, join a study group, etc.

She is responsible and makes good grades so I have no problem with her going out often. However, she is not driving yet and her friend's parents are super flaky about giving rides so we don't depend on them. That leaves a lot of driving on the table for my husband and I. When we say no because we are too tired or don't want to drive, she will usually try to convince us otherwise.

For example, today after work, I have an appointment. I won't get home until around 5:20. She has a class I have to take her to at 6 pm and it is far enough away from our house that I can't just go home while she's there. I pick her back up from the class at 8 pm, we will get home around 8:30 or 8:45.

Her bus stop is about 2 miles away from our house so if she took the bus home, she would get off the bus at 4:15 and it takes her about 30 minutes to walk those two miles so she wouldn't reach home until 4:45.

She asked instead if she can take the bus to her friend's house and then have a study date at her friend's house until I can pick her up for the class. (She has a million other reasons why she wants to do this, too; she really needs to study and if she comes home, she'll fall asleep; no matter what you say, she will come up with something.)

But if I pick her up from her friend's house rather than our house, that adds an additional 10 miles to my commute. My days right now are 5 am-8:30 pm. While 10 miles may not seem like that big of a deal in general, it is a big deal when you're already on 15 hour days.

Are my kids just particularly selfish? Does she just not care about how things affect me? Or is she a typical teenager who doesn't understand how big of a deal this is?

Very typical teenager. My 17 year old was/is the same. The universe aligned and we were able to get a good, reliable car for dirt cheap for her 16th birthday. She's also willing to run errands for us when we ask. She accepted from the beginning it's part of the dues she'll be paying for having the car.

[Anonymous 4]

Yeah, pretty typical. They want what they want now. A few years ago when my son was 15, I had just gotten home from taking his dad to the dr and it was very stressful as my dh could not drive or walk and he is getting worse (he has MS). So I was stressed and emotional from the appt. As soon as we get home our son asked if I could take him to the park to meet up with a girl he liked. I really did not feel like doing this at all with the day I had and of course my DH couldn't take him. It was very annoying but I drove him and then I picked him back up a couple of hours later. He said he was sorry for the day we had but of course still wanted to go to the park and needed a ride.

[Traci_Momof2]

It's part of being a teenager. I can look back at my teen years and I know that I saw things for how they affected me, not so much for how they affected other people. It didn't make me a bad person, and neither is your kid a bad person, it's just how the teenage mind works. It also doesn't mean you need to bend over backwards for her.

You didn't mention her age. Is she old enough to learn how to drive herself? If so, that should be her motivation to do so. If she's simply too young yet, then I personally would make more of an effort to drive her places, but I too would have my limit. I myself have teens who were/are hesitant to want to learn to drive. However, my teens are quite happy to be home-bodies so motivation to get places didn't work as well in my house. I also have a coworker with a 20-something who wants to go places but doesn't want to learn to drive. My co-worker says to her DD "you need to learn to drive if you want to go places" and the DD just chooses to stay home so it kind of backfired on her. But if I had a child who was old enough to learn to drive but just didn't want to learn to drive but wanted me to drive them everywhere I would use the word "no" a lot more often than if my child was too young to learn, KWIM?

[Aletheia]

My daughter is a social butterfly. If it were up to her, she would never be home. Every day, she wants to go hang out with friends, go to the gym, join a study group, etc.

Work out how many times a week you're comfortable driving her.

Let her know that, after she reaches that limit, you want 50% of what she'd pay for Uber, cash in advance. :)