Stop the world, I want to get off!

The title reflects how I was feeling this morning. I have since calmed down, but boy, was I mad!

Someone said to me last week that teenagers are designed to drive you crazy, that way you start to look forward to the day they leave home and don't try to hold on to them too long! Hmmm, there might be a grain of truth in there.

Both yesterday morning and today, L was ranting to me about how there's nothing to eat for breakfast. Bear in mind that he's been up all night, so is probably tired, but when I have just got out of bed the last thing I need is a whining complaining kid giving me hell.

I want him to eat well. I want him to choose healthy options. So when it comes to certain foods, I try to limit them or not buy them at all. I keep the sweetener in my bedroom so he doesn't help himself to it at night. If we have ketchup and mustard in the house, I often keep a tight rein on that too, or it gets slopped on bread by the gallon, along with a slab of vegan "butter"! Today he said he wanted to make pancakes for himself - but we only have a stainless steel frying pan, which makes a mess of pancakes, but I refuse to buy a non-stick pan for health reasons. He won't eat porridge - says I wouldn't let him put in enough sweetener so he could taste it. Smoothies are OK now and again. Fruit - nah, apparently the oranges and grapefruit that he's been eating at night are now making him feel sick, so those are out.

After a winter of inactivity, where the most physically challenging thing he did was walk upstairs from his bedroom to the kitchen, he's looking a little chubby, a little pale and pasty-faced. He sniffs and clears his throat constantly - too much mucus, I'd say. The other day he finally agreed with me that he needs to do a cleanse or at least change his diet a little - less stodge - because he's finally noticed he's not feeling that great. However, when it came down to it, he couldn't do it and was cooking himself great mounds of pasta and tomato sauce as usual.

I have to confess I don't receive L's whining well. As I said to my husband, all these parenting books (which I no longer read) tell you, as parents, how to communicate, how to deal with your kids, etc etc. I know that, as an adult, I should be the one to "set a good example" and "behave how I would like the kids to behave" and all that, but I'm afraid it all goes out of the window in the face of a whining kid. I am regrettably easily irritated, quick to give L the argument he's looking for, and hell yes, I want to have the last word, so it was a good thing that shortly after we "had words" this morning he went to bed and I had a chance to get over it (after a good cry).

I say we need fewer parenting books and more books for teens on how to be less selfish and self-absorbed!