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Teens, tilling and taxes |
Query: My teenager acts like I don’t exist—unless he wants a ride somewhere, or he can’t find something in the house because he threw it on the floor when he was done with it, and I put it away. What can I do? He was sweet, helpful, and well-mannered only last year. Will this continue until he goes to college? If so, I can hardly wait to get him packed, out the door and into debt.
—Frustrated on Fenton
Carrie: Remember how awkward and difficult the half-year ages were when he was a toddler? You know: the only toddler worse than a two-year-old is a two-and-a-half-year-old. It sounds like your teen has reached that point in this later developmental stage. I’m guessing that next year he’ll qualify to begin to learn to drive, and the year after that the young man’s fancy may well turn to preparing to enter higher education. But those two years can be long, with someone who’s got a case of the terminal surlies.
Sit your loved one down and share with him that driving privileges are not “automatic.” Inform him that if he can’t be civil to people he knows and loves, then he probably shouldn’t be driving, as there’s too much incivility on the road these days. Explain to him that it behooves him to greet all his family members at least once a day and that his participation in household chores lets you know that he’s become responsible enough to be trusted with larger responsibilities (i.e. the car).
It’s not the nicest way to go about raising a family, but this modified form of tough love should make a change in his behavior shortly. If it doesn’t, his issues may run deeper than you have supposed, and it could be time to seek counseling.
Query: We don’t get a lot of sun on our lot. Where we do, my husband insists we put in a vegetable garden and maximize the little light we get. He’s adamantly against flowers—he says he doesn’t want anything in the garden that he can’t eat. But I can’t help wanting a little color and sprightliness. Is there any kind of a compromise possible?
Carrie: You’re in luck. Co-planting isn’t limited to growing corn and beans on the same hill. Certain combinations of plants protect and/or increase the yield of the vegetable dramatically. Your ally here is the USDA. They have loads of pamphlets for which you can send away to tell you how to get more out of what you plant, whether you grow thousands of acres or only a few square yards. My favorite is marigolds around the tomato plants. If you’ve got a fruit tree, it will do better with alliums planted around the base, and they can be those charming ornamental varieties with the purple fluff-balls. (Sadly, my botanical knowledge is wider than it is deep, and I leave it to the readers to provide the correct descriptive for the allium in flower). Hop on the Internet and you’ll find you have an authority at your back whilst you plan out a garden—with high yield for him and gorgeous blooms for you.
Query: Why do people cheat on their taxes? My partner insists on “doctoring” her returns. Not in huge ways, I grant you, but still. I live in fear that the IRS will come in the night and take us away and ruin our credit rating and re-possess the house and then we’ll both go to jail for a million years. I can’t make her see that it just isn’t worth it to save a few dollars. She protests that the government shouldn’t have all that money of hers because it will be used for the military and the enforcement of laws which abrogate our civil rights. Can you think of anything I could say back to her to change her position on this?
Carrie: Whoa! Death and taxes inevitably bring up deeply held beliefs and ancient practices, passed on from one generation to the next. I don’t have to tell you that it’s not easy to convert a closely-held belief system. Happily, it doesn’t sound as though your partner is erecting icky tax shelters in the Caymans. So even if the IRS catches her, it’s probably only a matter of: a huge fine (because of all the penalties and interest) garnered directly from her wages over a period of half a decade; annual audits for several years—with frequent audits for the rest of her tax filing life thereafter; and many, many hours of community service in lieu of incarceration. I hope, for your sake, that you two aren’t legally conjoined. If you are, then all of this will apply to you as the spouse as well. That may be the argument that helps you reach critical mass. Good luck.
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