Page Toppers

Theme Pages for Teens:

• Learning to drive, first car, copy of driver's license, changing a tire, first destination
• Locker decoration and memorabilia - and combination
• Favorite teachers, coaches, mentors and lessons learned from them
• After-school jobs, copy of first pay check
• Favorite clothes, fads and munchies
• Favorite places and hangouts - include photos, menus, tickets, etc.
• Applying for college, SATs, campus visits
• First date, dances, proms
• Current events and political interests
• Bedroom decor
• Weekend sleep schedule
• Activities and Achievements
• Popular music, television and movies
• Changing hairstyles, first shave, etc
• Blank pages for friends to sign

Quotes

• Adolescence is a time of rapid change. Between the ages of 12 and 17 a parent can age 30 years.
• Ask a teenager now while they still know everything.
• At fourteen you don't need sickness or death for tragedy. (Jessamyn West)
• The best substitute for experience is being sixteen. (Raymond Duncan)
• The best way to keep children at home is to make the atmosphere pleasant and let the air out of the tires. (Dorothy Parker)
• Boss to secretary: "I've got to call home. Send my daughter a telegram to get off the phone."
• Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own. (Doug Larson)
• If you want to recapture your youth, cut off his allowance. (Al Bernstein)
• Don't worry about knowing people, make yourself worth knowing
• I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. (Maya Angelou)
• The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way. (Judith Martin)
• It is not what a teenager knows that bothers his parents, it is how he found out.
• It rarely occurs to teenagers that the day will come when they'll know as little as their parents.
• Mother: "Nylons? Paula's mother lets her wear nylons?! But, honey - you're only in grade one! You're little girls. If you start wearing and doing grown-up things now, what will you do when you get to be a teen-ager?"
  Little girl: "Tammy's cousin shaved her head and painted half of it green."
• My kids idea of a hard life is to live in a house with only one phone.
• A normal adolescent isn't a normal adolescent if he acts normal. (Judith Viorst)
• Raising a teenager is like nailing Jell-o to a tree.
• Sixteen is the worst age to be. All the things you want most and all the things you can't have are exactly the same.
• Teenage boy: "Bleah, What *@*and# weather."
  Mother: "Watch your language. What's happening? Can't people express themselves anymore? Every movie, every conversation seems to be peppered with garbage words!! There are thousands of wonderful, descriptive words to choose from...why do people today constantly repeat the same stupid four-letter words?!!"
  Father: "Maybe they like to stick with the ones they can spell!"
• Teenage children are quick to correct the deficiencies of their mother and fathers so that those parents, in their old age, will be able to get along on their own.
• A teenage girl does her homework in the same length of time it takes her mother to do the dishes.
• Teenagehood - that time in life when you show your individuality by looking like everyone else.
• Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath. (Arnold H. Glasow)
• That's what being young is all about. You have the courage and the daring to think that you can make a difference. (Ruby Dee)
• There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate.
• To an adolescent, there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent. (Dave Barry)
• The troubles of adolescence eventually all go away - it's just like a really long, bad cold. (Dawn Ruelas)
• The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person. (Oscar Levant)
• You can tell a child is growing up when he stops asking you where he comes from and starts refusing to tell you where he's going.
• The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. (Quentin Crisp)
• The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication. (Aristotle)

Cover Girl

A teenage daughter, parents find,
From everything they've seen or read,
Is quick at making up her mind -
But slow in making up her bed.

A Party

It's always a party
When my friends are here.
We don't need streamers
Or balloons floating near.
'Cuz when we're together,
There's fun everywhere.
Our dreams are confetti
Tossed high in the air.

The Cat Years

I just realized that while children are dogs - loyal and affectionate - teenagers are cats. It's so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, boss it around. It puts its head on your knees and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting. It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.

Then around age 13 your adorable little puppy turns into a big old cat. When you tell it to come inside it looks amazed, as if wondering who died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your footsteps, it disappears. You won't see it again until it gets hungry - then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen to turn its nose up at whatever you're serving.

When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.

You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of depressed. It won't go on family outings.

Since you're the one who raised it, taught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble your efforts to make your pet behave. Only now you're dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward it wringing your hands, the more it moves away.

Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you have to learn to behave like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to you. But remember that a cat needs your help and affection too. Sit still and it will come, seeking the warm, comfortable lap it has not entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it.

One day, your grown up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big kiss and say, "You've been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes for you."

Then you'll realize your cat is a dog again.

A Child's Bill of Rights