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On last night’s Teen Mom 2,it was clear that there is a fate worse than being a teen mom. And that’s being the parent of a teen mom. Not all the teen moms lean on their parents unnecessarily. But the ones that do are often yelling at mothers who were teen moms themselves. And none of them seem close to growing up!
1. Don’t immediately assume your kid is inept; give him or her time to figure out how to be a parent
Ahem, Jenelle Evans‘ mom, Barbara. I waver between feeling badly for her and wanting to shut her the hell up. It seems like since Jenelle gave birth, Barbara has been bossing her around, instructing her on baby Jace’s every need. Their house is in a constant state of battle. Granted, Jenelle is the most irresponsible mom on the show; she wants to go out and party and assumes that her mom might as well watch her baby. But it looks like Barbara never gives Jenelle room to test out being a new parent, and then took away Jenelle’s custody of Jace. Leading into our next lesson learned…
2. Don’t allow yourself to be taken advantage of
Barbara! Why would you want to raise a baby when you just finished raising a teenager? As we saw in this week’s episode, Barbara seemed excited about the prospect of Jenelle moving an hour away to attend college. Yes, it’s good to be excited, but Jenelle should primarily be concerned with raising her son and being around for him. It’s as they both want to pretend that this baby never happened to either of them. Barbara, do yourself, Jenelle, and Jace a favor, and let Jenelle figure out how to be a mother. She might make some mistakes along the way, but she will figure it out. Otherwise, she will be a pot-smoking, late-night partying, stunted young adult forever.
2. Definitely don’t give your kid a house as motivation to achieve something
This is also known as a bribe. I’m looking at Chelsea Houska’s father, Randy.He gave Chelsea and Megan a new house as motivation for Chelsea to finish high school. Well, we saw on this episode how that worked out: Chelsea still hadn’t finished her five remaining classes and decided to work towards a GED, instead. Randy seems to have the best intentions and only wants the best for Chelsea, but clearly, this bribe is not working.
4. Don’t allow yourself to be disrespected
This applies to Kailyn’s baby-daddy, Jo Rivera and his parents. His parents appear to be smart and have an endless patience for Kailyn and Jo’s constant bickering. However, after Jo acted up, his parents nipped it in the bud and told him to get out. Jo immediately started thinking logically about the best thing to do for his son. Real-life situations like this will teach teen parents how to act once they move out of their parents’ house.
A lot of the girls on Teen Mom 2 are the children of teen moms. And for many of the moms of teen moms, the show is evidence of that old “what goes around, comes around” maxim. At least there’s flip side – in a few years someone might do to Jenelle as Jenelle has done to Barbara! Ha!
