>My Own Private Parenting Experts

Teenagers, as some of you have learned for yourselves, know everything.

Everything.

My own teen stepdaughters, though not parents themselves, know all there is to know about how I should be raising the two youngest Ferriers. Basically, anything done for them when they were kids was the absolute best, strike that, only way to do things, and if I deviate even slightly from the vague memories they have of their toddler days, I have to endure seemingly endless debates on why they were right and I am now wrong.

I’ve gotten pretty good about accomodating them where I can, saving my battles for arguments over things like the fly girl-style dance school that the girls attended when they were three (“Sure Punky can go there and dance to “Barbie Girl” in a bikini top and miniskirt! Over my dead, cold body!“). I’ve gotten so good, in fact, that I can even see their parenting advice coming before it has actually sprung from their wise and well-Dr. Pepper-chapsticked lips, and I can prepare myself to smile dumbly and give them a much nicer answer than, “What the hell are you talking about?!” or “I am a great mother! I don’t need your parenting advice!”

And so when I heard my 14-year-old start off with the words, “I read this study? And I found it really interesting?” as we ate our Mexican popsicles last Sunday afternoon, I could totally tell that the study would very likely involve evidence that somehow, some way, I was doing something wrong.

“The study said that children who drink formula have problems with obesity all their lives,” she said darkly.

Now this was a tough one. Eight-month-old Bruiser had always seemed to want more breastmilk than I had to give and I had long been supplementing his diet with a bottle of formula a day. Recently, he had decided to wean himself almost entirely, four months ahead of schedule, and I was struggling with guilt over switching him to formula long before I had planned to do so. So once my stepdaughter had spoken her Words of Wisdom, rather than answer immediately, I gritted my teeth and stared straight ahead of me at the road for a moment, trying to maintain my composure.

“Doesn’t Bruiser drink only formula now?” she prodded.

“Yes, and I’m hoping that in another thirty years or so, he’ll weigh five hundred pounds and be confined to his bed,” I said. No, I didn’t really say that!

“Yes, and from the little rolls on his legs, he’s obvioiusly struggling with baby fat already.” Nope. I didn’t say that, either. Instead, I took another breath.

“Bruiser still nurses once or twice a day,” I said finally. “And you know, I was raised only on formula, and so were most other people I know who are my age. And some of them actually aren’t struggling with obesity. So let’s just hope Bruiser’s going to be okay.”

Snit fit averted.

A few of my readers have wondered before whether I feel the need to justify my parenting decisions on my blogs sometimes because I’m worried about what you will say. Frankly, negative e-mails here and there don’t really bother me. It’s far more daunting to explain myself to my live-in parenting experts, who watch my every move, see both my good days and my bad, and have all kinds of “informed” explanations on everything under the sun.

In a warped way, this “knowledge” of theirs is one of the last remnants of childhood, evidence of this fantasy world we all lived in as kids in which we thought we knew everything. Pretty soon, they’ll be adults in the real world, getting their rear ends kicked by reality in a myriad of unpleasant situations, realizing at last that they know far less than they’d thought. It makes me sad to think of them losing the blustering confidence they have now in all of their opinions and ideas.

At least it does sometimes. Other times, like when I’m being criticized by the girls for not backing them in their efforts to save forever the bucket they used to puke in as kids every time they got a stomach virus? (I don’t know, maybe they wanted to bronze it?) A figurative kick in the rear by the big wide world sounds just about right.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.