How to Enrage Your Teenager

If you're a parent, you probably spend the greater part of your day trying to think of new, fun ways to enrage your teenager.  I mean, that's what we live for, right?

Well, I came up with a fun creative way that you can skip past "annoyed" and "bothered' and go straight to BERZERKER RAGE, so I thought I'd share.

Start off by letting your teen stay home and play video games while the rest of the family runs around to do activities, run errands, and other fun stuff like buying groceries.  This sets the table for the adventure to come.

As you're driving away from the house you notice that the front door was left wide open.  (This can be subbed for any of a number of other lame excuses to try and make contact with your teen - get creative!)  To rectify the issue you try and call your teenager on their cell phone.  The cell phone you pay for and that you know is literally within 6 inches of their hand.  This is step one because Gen Z kids use a cell phone roughly 23.5 hours a day, but DO NOT like to actually deal with phone calls and speaking with another human.

When your teenager doesn't answer, you enter Phase 2 where you try and text them.  Don't worry - this will be ignored too, but you're fanning the flames.

For the coup de gras, you're going to need to make sure that your child has some sort of additional device in their bedroom.  In our case, it is an Alexa.  Knowing that if you try and "drop-in" and use the intercom feature you'll also be ignored, you have to get creative.  You can turn the Alexa on to play music, but if you play anything your teenager likes they'll just think it was a pleasant glitch and move on.  Instead, you need to find something that is moderately annoying, and that you know will let the teen know it was you.  In my case, I tuned in to a Pandora station of silly little kid music.

BANG! WHAMMO!

Within 15 seconds my phone was ringing.

My teenager was overflowing with a volcanic eruption of rage, that was so overwhelming that he could no longer ignore it and was forced to speak with me.  The conversation wasn't exactly pleasant, but he did close and lock the door, so all's well that ends well.

Tune in next time when I'll explain how your breathing makes you annoying, and your mere existence is an embarrassment.