Tom Galvin wrote:
 > Shay wrote:
 >>
 >> Excellent. I need to find some pretext to have a long talk with
 >> my niece(13yo) about bad social habits.
 >
 > YMMV but I found repeated short conversations more effective at
 > that age.

Don't know many teenagers, but I think it depends on one's relationship 
with the kid. In a way, we're fairly close. I knew her parents before 
she was born and rented a room from them when my niece was a baby. She 
was calling me "Uncle Shay" before I had even met her aunt. On the other 
hand, I'm not an uncle to her like my uncles were to me.[1] My uncles 
had nearly as much authority over me as my parents. They could pull off 
preaching to me.

Back to the first hand, she does recognize that I am one of the few 
adults around her who acts like an adult (the rest [the exact type I 
would warn her to avoid] are needy and try to be her buddy). Teens are 
going to f*** up in life as part of their learning process, preaching or 
no. I feel the only thing within my "power" to do is give her a "heads 
up" and hope that helps her figure it out for herself a minute earlier. 
If I ever have a kid of my own, I'll be preachier - "Lie down with dogs 
and you get up with fleas" will be written on the nursery wall.

  -Shay

[1] I've even agreed with her to drop the "uncle." I have no kids 
myself, so have become "Uncle Shay" to all of my in-laws (gets old 
quickly). That's been curbed a bit since the 13yo dropped it, but I 
still have one more (4yo) niece to go. I don't want to be "Uncle Shay" 
(I had an "aunt" Fritzie) to my wife's entire family when I'm 80 years 
old. After they finish school, my nieces will most likely be 
near-strangers I see once a year on Christmas anyway. I can live with 
their foregoing my proper title.

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