Fourteen-Year-Old Girls Edge Out Toddlers to Claim “Worst Age” Title

Move over, “Terrible Twos” — the “Frightening Fourteens” are officially the the worst age EVER.

At least two-year-olds are cute (says Candy before her kid reaches the terrible twos/threes… We’ll see how “cute” I think it is when Skye is kicking and screaming in Target’s toiletries aisle because I wouldn’t let her buy a razor).

According to a survey of 2,000 mothers and fathers of children over the age of 18, 14-year-old daughters are the most difficult to parent because of their desire to grow up too quickly, their demands for greater freedom and peer pressure to be thin.

Yup, that sounds about right.  Pretty sure that’s also the age at which I perfected the Disgusted Eye Roll and Frustrated Sigh.

Fifteen-year-old boys are no piece of cake either, say those surveyed.  Although parents were frustrated by the teens’ “bad” behavior, two-thirds of them chalked it up to raging hormones.

“We have to remember that as well as being the worst age for the parents, the teenage years are also the most difficult for the children themselves,” said Kathryn Crawford of TheBabyWebsite.com, which carried out the survey.

The best thing parents can do, says Candy, the clueless publisher of TheLaughingStork.com, is try to keep the lines of communication open and stock up on a lot of alcohol.