Our teens love to surprise us with their latest brilliant idea and my 16-year-old didn’t disappoint the other day. Almost literally waiting at the door for my return home, he accosted me with the urgency only a hormonal teen can bring.  “Dad, I hate high school and want to drop out and do independent study,” he declares.

I think I would’ve preferred, “Hey Dad, whas up?”

We sat down and he began his pitch.  The fact that all this followed a recent social disaster at school he quickly dismissed as irrelevant.  His rationale was that he is totally bored in high school, his teachers are boring, none of what he’s learning interests him, and he’d rather go back to home-schooling or “independent study,” as they call it at his high school.