Eye rolling and being stupid

When I was a teenager, I remember how being around my dad always made me feel stupid. I remember his eye rolls, his moans, his shaking of the head. . .things that indicated that I was just acting like an idiot. Today, I got a glimpse of his perspective. My eldest was buying pop for her friends from a machine--even though it was 11:00 in the morning, and we had pop at home in bottles to be consumed for free. Okay, I can let her make this choice. But the machine was mostly empty and kept standing silent when the different buttons were pushed. At one point, Abby got frustrated because it wouldn't give her the pop she wanted and started to add more money to the machine. What?? Why would you add more money to a machine that won't give you what you want?

Now I have read research about teenage brains that my dad never had access to. Their frontal lobe is simply not developed. Their ability to reason and make decisions is very limited, compared to an adult. Knowing that these kind of judgments are actually hard for her physiologically helps me. On the way back to the car, I'm asking God, "Are we at least training her, God? Is she at least learning through this kind of situation?" How can I give her more and more freedom when she is apt to behave so...stupidly?

At some point in college, I remember stating that I simply had no common sense. I knew I was "smart"--I had scholarships and grades to back that up. But I had also gotten into a lot of embarrassing situations just by being stupid, by lacking judgment--and my dad's eye rolls were always in the back of my mind. The trick now is for me to help my daughter grow in her freedom, grow in her judgment, and still communicate my blessing. Of all the parenting articles I've read that address eye rolling, none of them have advised me about my own.