Today someone asked me how many teenagers I had.
“Too many,”
was my response.
My youngest
child hit 13 last Friday. When my oldest
turned 13, I had a bit of a meltdown. I myself
had recently turned 37 – a number I considered, at the time, too close to
40. Having a teenager put me over the edge,
so to speak. I was officially “old” and
I didn’t take kindly to this milestone.
I comforted myself with the fact that I still had a child, in fact many
children, who were not teens. The
distinction was necessary to me.
My children’s
teen years so far have proved to be just about as difficult as I expected them
to be. Not horrific. Not a cake walk. In our house we have combated attitudes, body
odors, messy rooms, car accidents, defiance, overuse of the word “like,” ambivalence
and even some angst. The social and friend
stuff is always hard with the teens: such a difficult time that I remember with
painful clarity from my own life. Truly
one of the hardest parts of parenting is watching your kids hurt by other people. I have to believe that the pain makes them
stronger. I have to hope that the pain doesn’t
make them harder. I’m here to help model
channeling the hurt into something positive and not something destructive. Sometimes I succeed.
The frank teen
sex talks have had a different twist with every kid. I know now that the best talks happen in the
car – all eyes forward. No question is
off limits, and I generally throw in too much information. Enough to scare them. But also enough to teach them. Always trying to maintain the distance I think
needs to be maintained: I am their mother, not their friend. My latest bit of wisdom to one of my not-to-be-named
teenagers was, “I am on a need to know basis.
Like you doctor. If it isn’t
something you would tell your doctor, then don’t tell me” with the hopes that
the shock-value details will be reined in.
This bit of instruction is tailored to a specific child – like most of
my conversations with my children. I
hope that by the time they reach the teen years, I have come to know them well
enough to have the kind of productive conversations unique to each of
them. It’s definitely not one size fits
all.
My youngest
turning into a teenager has been harder to accept than the first born turning
13. Because with it came this realization:
I no
longer have small children.
I haven’t
fully grasped this concept yet. It’s
been 22 years since I first discovered I was pregnant. So for 21+ years …I’ve had a small or
small-ish child. Not having a “child”
feels less like a chapter ending and more like a whole library closing. For almost half of my life, I had a baby or
child in tow. Half. Of. My. Life. And now the last one is a teenager. And I know what that means. I’m going to blink, and he’ll be gone. Off discovering college and a whole new
exciting world.
And I’ll be
50 when that happens. Which to my 37
year old self is exceptionally old. Even
to my 45 year old self, 50 seems old.
Almost as old as having teenagers.
