Leeann is right: it’s been awhile since I’ve written about the kids or put up photos of them. It’s gotten difficult to talk about them: Rob made me self-conscious and nervous by asking a lot of questions about my blog, so now I know he could theoretically read anything I write here. Is there any way to say “Some days I hear other people talking about how much they want children and I think ‘No, no, don’t do it, save yourself while you still can'”—in a way that your children can safely read it?
I don’t think they’re LIKELY to read it, though. My mother saved a box of all her journals, fantasizing about how she would let her daughter read them one day—and when that magical day finally arrived, I read part of one and was completely uninterested in reading more. Repelled, even. It seems reasonable to assume my children would feel the same way about reading my journals. Still, the idea that they could do it so easily, and with a search feature—it’s off-putting.
A general summary of how things are going right now is that as the children get older, I am getting out of the stage I basically like (not all of it, of course, but in the sense that I was glad I’d made the decision to have kids), which is babies and little kids (like, up to pre-adolescent). And as we get out of that stage, I am not very happy about it (even though I felt like I was ready to be done with it), because I don’t like the stage that’s happening now.
I realize it’s ridiculous, because it’s not like the literature doesn’t explain how this works, but I feel like I signed on for one kind of life and got another kind of life. It’s as if I thought long and hard about a pet, and decided after much research and reflection to get a pet caterpillar. It’s not that I don’t like butterflies, but that’s not what I wanted. Now I’m stuck taking care of a pet that’s completely wrong for me.
And what can I do about it, right? Nothing, that’s what. It’s the very thing that’s so scary about deciding to have children in the first place: there’s no way to know if you’ll like it or not, and if you DON’T like it, there’s no way to take it back. I can read the pamphlet and understand that the butterfly stage will arrive—but there’s still no way to know if I’ll like it or not. And if the caterpillar stage had gone so much better than feared, why wouldn’t the butterfly stage be the same way? But it isn’t.
Rob is almost 14, and he’ll be going to high school next year. Elizabeth’s Brownies troop has their meetings there, so I’ve been in the building a few times; it’s the same building where I went to high school, so that’s freaky. I had what was probably a mild-but-actual panic attack the first time I took her in there: there were several dozen high school kids hanging around (there was a sports event going on in the gym), and I was looking at them and thinking about how extremely stupid and powerful they are at this stage. It’s like when a small child’s mobility exceeds his brains, so he can move all over the house looking for ways to kill himself—just like that, but with cars and sex and alcohol, and with future career/family happiness on the line. Why was I worried about my stupid baby, when I could easily make him safe by putting him in a playpen or strapping him into a high chair?
Meanwhile, I feel like I live my life constantly on the verge of being drawn into a bewildering confrontation. Rob can be so nice and so companionable, working side-by-side with me in the kitchen getting dinner ready—and then five minutes later I feel like I have to stay calm and think fast so the troll under the bridge will be tricked into letting me pass. I dislike confrontations. I especially dislike confrontations where I am making complete sense on a very simple topic, and yet what I’m saying has no effect on the other person at all—a person who is suffering the delusion that HE is making complete sense. It’s like some sort of game: can I get out of this conversation alive AND without getting exasperated to the point of temper AND without crying later in private? If this were my spouse instead of my child, I would be secretly siphoning money out of the checking account in preparation for escape.
And then, most of the blogs I read by other parents of teenagers are self-conscious about writing too, or else only cover the good stuff. So I see basically a series of snapshots of the “nice and companionable working side-by-side in the kitchen” part of life, and it feels like everyone else’s teenagers only do that part, and also are SO GREAT AND FUN AND AWESOME to hang out with, while mine is defective and I’m screwing the whole thing up. It’s like having a newborn and having mixed feelings about the experience, but finding nothing but bloggers writing about how over the moon they feel, and how they were always meant to be mothers, and how they feel fulfilled like never before—and it’s either all true, which is terrible and discouraging, or else all of it is lies because those mothers don’t want their babies to grow up and read the blog and feel bad. Either way, USELESS.
William is 11 and in the 6th grade, and I see him as the next of four more train cars coming unstoppably down the track. Or as the next of four more cocoons forming on the twig, to avoid introducing a second metaphor. He’s grown much taller and he needs deodorant, which are like Signs of the End Times for childhood. He’s mostly still the same kid he was in elementary school, but with weird outbreak moods: I’ll ask him to wipe up the honey he spilled while making a sandwich, and he will go dark and moody and STOMP and SLAM as he does it, with me absolutely perplexed. Is it not fair that I asked him to do it? HE spilled it! Who ELSE should clean it up? And I asked perfectly pleasantly! Why do we seem to be in the middle of a Scene, then?
The twins are 7, and in the 2nd grade. One of the huge upsides of having lots of kids and/or wide spacings is that the kids in one stage make me appreciate the kids in a different stage exponentially more than I would have otherwise. When Rob was a second grader, I wasn’t seeing him as adorable and sweet and little-kiddish the way I currently see the twins with the contrast of middle schoolers. I wasn’t noticing that I could still pick him up or pull him onto my lap, and mentally calculating how many more months that might last. …Well, actually, that’s because Rob even as a NEWBORN didn’t want to be picked up. But with William, say: I didn’t appreciate 2nd grade William in the same way I currently appreciate the twins, because when William was in 2nd grade, the twins and Henry were tiny, so William was a big kid (and I did appreciate him in that way, because of having littler kids). The twins, though, are 2nd graders and still caterpillars, and the butterflies make me notice this. They’re in an exasperatingly forgetful/disorganized stage, but who cares? They’re only 7! Look how cute!
And Henry! Henry would be making me wring my hands with worry and despair if I didn’t have the middle-school kids. He can be so WILD and ROUGH and HEEDLESS, and I feel like I have to tell him everything a million times. But it’s like when you have your second newborn, and instead of thinking “I’VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE AND I’M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG” like with the first baby, you think, “Eh, this is just a stage. It can be hard, but it’ll be over soon.”
I try to make myself see the entire butterfly stage that way, but I’m not finding that to be possible. It feels as if the entire pregnancy/baby/little stage is over, which it really IS, and that the butterfly stage stretches into the entire future, which maybe it does. Just as some people really don’t like the baby/little stage, I may be someone who doesn’t like anything else.
I don’t think I have anything comforting to say as I’m not further down the road than you are– a little behind with one almost exactly William’s age and one in the twins/Henry zone.
My bigger one is very much as you describe William, mostly sunny with occasional (and mostly inexplicable) outbursts. They tend to last about 5 minutes but I wonder what they portend. And the little one is in that nice early elementary school phase– getting pleasingly independent but still cute. (This is one of MY favorite phases– I’m not so big on babies). If anything I’d like her a just a little older so we can read more interesting books. I think I’ll freeze her at around 8 or 9. Sound good?
i like this post very much even though i have no advice. well, except this: i work with teenagers in my Real Grown Up Job, and what I have learned in this: teenagers kind of suck, for both parties, kids and adults. but they can also be surprisingly awesome, when they aren’t sucking. and then everybody gets through it, eventually, even if sometimes there is yelling and crying, and in the end, you get grandchildren.
I don’t have much insight since I was just an observer as my husband dealt (and is still dealing with) his 4 teenagers. I will say it sucked – still sort of sucks – but is getting SO much better as they age. As a matter of fact, they seem to be turning into actual people who sit and talk and have normal opinions and reactions and are perfectly pleasant. I didn’t necessarily see that coming a few years ago. 20 seems to be a good age.
OMG. OMG, I love you. YES. I get it.
In fact, I did stop my blog (or at least, put it on a hiatus of sorts) because it was so hard to write about my kids without it seeming wholly unfair to them. MY oldest was checking my blog religiously and quite honestly, being that she is 17, she was the one that I would find myself furiously planning blog posts about on a semi-regular basis. It was at these moments when I desperately wished I had written an anonymous blog that my kids knew nothing about, because the healing through writing would be extraordinary. But then the fantasy continues that the blog so STRIKES A CHORD with all the other parents of teenagers that it becomes well known and then my identity would be OUTED and my kids would hate me. So I grumble and write angry blog posts in my head in which I always emerge VICTORIOUS with my teens groveling at my feet.
We don’t have big arguments really at all, it is the stupid small stuff that tends to get in the way. And man oh man, do I get Bewildered. There are times when I am sure what I am about to say is going to start a conflict and it doesn’t and I get a little snap of surprise. But then, I’ll say something purely innocuous and there will be ATTITUDE and a COLD SHOULDER and I am sort of standing there like WTF?
My middle child is a much milder kid, very pleasant on the whole. Oddly,I find it much more aggravating when HE gets upset or angry. THIS IS NOT ALLOWED! YOU ARE THE NICE ONE! I think to myself, while realizing that is patently unfair, the boy deserves to have feelings. But I don’t care, I want him all sweet and cuddly for always because I have the two tempestuous bookends.
And the last one? He is me, coming back in a more aggressive alpha male form, and I feel like we live in a bipolar swing of me admiring his humor and creativity and cuteness and then believing there is no way I will survive this child to his adulthood and how many years is it and if it like this now then dear mother of god how in the world will I make it through his TEEN YEARS and then I just stop thinking about it and eat something sweet.
I guess with teens I just try to treasure the times that are good and hope like hell that the hard times will pass. I also try to to make their rooms as appealing as possible so when they are grumpy they will USE THEM.
Oh, and the final exhausting thing? Having kids up late. Like, I miss the days of no kids being around after 8 PM. You know? As a parent, I totally suck after 9 pm and I’m trying to teach them this.
Third time I’m trying to post. I will say that yes, this stage I’m in is very scary with the attitudes out of nowhere, the angriness, the fact that they can drive, can drink (3 of ours are “of age” now) and at least 2 are having sex. (protected, ages 19, 22). One dropped out of college with one semester left with no plan and no job. I do NOT like this stage. I’m muddling through with less sleep (like Leeann says–they are up VERY late or you are up VERY late waiting for them to arrive safely). The further we get away from 21 the better it seems. Sigh. No one really thinks about this stuff when they think “I want a BABY!!!” LOL. We all survive somehow.
Leeann- YES, THE UP LATE. Sometimes they are up AFTER WE GO TO BED. That feeling of always always always having kids around and never having the house to ourselves—ACK.
Mine are 19 (F), 14 (F), and 4 (M). No, didn’t plan the last one. Actually didn’t plan any of them, but it works out pretty well. I feel like I’m in the same place as you, and a little ahead. Nicole, the oldest, oh, dear. I’m not sure HOW we survived her becoming a teenager and growing up! The eye rolling, foot stomping, inconsiderate, unruly, illogical stupidness!!! Some days I just wanted to punt her over a fence. But then there would be the flashes of fun and togetherness and I basically just got through the rest by living for those moments. Now she’s 19 and still making dumb decisions, but I can at least talk to her about them more easily, and, on the whole, we get along fairly well. In fact, sometimes I laugh so hard with her I cannot breath. Annamarie, the middle child, is just starting to get in the groove of the eyerolling, etc., mess, but she’s not as bad as she is much more easy going than her sister. But she is waaay less logical, so the arguments are harder to deal with. But there are fewer. And I know it will get better because it did with her sister, so maybe that makes it easier too? Then there’s Alex. Having him so late has made me really appreciate his baby and childhood so much more than the girls. I constantly pushed for the next stage with them – oh when they can sit up it will be easier, when they can walk we can can do this, etc. With him, I’m just enjoying each step as it comes along, although the mobility but no sense stage of 18 – 36 months was still hard. Even harder because he’s a boy and has no fear. I do have to say that if you’re going to have another kid at 44 with whom you end up with terrible sleep apnea, it’s a WONDERFUL idea to have a 14 year old on hand. She was and is such a god send with him. Literally saved my life. And Annamarie is his favorite toy. I am soooo thankful for the way the sisters love, play with and give attention to their brother. Makes me way less likely to kick them over fences when they become crazy.
BTW, my 11 year old reads my blog. It started with just a post or two when he was 9 or 10, but now he reads them all. (And last night he pointed out I haven’t written a new post in 3.5 weeks). It does change what I can write a little bit, but I like that he comments. It’s a new way to communicate with the digital generation. It’s possible it might become more awkward as he gets older. We’ll see.
My nine year old reads my blog too. If fact, she often asks me, “Are you going to write about this?” And she asks with a gleam in her eye. She loves it (for now) when I write about her.
She’s my oldest and we’re just getting to the eye rolling stage. She will often mutter, “Fine!” at me which gets her a fierce look but so far, she’s a great kid.
Her sister, who is six, will probably be more challenging but I don’t want to think about that these days. Right now she still loves to be cuddled and held and babied so we’re going with that.
Wow. I don’t have a blog, so that part isn’t applicable to my life at all. However, I HATED all of the stages after babyhood and before middle-school. Like, with a WHITE.HOT.PASSION.HATRED. Seriously. I am more and more in love with my teenagers each day, so I am genuinely sorry that yours are causing you sadness.
I only had the one – so I had a hard time understanding the “it’s only a phase” thing for a long while. But I have to say, for us, the 12-14 age was the hardest – it seems that is when his hormones kicked into overdrive and he was moody and unpredictable. Once we got past that, life was a bit smoother – not without it’s moments, but smoother.
ok, my boys are 18 (ACK!), 16, 14 & 12. I find 12 highly annoying. Like I’m ready to ship him off somewhere. And 18 is good so far (about a week now) but as Gigi said for us the worst is 11-14-ish depending on the kid. And the arguments that make no sense – YES! I was beginning to think it was me. Most of the time we are in a good place these days but there are days I just send them to their room. I always hear how boys become reclusive but I have not found that. My 14 y/o is the most reclusive and as I said, there are days I wish they all were. THE FIGHTING. Gah! Take heart though, they do get better. More of the companionable and less of the senseless hormonal fits.
My kids are almost 7 and almost 3 and I have to say, keep on writing, please! There are so few real blogs out there. I don’t need the ‘my family is so wonderful’ blogs and I don’t need the ‘mommy drink vodka and is so funny’ blogs. There’s a real lack of actual, sucky life blogs which is a shame because everyone’s life sucks to some degree and we should all feel like there are other people out there who can identify. Thank you for writing what you do!
Teens are so hard – so very hard. From my experience, most parents hate parenting teens most of the time. Mine are now 21 and 24. At our extended family Christmas celebration, my son was talking to my brother and in passing commented that some kids in his grade in high school didn’t have “good parents” like he did. I…I was stunned. I sat quietly and took it in, because this is not at all what he would have said when he was between the ages of 13 and 20.
There will be moments, even days, that you will enjoy them when they are teens. It is hard, though, and I will bet there will be parents of children the same age with whom you can commiserate. That helps.
Very interesting. I am still waiting for my four year old to act like a human being.
Stupid and powerful. This is like Dalai Lama insightful. And terrifying. But really poignant.
I am on the cusp of the crazy with a soon to be 12 year old. (God, I think my heart just stopped in my chest.)
We will make it. It is going to work out fine.
I had a hard time with my stepdaughter – I “got her” at 7, and so I missed a lot of the caterpillar stage, only to be thrust quickly and rather perplexedly into the butterfly stage early on (she hit teenager of doom stuff around age 12) (exited around 14).
I think one thing that helps — which doesn’t help NOW because he is your oldest – is this idea of “Eh, this is just a stage. It can be hard, but it’ll be over soon.””
You can’t see it now because he’s your first kid to hit this, but: even though he’s not old enough to be a kid, that doesn’t mean he’ll be a dick teenager forever. It really does and will get better. AND, each kid manifests their teenagerness in different ways; my oldest brother was basically a nightmare and my next brother overcompensated to NOT be a nightmare because he saw how that impacted the family.
It’s a stage. Really really. A shitty one, sure, but not an endless one.
I can relate to SO much of this post, oh my gosh. I can provide a bit of hope, though — my kids are now 18 and 22, and especially with my 22 year old, it is a whole different world from when he was 13-19 years old.
Back then, I used to go to bed and count how many years til he was off to college and out of the house. Seriously. It was so stressful and I hate confrontation just like you do.
Now he is completely pleasant, fun to be around, and has (more than once) apologized profusely to both me and my husband (his stepdad) for his behavior/attitude in his younger days. He’s actually thanked me for being strict and not giving in to his BS. This is coming from a kid I was pretty sure we’d never hear from again once he got out of the house.
My daughter is younger, still a bit immature and prone to making wild, impulsive, bad decisions so I am still on the roller-coaster ride with her. But I have hope!! I’m counting the years…maybe 3-1/2 more years until she’s All Grown Up? lol
Hang in there, and You Are Not Alone.
You are right and smart and say the things that need to be said!
I remember being told that early teens/late adolescents are just like toddlers — irrational, headstrong, prone to tantrums. Desperately wanting independence but not knowing what to do with it or how to treat it responsibly. Does that analogy help at all?
BTW, my son is 3 weeks away from being 18 and has come out of the Dark Period to be such an incredibly lovely, LOVELY young man. I’m just girding my loins for what my almost-13 year old daughter has in store for me!
Stay strong.
“If this were my spouse instead of my child, I would be secretly siphoning money out of the checking account in preparation for escape.”
Brilliant.
Kids suck. And there’s so many variations on the possibilities for suckage that I can’t even begin to enumerate. If we knew how much they sucked we’d all sterilize ourselves at the age of 20 and the world would disappear.
It’s why grandchildren become the beacon of hope for the future. Because they’re the very thing you’d hoped for when having children, before you realized how much kids suck.
This, too, shall pass. Really. It shall.
I’m pretty sure I’ve left this exact comment before, but anyway…Substitute 13 yo girl for 13 yo boy and your life is my life. I feel your pain, sister! Honestly what help me the most is reminding myself that ‘It’s normal and expected!’ I even carry that that thought further down the path with ‘It would be developmentally inappropriate for everything to be sunshine and kittens at this age!’
This is why there is vodka.
I don’t have any teenagers (yet, my kids are 5,3,1) but I teach them and I have found that MANY of there parents are so pleased and surprised when I tell them what a nice/cooperative/likeable/responsible son/daughter they have. I don’t know how long that feeling lasts for them but I hope some of them sleep just a little easier one night thinking, “okay, I haven’t raised a through-and-through-miserable asshole.” I can see though how some (many? most?) teens would not bother trying to out-miserable a whole class but get a much bigger kick out of making a whole family miserable.
I looove the baby stage. We have three kids (12, 9, and 4), and I so miss the baby stage. Our two oldest often stay up later than we do. The bonus? I love quiet mornings when they sleep in.
My oldest isn’t even 2 yet, so I can’t exactly commiserate yet (though I have a feeling I’ll be right where you are eventually!) but I know my mom loves kids and had a ROUGH go around with a lot of us kids during the adolescent years (car accidents and broken bones and hospitalizations, oh my!) but she always says that eventually then they grow up and become more like your peers and friends than the kids you’re trying to make last till adulthood. So maybe if you can just get them through the butterfly life cycle, then after that they go get their own caterpillars and you guys can be buddies again :)
Yesterday a friend, the mother of a seventeen year old girl, told me that I was doomed as I look forward to my two daughters going through the teens in just a few years. Her daughter is lying to her face and being uncooperative. I figure I am doomed in some ways but denial and optimism keep me going. After all, I will have all the free fashion advice I could want. My girls are 8 and 11. The oldest has always been moody so we’re not unaccustomed to stormy emotional weather. The best part is looking forward to knowing them at those older ages. I think you will be surprised to like them again sooner than you think.
My phone ate my comment. Go look at @lightshaus and be mortified with me. Some days on Twitter are not SO bad and others are TERRIBLE and I have no control over this child I raised. None. Plus he’s learning how to be a complete f$%&king a$$h0l3 from his father each and every day.I look at my precious littles and dread the future some days. Other days I put my head in the sand.
Do you know that I have been feeling vaguely guilty for the last four years about feeling repelled about reading my mom’s sentimentally saved journals from my childhood. My mom was SO EXCITED about how we were going to bond over new motherhood after Elizabeth was born and she handed over these journals with her eyes glistening. And I had to FORCE myself to read them. I hated it. I gave them back to her, telling her that I had loved reading them but I was sure she would want to keep them for herself. But honestly, it was because I HATED reading them and wanted them gone. And I can’t even explain why I hated reading them. I just didn’t want to read my mom’s feelings about me losing my first tooth.
This whole post leaves me feeling very hyperventilatey.
But! I am cheered by the thought that MANY teenagers go on to have fine, loving, mutually-respectful relationships with their parents as adults. That wouldn’t happen if they remained in the Horrid Teen period forever, right? No, is the answer. It would not happen. Parents would shove them out of the nest and move to Australia.
I am also cheered – for you – that there are many different TYPES of teenager. You have five kiddos – surely they will not all be the same flavor of teen! My brother and I were SO DIFFERENT as teenagers – my husband and his sister were different, too. So there are bound to a be a few… moths instead of butterflies in your group!
This made me laugh, because it made me think of good friends of mine who have a world’s loveliest 17yr old… and I remember hanging out over there one evening while she threw an ENDLESS fit/pity party/crying jag over being forced to take her turn doing dishes (they use a sign-up system). Oh the unfairness! the sobbing-texting-washing one dish-sobbing! Wow.
But she is amazing, and will be a lovely, wonderful adult woman. Assuming she survives that long. ;)
HereWeGoAJen- OH, I am SO GLAD to find someone who felt the same way!! Especially with so many bloggers writing their blogs for their children to read later, I’ve wondered if I was an unusual exception or what! I definitely don’t write my blog (or my baby journals) for my kids, because I assume they’ll feel repelled as I did. (I write them for my own old age, to read and re-read in my single room at the nursing home.)
I like it when you write about your kids. You re very honest and it makes you seem more real.
I have baby stage babies and I am terribly worried about what is to come when I no longer have control.
I also deal with teens in my career on a daily basis and I will say I have not met one yet that I much care for.
This post is both terrifying and comforting and I’m glad my blog is defunct and I’m feeling a depressed kinship with all parents everywhere. Possibly the margarita talking. But.
I think it is normal to really like and dislike certain stages….even if those stages are like decades-long. I try to find the benefit of each stage. I like the toddler-stage, but as my kids get older and less needy (except for G because he’s just weird), I find I am able to enjoy me time again a bit, and that is something I have missed. But don’t listen to me. I mean, I chose to teach middle schoolers. On purpose! So I’m more than a little bonkers.
I worked with middle and high school students before I had kids and I loved them but I’m guessing it will be different when I have to parent them. My babies are 4 and 6 now so I have a little time left, although my 6-yr-old has perfected her eye roll and exasperated sigh already.
Yes! This! I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m in such a funk and why the next 15 or so years look so BLEAK, and this is why! I wanted caterpillars, I LOVE caterpillars, I know what to do with caterpillars! I am not liking the butterflies so much, and the butterfly years are going to be so much longer than the caterpillar years =(.
Thank you for writing this! As usual, it’s nice to know it isn’t just me.
This is a fantastic post I’m bookmarking for all time. I just wanted you to know that.
Oh, you have hit the nail on the head with your descriptions. My own son will be 11 in a few days and fits somewhere between your two oldest in terms of emotional stability. Just yesterday I had to jack him up (to use a phrase of my mother’s) and it left both of near tears. I only said 3 sentences, didn’t yell or swear, and yet he was devastated. A couple hours later he was fine. I’m thankful that the storms are quick but live in a constant state of edginess waiting for them.
I’d also like to second your experience with your mother’s journals. My mom didn’t save journals, but she wrote me letters when I was baby and
no. No. No. No. Can’t read them. And I love my mother. We get along very well, I think.
It’s a very interesting reaction, however. I haven’t managed to dissect it yet…but it’s one of those things I think about from time to time.
What I’m so pleased to see is that there’s been little in comments in the way of “but it’s so WRONG to dislike a stage.” I remember a while ago there was a carousel of bloggers doing a “It Get Better, Parenting Toddlers Version” and there was quite a bit of tongue clicking about terrific, not terrible twos and such.
The part about “Save yourself while you still can”? That is the kind of honesty those of us pondering procreating need to read. And maybe that’s why so many blogs end up password-protected.
I was a huge PITA, it started in something like grade 3, and I don’t think it got better until I moved several states away for several years. But nowadays my mom is always saying how great I am and how proud she is (and how desperately she wants grandbabies). Dad is more sobering, saying things like “you better make sure you’re ready” and “your life is never the same afterwards.”
And I’m about to hit 35-and-a-half, and I still don’t know what to do, and it’s so scary.
I have an only child, largely because my ‘I’VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE’ moment lasted until he turned, oh, FIVE. (I discovered early on that temperamentally, I’m just not well-suited to dealing with babies and little kids. Oops.)
My son is seven now, and I’m really enjoying him—but who knows what will happen when he hits the middle school/high school years. Based on hanging out with my nieces and nephews, I THINK I really hit my stride with kids somewhere around age 12, but every kid is different, and my guy is…not on the mellow end of the spectrum.
Assuming we both make it through unscathed, I AM really looking forward to having an adult child, though.
Love this post.
I have approximately zero teenagers in my life right now, but I taught teenagers for several years and I KNOW what a difficult age it is. I think you do a fantastic job of describing it like a baby who can move, but isn’t smart enough. Teenagers have these great big bodies and they want to be big, but they’re brains are significantly behind. That AND they have so many hormones coursing through their bodies that it’s like it actually makes them crazy. Hormone poisoning. I will say two things, though. Boys mature later and as a result, will suck later, but I believe that 17 is a magical age. The nature of my job was that I would have the same students for many years in a row and seventeen was like someone waved a wand and turned annoying, terrible boys in men. Seventeen is fantastic. Girls, on the other hand, can start trying your patience as early as 11, but they’re usually done with the shenanigans earlier.
Not that any of this makes this stage easier, but it does end. And in the very center of that ball of hormones and confusion is the same kid you’ve always had–it’s just harder to see.
Kind of morbid, but maybe having a living mother affects your feelings about her journals? There are things about my childhood that I can’t ask my mom anymore and I wish desperately that she had left journals of those times.
Linda- I also can picture it being the sort of item where if I didn’t have it, I might think it was something I wanted: it wasn’t until I tried reading the journals that I realized I really didn’t want to. Or, yes, if my mother was dead, I might also feel differently: I’ve noticed that people whose parents died young tend to think about them the way we fantasize our children will think about us one day. So if I die young, it’s nice to know my children will have the option to read my stuff, whether or not it turns out to repel them.
Oh, Swistle, I love this post so much. Please leave it up forever, so when my kids are on the verge of butterflydom I can come back to read it. Although, I have to admit that a large part of why I’m always babbling about makeup these days is that I am finding my little threenager to be so challenging that I’d rather escape to talk about something fun instead of going on about how I’d like to return her to the kid store (my version of my mom’s favorite threat – “I’m gonna send you to the Gypsies”).
“If this were my spouse instead of my child, I would be secretly siphoning money out of the checking account in preparation for escape.”
I love this line.
Maybe it would be easier to view the teenage years as the pupa stage… and the adult years, where we will ideally have a genial and friendly relationship with our children, as the butterfly years. :D
I love this post, Swistle.
I hate the under-12-months stage. I don’t like babies. I don’t want to hold other people’s babies. I don’t want to have more kids mostly because I don’t want to have to go through the baby stage again. I think it’s good that way because I’m done with it now and don’t have to dread it anymore. Hopefully I’ll be able to deal with the teen stage too. Ugh. My husband LOVES babies, and I think he’ll probably struggle w/ teens. YAY FUN FOR EVERYONE.
I found this post to be absolutely riveting, and wonderful in every way. I want to save it forever to refer to as needed.
The thought of having multiple *adult* children (and a bunch of grandkids one day) sounds pretty nice to me, but having to do the pregnancy/baby/toddler/teenager thing more than once has me firmly planted at one child.
I often wish I could conjure an older sister for my daughter, because I don’t want to have another baby, but she would LOVE having a big girl around (and I think it would be neat for her to have a sister generally, and hey! instant big-kid!).
We are eight, and I decided to be all pre-emptive with the science and explained hormones at the same time I explained periods. I told her there would be times in the next ten years in which she would become inexplicably ragey or sad and I would do my very best not to take it personally, but she might have to go to her room until she could get like Animal in the latest Muppets movie: IN CONTROL. She asked why that has to happen and I said who knows, I’d also like to know why the lining of our uteri has to trickle out between our thighs once a month, but it’s SCIENCE!
Parent of the year, over here. I’m trying to remind myself it is normal human development for the frontal lobe to go offline until 29. If my girl is anything like I was as a teen, I’m in for a wild ride.
Your post is awesome.
I have never commented here before (came over from 5 Star Friday) but I just wanted to say thanks for saying what I’m too afraid to admit. I love babies and I love older kids and teens, but now my daughter is 7 and in second grade and I am finding I really don’t like this age and it’s making me fearful of the future, not knowing what feelings I am going to have with parenting later on. Cause you are right – you THINK you will feel a certain way about parenting, you might even BELIEVE you will feel that way, but you don’t really know. I certainly didn’t know, and now I’m like.. dang. It’s hard to feel that way about parenting. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love my daughter and happy to have her, but would I be happier if I’d made another choice? … Ugh. Forgive me…. Probably.