Mid-CenturyModernMoms

The Pros And Cons Of Raising Teenagers

Yes. Believe it or not, there are several advantages to parenting teens. Let's see if I can pull my brain together enough to get a few down here.

The positive list is first. The negative/educational list is later.

1. Teens are addicted to computers. If you own several computers the teens will leave you alone until the cows come home. That means they forget about food and phone calls and television. You can watch what you like, eat whatever you want and even talk on the phone without being bothered.

2. Teens sleep in, every day. This means you can sleep in as well, assuming you don't have a job to go to or a class... The house is very quiet when the teens are sleeping, nice and silent.

3. Teens will always eat pizza. If you forget to make dinner, pizza is only a phone call away.

4. Teens leave their dirty clothes on the floor. If you have a dirty carpet~NO ONE will ever know. They cannot see the carpet through the clothes.

5. Teens like to stay up late. You will never feel lonely again at 2am. Your teen will be awake with you.

6. Teens love to eat late at night. Here's your excuse for a midnight snack. "Oh hi honey, I was just making the kids some food." (He/she'll never know you planned on eating as well.)

7. Teens are messy everywhere~this means you can blame them even if you made the mess. This is very handy if you have a spouse who's anal-retentive.

8. Teens NEVER fill the gas tank. Something else you can blame on them. "Sweetie, I just filled it. Fido must have used the car and all the fuel I put in it."

9. Teens forget to turn off lights. You'll never come home to a dark house while you have teens.

10. Teens eat lots. When they are old enough to drive, they are old enough to do the grocery shopping for you. This is very advantageous for those of us who detest grocery shopping.

For all of you who have younger children or no children, let's talk about teens. Don't be scared...well, really smart parents are scared. Teenagers are frickin' scary!

Janice's not-so-well-known facts about teenagers.

1. Teens are full of drama and angst and over-reaction. Full of it. When BBB was 13/14 all I had to do is glance his way to elicit this angry response: "What? WHAT? Why are looking at me thatway?" Dang boy I was flipping my hair off my face. I did not even mean to look his way. YIKES. The really fun days were when he got home from junior high, slammed the front door shut and stomped right on past me. The best way to react: IGNORE their presence until they seem calmer.

2. Just when you you get a grip on how to handle new and exciting behaviors, they change. Get to used to it. At 19 BPB still does this. Life with a teen is rarely if ever predictable.

3. Be prepared to have your teen ignore you and if anyone they know is close by they will pretend that have never seen you before. DO NOT embarrass your child by saying Hello to anyone. Pretend to be invisible!(I, personally, love messing with my teens' minds, so I would always introduce myself to anyone that was even close by.)

4. (AHEM)If male teens spend extra time in the bathroom do not knock on the door and scream, "What is taking you so long in there??". Trust me on this one.

5. Teens love to think they are independent. They will want you to drive them to and fro, here and there, up and downtown and everywhere but they will want you to let them go out of the car without a kiss goodbye, without you sticking your head out the window and screaming: "Hey my honeybabysugar! I love you!!!" This will cause your teen to turn beet red and flee from sight rapidly, maybe never to return. ( No suck luck. They always come home~they know where the money and food are.)

6. Teens sleep ALOT! Particularly boys between the ages 13-17. My BBB took naps last summer because he was so tired from growing. They will grow! One day you need to look down to meet their eyes. The next day they are looking down at you. It's disconcerting.

7. Teens eat 24 hours, 7 days a week. Not kidding! Get ready to serve up seconds and thirds and fourths. Also try to have snacks on hand at all times. Teens are hungry at 12 noon and 12 midnight. Just stock up! My food bill is 4 times what it was when the boys were younger.

8. Teens lie. If they get caught red-handed they will deny, deny, deny. Dr. Phil says, "How do you know if your teens are lying to you? Their lips are moving."I find this to be true in older teens the most.

9. BIG WARNING HERE: Expect your teen to go from acting like a 14yo to a 2yo in 30 seconds or less. No warnings. Temper tantrums, inability to make decisions, crying for no reason, slamming doors and stomping their feet.I think that is enough for now. You are most likely thinking it might be a good idea to sell your 10yos on the black market.....don't even dream about it. Teens always get returned to owner.

Two different stories, one hurting kid

I attend a support group for parents of 'difficult' adolescents. Which isn't really what it is at all, incidentally. All of the parents who attend this group have kids with some type of mental or emotional disorder. We have depressed kids, suicidal kids, bipolar kids, kids with rare genetic disorders, kids who just don't fit any mold. The thing all these kids have in common is that they've been hospitalized, many multiple times, because they were either a danger to themselves or a danger to others. Oh, and they all have parents who are tearing their hair out in frustration trying to figure out just what to do.

We're a fairly tight knit group of moms. We not only support each other in our quest to find the best care for each of our respective kids, we attend each other's school meetings, visits to special programs, and just to hang out and give each other hugs. In the short time I've been part of this group, I've made a good friend, and I've gotten a lot of great advice. It's really a fabulous support group.

So what's the but?

Today, for the first time, we had a dad come to our meeting. It wasn't a big deal that he was male, as we're all grown ups. He is a single dad and he introduced us to his daughter (figuratively) who is a hurting buckaroo for a variety of reasons. We all encouraged him to take certain types of actions, we listened to his story, we were more than supportive to him, we didn't scare him off, and he promised to return.

And the problem is?

Oy! Privacy. My favorite issue. His daughter and my son were in a program together. A program that encourages the kids to share their issues with the small group. What my son knows of this girl is not essentially what the father reported to our group. This makes me VERY uncomfortable. Because I know things about her that her father doesn't, from the things my son reported. But it gets even more uncomfortable. While my son was in this program, another friend of his who we'll call Dirty (because he is) was also at the program. Dirty and my son have known each other for years. Dirty and this man's daughter evidentially had it in for each other, and when Dirty came over during this time, he talked a lot about this particular girl. Now, I had no clue I'd EVER meet this girl's parent. They live hours away from us. Who would have thunk it? But damn... the girl who was a big topic of conversation in our house for weeks is this guy's daughter. Doesn't that suck?

I know I need to keep my mouth shut. I'm not completely idiotic. But I feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing some things that her father SHOULD know, but apparently doesn't. His daughter is in a lot of emotional pain for reasons totally unknown to him. But not to me. And if that doesn't bite, I don't know what does.

That's one of the problems with your kids being in programs. So much is shared, some of it the truth, some of it false, but a lot of it just plain painful. They're encouraged to get their pain out their, to acknowledge it and then move on. The groups help these kids to learn coping mechanisms, to recognize where their behavior comes from, and to be able to grow from their problems. Those are all good things. But the problem is that the kids gossip both amongst themselves, and they often come home and bitch about the other kids in the program. Which is exactly what happened here. My kid and Dirty weren't outing this girl. They were talking about how tough she was to deal with, and during those discussions, personal things were revealed.

So, here I am, brimming with information I wish I didn't have and not knowing what to do with it. Any advice?

SOUNDTRACKS by Jenny Gardiner

My teenaged son was hit by a car exactly one year ago today.

I was driving home after having dropped my youngest at a school right across the street from where my older ones attend, when I found out about it. Looking back I realize that probably right about the time I was dropping off one kid within shouting distance, the other was being launched across a parking lot by a Jeep Cherokee.

That morning, lost in thought, having no clue what I would soon learn, I almost didn't answer my cell phone in time when it rang, and luckily caught it before it bounced to voice mail.

"Look, Mom, don't worry, I'm fine," my son said, his voice jagged and hepped up with the high of adrenaline. "But they're loading me into the ambulance."

I've had my share of heart-stopping parental moments, including the time we put one of our kids to bed only to find her---out of nowhere---in the throes of a seizure twenty minutes later. That episode led to all sorts of eventual angst and trauma, things that have contributed to making me a stronger person, no doubt, albeit a stronger person with a more acute fear of all that could go wrong in my beloved children's lives.

The minute you hear such words uttered, what flashes before you is all that might be wrong that you don't know. That he won't make it to the hospital before he dies, and you'll never have the chance to impart those last important words, the I love you's, because who knows? Maybe there are internal injuries and then what?

Last week in our small town that's exactly what happened. A sweet, friendly, athletic 16-year old girl was leaving her neighborhood en route to school. She turned left when the light turned green onto a busy four-lane highway, not realizing that an 18-wheeler was barreling down on her, its driver in such a rush to make it to his destination that he ignored the laws and the fact that he was manning a moving missile and just kept on driving right through a red light shattering the lives of so many people instantaneously. They say this girl died in the blink of an eye, upon impact. Of course her parents and her twin brother will have all the time in the world to die slowly from the heartache hoisted upon them.

The tragedy of this story has revisited me again and again since last week. Perhaps more so because but for the grace of God, it could have been me getting that same phone call that child's parents received that morning. Those parents who, if they were lucky, only a few short minutes earlier had kissed their girl goodbye and wished her a good day.

It resonates too with me because this is the sixth such accident in our small town in half a year's time. Two teens we know were nearly killed right along that same road by red-light runners, in one case a drunk driver. And yet it keeps happening, no one seems able or willing to stop it.

We were so fortunate. While my son was pretty banged up, had lots of cuts, scrapes and bruises, and even ended up passing out in the ER once the adrenaline wore off, he did live to tell about it, even sort of becoming a legend for a few days at school: the boy who got hit then run over by a car (by a girl who was text-messaging and speeding and who has since had additional moving violations yet still has her license). He, at least, was able to garner a few laughs over it.

I, however, remain haunted knowing that he was all alone at that moment of impact, when the front end of that Jeep met his backpack--laden as always with 30 pounds worth of textbooks that probably absorbed some of the force and likely saved his life--and sent him flying. And he was alone precisely at that moment the car then drove over his foot, the added insult to injury. This knowledge just kills me: that he was there---and I was probably right across the street--- and I couldn’t help him in such a lonely hour.

These thoughts often plague me when I hear of others’ tragedies. Innocent victims, people just going about their lives when poof, it all changes. And all ultimately alone when they most needed someone---or something---to sooth them.

I realized something interesting shortly after my son’s accident, though.

We were at a party with several families, watching a slide show of our vacation on somebody’s laptop, with an iTunes playlist on as a backdrop, when the song Wonderwall by Oasis came on.

“Dude, that’s the song I was hit by!” My son blurted out to his friends with a chuckle. Because he was listening to his iPod when he was hit, he has a personal soundtrack--a theme song--to probably the worst thing to ever happen to him.

A soundtrack. We all have those songs in our lives that bring us back to good times: that first kiss, the prom, graduation, a wedding day. But in this iPod generation, where most everyone tunes in whenever and wherever they can, songs probably link to more and more unexpected occurrences in our lives.

That my son had a theme song to the accident sort of creeped me out at first, but it didn’t bother him. In fact he was happy to hear it playing that night, even though the last time he heard it was under, uh, less than ideal circumstances.

I can't help but wonder if that girl had a favorite song playing on the radio just before her life was snuffed out. If she was lost in happy thoughts, excited about a big game, or planning to shop for a Mother's Day gift after school. Was there something there that helped her when she needed it most?

I guess I’m glad that in his hour of need, music was there to comfort, and--like that backpack--to soften the blow a little bit for my son. For me, I don’t think I’ll ever hear that song again without my heart stopping for just a moment, recalling that most important time in which I couldn’t be there for him. But perhaps when he hears Wonderwall my son will remember to be happy he’s alive, comforted just a little bit by music.

Mixed Messages

So much is going on at our house that I feel the need to unburden myself or I'm gonna 'splode from all the information overload. There's good news, there's bad news, there's insanity, and there is relative calm. Oh, and there are two nutty teenagers that live to change the equilibrium at any given moment. Because, you know, they're teens!

So what's new?

The Boy made high honor roll in school. HIGH HONOR ROLL. You have no idea of the nachas this gives me. I'm so very proud of him for finally, after 11 years in school, buckling down and deciding to maybe, perhaps, um...do his work. Because that's a good idea if you're trying to get into college, isn't it?

But is he happy? Why no, because I'm a bitch to him and I never do anything nice for him and he hates me and hopes I have a heart attack and die. He's just a bundle of joy these days. I'm so sick of being screamed at I just want to duct tape his mouth shut. I won't, but don't think I don't fantasize about it. And just what is it that he's so angry about? Oh, I had the unmitigated gall to ask him to dig up some weeds in the garden. Last week. And then again every freaking day. But he won't do it, and he says that he gets no pleasure from gardening, so why should he do it? Um, maybe because you eat the food I grow from my garden? Could that be a good reason? Evidentially not.

And then there was that party. The one my darling son held while I was out of town. The one he was told not to even THINK about. But he did it anyways, and there was alcohol and probably pot and a whole bunch of kids spread all over our front hill. How did I find out about the party? Well, first I found an empty liter bottle of gin in his closet. That was a fun discussion. And because I am the suspicious type (do you wonder why?), I checked his Facebook page. Facebook is awesome for catching kids doing bad things. They're so dumb they leave up photos of the parties. All you have to do is follow the photos. I did, and lo and behold, that was our porch with my son holding a beer can looking particularly wasted on a friends photo set. Ahem. I could probably get a job with Scotland Yard. I'm that good.

Consequently, things are up and down with him. School = good. Home = bad.

The other one? The Girl? She's gonna drive me absolutely bonkers writing a paper on a book she read for school. She hated the book. So what else is new? She hates reading of all kinds. Sort of a disappointment for a serious book lover and writer like myself, but what can I do? Her father is an engineer. Say no more.

The deal is, if she persists in whining and nagging and complaining, at some point I'll come to her rescue just to shut her up. Guilty as sin, I am. But gosh, how much whining can one person take? My tolerance is low, apparently.

Her schooling is coming along despite the fact that her tutor is dyslexic (I know!) and not overly bright. Sweet as sugar and helpful as can be, but OMG, I eventually insert myself in the tutoring sessions in English because otherwise my kid would be learning the wrong stuff. Math and science, I'm not that worried about. The kid is doing fine in school.

However, the school. Well, as nice as they are about my son, they're nasty and unpleasant and totally unhelpful to my daughter. They do not like her. They do not like green eggs and ham either. Well, the feeling is mutual. Not about the green eggs, although I doubt I'd like those either. About the school administration. They are not nice to me, to her, and they're driving me beserko.

And then there's me. I'm doing ok, hanging in there. We're going as a family to Chicago in a couple of days for an event sponsored by Ford Motor Company. You would think that traveling with teenagers would be a piece of cake compared to toddlers and infants. Well... you would probably be wrong. The preparation before the trip is exhausting. We're being feted at a fancy restaurant for a Mother's Day dinner, which meant that we had some shopping to do.

The Boy has outgrown every single piece of clothing he owns, so we had to get him pants and shirts and a pair of shorts just in case the weather ever cleared up in Chicago. Apparently the weather will never clear up in Chicago. Sigh.

The Girl only owns summer dresses that fit well. And no decent pants. More shopping. Like the Girl, my only dress that is currently in style and that fits after a major weight loss is a strapless summer frock. Off to another store to get me something springy but with sleeves and a bit of skin coverage. I hate to shop, I hate to spend money on clothes, and I hate to take my kids shopping. So this week was really swell. 

Oh, and the allergies. The allergies! We all are suffering. The sniffles, the nosebleeds, the itchy eyes, the rashes.

All in all, a jolly good time at our house! So what's going on with you?

The Estrogen Dialogues

By Margy McCarthy

Nobody warned me about the potential repercussions of the “you can have it all” eighties.

Maybe Nostradamus or some gypsy woman somewhere said something about it, but my friends and I weren’t paying attention. We were all too busy wondering who shot J.R., adjusting our shoulder-pads, and seeking personally-meaningful careers that allowed us to express ourselves creatively while flipping through pages of the latest from Adolfo and L.L. Bean.

We were a new breed of American adult female. We had opportunities previous generations never dreamed of, and we were encouraged- nay, expected- to take care of number one, get an education, and postpone procreation until the glass ceilings had all been chiseled through. We were so busy bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan, we didn’t give much thought to the implications of not birthing our own children straight out of the blocks.

And now the implications are here. We eye the calendar warily each month with nightmare visions of our only claim to lasting fame being the Guinness Book World Record for oldest recorded childbirth. We discover for ourselves what our mothers meant when they expressed a stray desire to coat their bodies in peppermint oil and ride the roller coaster at the state fair naked. We settle uneasily into a new routine of deep-penetrating anti-wrinkle serums and progesterone creams; we find ourselves staring with envy at our vehicles on the lift at Jiffy-Lube… and our daughters simultaneously begin THE MENARCHE.

Say it with me. Menarche. Has a militaristic ring to it, doesn’t it? A strong word. Powerful. Commanding. And, oh, how commanding it is.

I have heard of menopausal women becoming despondent; mourning their lost youth and their inability to conceive. I have heard of women who wept their own personal trail of tears right into “The Pause”-- but I ain’t one of ’em. No sirree. The moment Shriek was handed to me in the hospital and I saw for myself that she had all her parts intact, I was ready to be done. In the thirteen years since, I have calmed my horror at the sight of a box of tampons in the guest bath at my parents house when my dad’s sixty-something sister was visiting with the knowledge that my own mother experienced an early, fairly graceful (except for the hot-flash roller-coaster remark) change of life. I fell to my knees and fervently prayed that the determining factors for my own reproductive longevity were provided in DNA from the maternal side of my family.

And so it seemed to be. For four full months the tides, the pull of full moons, the hormonal fluctuations lost their power over me. I relaxed into the lull, smug and self-satisfied. I leaned back in my chair with a smile. There would be no more visits from old Auntie Flo for me. This was easy! I crawled comfortably into my bed each night and woke refreshed, inwardly chuckling at the very idea of night sweats.

And then, just as I was certain I had crept unscathed out the back door of fertility- Shriek began menarching all over the place like the Russian army on steroids, rounding up recruits. “Как вы, Margy?” the generals shouted greetings from the tops of their tanks, “Долгое время никакое видит!” (How are you, Margy? Long time, no see!)

“No, no!” I moaned, throwing back the suddenly oppressive stifling inferno of my bedcovers, “Go away!

“Вы должны соединить армию!” (You must join the army!) they called, and the drums began to pound, high tide rushed in, and the full moon pulsed hypnotically.

“But I served my time!” I protested, “I don’t want to reenlist.”

“Вы не имеете никакой выбор.” (You have no choice) they laughed, "Вы решили вашу судьбу 30 лет тому назад.” (You decided your fate thirty years ago.)

The eighties sure did have their consequences. I guess I should have paid more attention to perestroika, and less to Dallas.

Why is the World Round, and Other Imponderables by Jenny Gardiner

Me and my teen mom homies, we've been dealing with it all, and then some, lately. We're almost cliched, in fact, pondering as we are how much easier it was back in the days when we merely had to drag a tantrum-hurling 2 year-old from the grocery store, versus tackling the many heady issues parents of modern teens face as their offspring teeter on the precipice of adulthood. It's enough to make a girl go gray, stress-eat the ever-so-divine limited offer Indiana Jones Mint Crisp M&Ms, and cuss a blue streak to no one and everyone in particular. Not that I would be susceptible to the latter two...

I think in the world of raising children, barring unforeseen circumstances, you start out with the cake course. Parenting 101. You know, the diaper changing, the calming of an irrationally petulant child. The easy stuff (that at the time seems insufferably impossible to navigate). By the time the kids are teens, parents have unwittingly entered into the post-graduate phase of things. Everything becomes so much more involved, so much more complex. Black and white blurs into gray, with no necessary right or wrong, but rather a "hope I don't screw this up too badly" mode. At this point, I find visualizing into the future, to a point at which your kids are through with college, in the work world, happily dating, or maybe even married, is a vital coping tool. Because only then might we be secure in the knowledge that we were able to transcend the stressful makes-your-head-hurt stuff that is the domain of the teen parent.

Consider a few recently teen quandaries my homies and I have encountered lately:

*The high school senior, the one who can't yet seem to keep track of a permission slip let alone a passport, who wants to travel alone through Europe this summer. That same one will be off on his own by summer's end, so perhaps allowing this risk-taking venture is a way to encourage some necessary maturation before he cuts loose altogether? Or perhaps that un-street-savvy kid will end up mugged and left for dead in a gutter, passport, cellphone and wallet lifted, unable to contact his parents for help. Of course approving this venture for the boy then means his younger sister must also have this opportunity, and hey, like it or not, there is a double standard when it comes to females traveling alone abroad, especially at that young age.

*The high school sophomore who met a boy last year one week before he moved six states away. They've remained in cellphone/IM contact throughout the school year. Now he wants to come visit, staying at the girls house over a holiday weekend. Having this complete stranger under one's roof can be one of two things---a positive chance to spend plenty of time with him, to get to know him and trust his intentions. Or it can mean ready-made opportunities for him to hook-up in the middle of the night with the daughter while the mom sleeps (the dad will be out of town at a soccer tournament with one of the kids). To deny this certainly offers up a large platter of forbidden fruit, and we all know how much tastier that type is...

*The teen girl who insists upon booking her first Brasilian waxing. (clearly this girl has no clue what she's getting herself into, pain-wise!). Truth is, we all know why anyone chooses a Brasilian wax job. And it ain't comfort. So that in and of itself suggests there's reason behind this (trust me, it has nothing to do with swim suit season being upon us). So now that that mom knows what her 16 year old is up to, what's a mom to do?

*The high school prom, for which an alternate, unsanctioned prom sprung up after school administrators decided that grinding was far too scandalous and issued a 10-inch rule (get your mind out of the gutter, not that type of 10-inches!): a mandatory 10 inches of air must be sustained between a dancing couple. Is grinding mighty sexually suggestive? Sure. Is this much different than adults banning Elvis and the Twist? Not really.

*Then there's the high school senior who questions what it's all about---after all, why bother with any of it when ultimately we're all gonna die. Um, how do you truly answer that question? Anyone deep enough to ponder such things is not going to be satisfied with a pat answer. And who actually has a legitimate answer to this question?

Okay, some of these issues are far bigger than my head can wrap around. The we-are-merely-a-speck-of-dust-on-the-pinhead-of-some-larger-entity is far more than I can/will/choose to ponder with any success. It makes me too dizzy and slightly depressed. But at least I'll tackle the prom thing, and by extension, perhaps address my feelings and worries about the state of teen-hood today.

The pat advice to all parents is this: pick your battles. On the issue of dirty dancing, I do feel as if this is a battle best left alone. After all, teens nowadays have their wings clipped to the point of no longer being birds of flight. In our home we have a parrot, and when she was younger, we regularly clipped her wings (a practice akin to trimming fingernails). The idea was to keep her from flying around the house. But the reality was it caused her to fall off her perch and drop like a lead weight to the floor---her wings sans flight feathers sort of led to her fall from grace.

After our parrot fell enough times so hard that her breast bone punctured through her skin, our vet decided it was a good idea to let her flight wings grow out. And you know what? She doesn't fly around the house. Sure she still spreads her wings, flaps them vigorously on occasion. But if she falls, the amount of feathers she's got enables her to enough loft to land without such a violent thud.

I think society has gone way overboard in clipping back the flight feathers of our teens, particularly at a point at which they need to be spreading their wings and learning to fly, even if it means they fall hard and fast to the ground. The simplest of bad judgment errors for teens nowadays can result in a loss of all academic honors, membership to sports teams, hell, even college admissions. We don't allow teenagers the chance to make mistakes and learn from them. They're expected to learn vicariously from others' errors, I suspect, when in reality that doesn't quite work the same way. We have raised a generation of future adults with probably far less life experiences than we ever had, because most were never allowed to take risks, were clamped so tightly in their car seats and then strapped down with onerous activities and then just when biology started mandating that they stretch away from the weight of our protective shield, we further reduced their ability to take those important strides toward adulthood, errors or not.

I remember once reading about Eunice Kennedy, mother of umteen children, and she spoke of how she let her children fail, even when it meant they suffered for it. We parents---armed in this dreadful age of information with the myriad fearful possibilities of what could go wrong---cherish our children so greatly that we are afraid to allow failure to happen. We don't want them to be hurt, or even worse, killed. We don't want them to fall flat on their faces, to suffer the pain and/or humiliation of trying and faltering.

But have we really served them best in this regard? I know so many of my contemporaries look each other in the eyes when discussing our own jaded youth with that knowing wide-eyed gaze of "Damn, how the hell did we live to tell about it?" The sad reality of it is there were those of our peers who didn't live to tell about it. That's the sucky thing of it. For this, we are all so fearful that our kids will be amongst that unfortunate group. Thus we keep our birds caged, wings clipped, hoping they can get to adulthood injury-free. Yet truly, probably, sorely untested, and lacking some important life experiences that they need to become complete adults.

All of these ponderings lead to me to wonder what is the answer to these teen parent dilemmas. Of course I no sooner have these answers than do you. I'm just muddling through it the best I can, trying not to eat too many of those Mint Crisp M&Ms. After all, they are a limited edition, and when they're gone, they gone.

Independence Day

By Nina Rubin

A story in the New York Sun entitled "Why I Let My 9 Year Old Ride the Subway Alone" quickly shot to this paper's "most emailed" list, and also prompted a story on Slate.com.  It all reminded me of Jaws first independent subway trip when he was 12 and in 7th grade. 

In a provoking (in a good way) account in the New York Sun, writer Lenore Skenazy outs herself as a mother who let her 9-year-old son ride home by himself on a New York subway and bus. Yes, he transferred. She reports that her son arrived "ecstatic with independence." And also that half the people she has told "want to turn me in for child abuse." Only half?

Skenazy understands why other parents recoiled at a decision that wasn't all that daring, rationally speaking. It's not simply that parents think of every horrendous kidnapping story and so decide not to take any chance—however tiny—that something unspeakably awful will happen to our children.

So when did the notion of parent-as-bodyguard begin to prevail, and does it connect to the endless tug of war over where and how mothers should spend their time?

Unlike the Manhattan mother of the 9 year old, Jaws' blow for independence was completely unpremeditated and a tad defiant, but luckily for all of us, it had a happy ending. Now that he's 21 and alive and well, I still love telling about it.  It was a turning point for all of us.  A true Independence Day.

It was a Saturday in early spring, and Jaws and a pack of 7th grade friends (boys and girls) had tickets to a Mets game.  Back then we lived in a suburb of Long Island on the same train line that stops at Shea Stadium where the Mets play.  Not every parent was comfortable sending kids alone on the train to Shea Stadium, but having grown up with parents who rode the subways and allowed me age-appropriate opportunities to strike out on my own, I was fine with it.  Going to the ball game with a group of friends seemed to me like the perfect way to give middle school kids some rope and and have a lot of fun.  Jaws and his friends would take the train. They'd get off at Flushing Meadow, walk across the pedestrian bridge to the stadium, watch the game, rinse and reverse.

However, it rained buckets that Saturday.  And as I dropped Jaws off at the train station, the bedraggled group was debating whether or not to bag the game and wondering if it would be "called" and rescheduled. I was certain the game would be called, but I suggested that they all go for pizza downtown and call me when they figured out Plan "B."  So imagine my surprise when Jaws called and hour and a half later and said, "Hi Mom. We're in Times Square."  That's 42nd Street and Broadway...the heart of New York City.

When I recovered from this startling news, stopped yelling that nobody had given anybody permission to embark on this kind of freelance adventure, and made him promise swear in blood to be home on the 5:44 train, I hung up and actually laughed. 

I had to give them credit.  They came up with quite a cool Plan "B."  And they had cell phones.

Despite its legacy as a den of iniquity and a gritty urban crossroads, Times Square circa 2000 was hardly a scary neighborhood anymore.  I should know.  I worked at 44th and Broadway for 7 years at the only major advertising agency west of Madison and north of 23rd street. I'd seen Times Square morph into a respectable commercial crossroads where rising rents had driven out most of the peep shows, the Tads $4.99 steakhouses the Cuban-Chinese restaurants and even Papaya King.  (Poor suburban kids, they'll never have the Papaya King experience.) Increasingly, hotels and chain stores like Disney, Nike and Urban Outfitters had moved in, turning the once tawdry landmark intersection into, well, a suburban mall without a roof. 

The kids had a swell time, stuck together in their little rat pack, and were indeed on the 5:44 which chugged into the Port Washington station at 6:50.  From that day onward, New York City was fair game.  Jaws took some more group forays into the city to see movies, go to museums, and just "hang."  By 10th grade he got active in the Reform Jewish youth movement, and luckily for me, once independent suburban chapters on Long Island and Westchester couldn't afford youth advisors anymore and the NY region merged.  Hallelujah!  Now there were meetings at the denominational HQ's in midtown Manhattan, and "cool" kids from NYC private schools and elite public schools like Stuyvesant and Hunter were on my kid's radar. Even better . . . no more 11:00 pm pick-ups in godforsaken Long Island suburbs like Massapequa and Plainview.  Eventually I didn't have to drive anybody anywhere but the Long Island RR train station.  Some parents were horrified, but not me.  By 10th grade my kid had the subways down pat and had bright, committed Jewish friends in Brooklyn, Queens and Riverdale, the fancy part of the Bronx. 

My kids was worldly.  A subway maven.  He pored over the subway maps as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. Once, when I was trying to figure out how to avoid Penn station and take the subway from midtown to Woodside, Queens where the Long Island Railroad kicks in, I called Jaws on my cell phone.  "Oh yeah Mom, it's easy," he said. "Take the Shuttle to Grand Central and then the #7 to Woodside." 

We never looked back, none of us, from that Independence Day. Riding public transportation and figuring it out, has made my kids stronger, more curious and far less "flappable."  If only Atlanta had more public transportation...well, we're working on it.  Meanwhile, Grumble is an airport pro...he's been flying to NY, Washington and Florida on his own for years and will be doing a rather daring little maneuver over Memorial Day weekend, going from L.I. to Manhattan and then taking the subway to Brooklyn.  Are you impressed?  I am.

 

How will they take it?

By Ora

A positive note before I go off on another track. 

We really liked one of the second batches of schools that we looked at for Abe (17.5 yo, ADHD, PDD, NVLD...) and they accepted him.  Our second place school also accepted him.  This school- FLC- won't have a suitable opening until the end of the school year, 3rd week in June, although there is a possibility of sometime in May, maybe.

Abe actually wanted to go to the second place school because it a) already had a Dungeons and Dragons group (and he loves D&D) and b) the facilities are a bit nicer.  But it wasn't totally his decision (if at all) and he's okay going to FLC. So we've chosen FLC, and he'll be starting there mid-June, and in the meantime he's in a day program that is working with his special needs through therapy and a teeny tiny bit of actual school work. It looks like he'll be repeating this school year, which is a blessing in disguise as it will give him more time at FLC, a residential program that will be working with him on life skills for his foray into adulthood. Something that every kid in his situation needs, but is difficult for a parent to teach.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that. 

Thanks to Lewis Carroll.

My other thoughts today have to dwell on the harsher side of reality.  How do teenagers, neurotypical or special needs, react to the news that Mom is looking for a divorce from Dad?  Actually, how do you even tell them?  I definitely don't have the answer to this question, and, SURPRISE, I'm going to be springing it upon them sometime, potentially over the summer.  I don't have any answers now.  But I am looking for helpful input on this topic.  Have you been there? Can you help out with the emotional logistics involved?                                                                                                               

I'm a Natural Woman

by Judy Merrill Larsen

Don't worry, this isn't a post about not shaving my legs or letting my hair turn gray. Uh uh.  It's about the power of natural consequences.

As adults, we get this.  If I eat less and move more I'll lose weight.  Doesn't always make me do so, but that's a natural consequence I understand.  Same with, oh, say, paying bills so the electricity stays on.  In my fifteen years of teaching, I often found myself preaching this to my students.  Especially when they'd ask about extra-credit.  I'd launch into my song and dance about "Well, if you'd done the assigned work you wouldn't need extra-credit. now, would you, so why should I give you a chance to make more work for me?"  That always brought them around, yes indeedy.

But as a mom, it was often much harder for me to hold to this.  For a few years, when my sons were in elementary school, I was on a first-name basis with the night janitor at their school because we seemed to need to ask him to unlock a classroom door at least once a week to fetch something we needed to complete a homework assignment.  Part of me knew I should let them deal with the consequences of not remembering.  But it seemed so cold.  Harsh. 

No more.  One thing teenagers teach you (and the sooner, the better) is that they often only respond to natural consequences.  For example:

(and I need to make a disclaimer here.  Not all of these examples come from the children living under my roof.  Some come from their friends.  I swear.  But they're all instructive.)

~If, when you are "assigned" community service by a judge because of some hi-jinks you were caught participating in, "forgetting" to perform said hours will cause those hours to be doubled.  Plus you'll be fined.  So maybe next time you shouldn't ignore your mom's nagging.

~If you keep calling in sick to a job you no longer like, you'll get fired.  And the company who sends you your cell phone bill doesn't care the reason, they'll stop your service.  And, no, they don't have to warn you in advance.

~If you blow through all your lunch money/allowance by noon on Tuesday, you're going to be hungry (or brown-bagging it) for the rest of the week.  Not to mention that you can forget about any extra-curricular fun.

~If you buy clothes that scream "Skanky crack ho" to your parents, but "sneak-wear" them under your t-shirt, the school will likely call your parents to explain they don't mesh with the dress code and you'll be assigned a detention.  Also, said clothes will likely disappear the next time your mom does the laundry.

~Speaking of which, if your mom tells you to put all your dirty clothes in the laundry basket outside your door so she can get the laundry done and you don't, there will be no clean clothes for you.  Deal with it. Ha.

~And, if you decide your mom isn't all that bright and why can't you just put all your dirty clothes in the wash together (because she is no longer willing to do your laundry (see above)), don't expect that same stupid mom to replace your now pink underwear.  But you can expect her to laugh at you when you make your request.  And, if you've blown through your lunch money/allowance this week, you'll be wearing the pink underwear to school.

~If your economics professor has told you that your homework is all to be done on-line, and you sign up for the wrong on-line program, and then notice that your classmates have homework, but miraculously you don't, that doesn't mean you're off the hook; it means you'll be retaking the class in summer school.  At 8 a.m. if your mom has anything to say about it.

~If the bank explains that if you bounce a check there will be fees assessed--which will deplete your checking account even more, they really mean it.  It's not like when your mom used to tell you she'd fine you for having to go up to the elementary school at night to pick up your geography book.  She remembers how cute you were at age 4.  The bank doesn't, and even if they did, they wouldn't care.

Natural consequences.  They rock.  In part because your kids can't be mad at you or blame you.  Not that they won't try, but even they have to realize that they brought it on themselves.  And that's where the real power comes in--they have to take responsibility. 

That's a pretty powerful lesson.  And it leads to independence.  Possibly even adult behaviors.  And all you've had to do is sit back, watch it unfold and bite your tongue.

What happened to my little helpers?

A major Jewish holiday, Passover, is starting on Saturday night. With the onset of Passover comes an amazing amount of household work. Not only does every single corner of the house have to be cleaned to rid every room of possible leavened products, but the dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and utensils all have to be changed. This means emptying out your kitchen and replacing everything with special Passover dishes, etc. Wow, what fun this is. Next comes covering your counters with tin foil or plastic so your Passover dishes don't touch a counter that has touched leavened products. Your kitchen ends up looking like a space ship gone insane with all the tin foil.

Once all that is done, and you're suitably exhausted, it's time to cook two HUGE dinners for large crowds of family and friends. Special foods. Foods that contain no leavening, and are made of odd things like matzah meal and potato starch. Everything cooked from scratch because the prepared products are disgusting. Salty, tasteless, and scary.

Now, when my teens were little, they were great helpers. They would get all excited about turning over the kitchen, especially when they got to the tape. Taping the tin foil down is evidentally a way cool thing for a kid to do. Both of my kids liked to help with the cooking. They weren't all that excited about the cleaning, but they understood that no cleaning meant no cooking and no eating...for a week. Um, yeah. I could always count on them to peel potatoes, carrots and apples. They liked to chop up spices and vegetables. They are both decent cooks, as I have always had them help me with dinners as well as special meals.

But this year? Help? They think not. Both of them have been completely resistant to helping out. When I call them down for a quick job, it's always "five more minutes" or "I"ll do it later". And then they never come down. So of course, the nagging starts, and with the nagging comes the kids yelling back at me and calling me all sorts of delightful names. I get mad, they get madder, I get madder still, and things just don't get done.

I've make everything myself so far, and the rule has always been that nobody eats ANYTHING unless they make sure that it's OK to eat now and not for the Seders. This isn't a new rule, it's the same rule we've always had. But my son... he doesn't follow rules anymore. Rules are made for other people, not for him. He's special, you see. Specially obnoxious. He went through the Passover food bags and helped himself liberally to things that were not for him. Like an entire Passover rainbow layer cake. Oh, and an entire jar of chocolate spread (It's an Israeli thing). But this was the real kicker. He ate a huge bowl of chopped liver. Not only doesn't he like chopped liver, but it wasn't even finished. I hadn't put it thru the blender yet and it was big chunks of liver, onions, and hard-boiled eggs. YUM! He pronounced it disgusting but at the whole bowl anyways, because he was 'hungry.' 

I'm ready to strangle him. I miss my little helpers. Yes, they made huge messes in my kitchen, but sharing the holiday preparations with my kids was delightfully special. I loved watching their kitchen skills progress, their interest in combining ingredients grown, and their ability to change a recipe to suit our tastes take hold. I don't like these snarling teenagers that just want to take, take, take and do little to nothing in return. I know it's a phase, but do I have to like this phase? Because right now, I do not like it at all.