Home/Work : Teenagers

Our family's year: batten down the hatches and hold on tight

kgranju — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:54:00 GMT

Jon's Uncle Tom died today, at the hospital right up the street from us. He was diagnosed with cancer about 6 months ago, and a staph infection took him today. He was Jon's mother's only sibling - a fascinating person I am glad to have known.

Yesterday, J graduated 8th grade and moved up to high schooler status (see photos below). The ceremony was really moving; Jane has been at this school (with a brief interlude elsewhere in grades 2-3) grade since kindergarten. Some of these kids started kindergarten with her, and to look at these gorgeous, accomplished, bright-eyed teenage girls walking across the stage with her on Friday really took my breath away.

J's last day of middle school also marked E's last day of elementary school, another huge milestone.

Two days before that, our whole family came together to send H off on a great adventure; he'll be finishing up summer school and then his senior year of high school at a boarding school many states away. My eldest baby is gone, and if he goes straight to college as I hope, he may never again live at home full time. I can't even open the door to his bedroom yet without bursting into tears.

Jon has taken three parts of the four part CPA exam in the past 10 days. He takes the last section on Tuesday. It's like taking the bar exam for weeks and weeks. Before that, he was studying 24/7 on top of doing his regular job for the past several months.

Seven weeks ago, I started a brand new job. That came nine months after starting another new job; in other words, I've changed jobs twice in the past year. Both were great opportunities, and each transition came with good feelings from my employers, but still....two job changes in the past year. I absolutely LOVE what I am doing now - and feel incredibly lucky - but as anyone who has done it knows, changing jobs under any circumstance marks a pretty big transition.

In the past nine months, I've suffered two miscarriages.

Six months ago, Jon's father's brother died of cancer.

Nine months ago, my 64 year old father died very unexpectedly of a pulmonary embolism, breaking my heart.

The economy has completely tanked since the end of the year, and far too many of my friends are out of work, or struggling to stay afloat.

My beloved grandmother, who lives 3 hours away from me, has, in the past 12 months, become completely bedridden. Because of everything else going on, I have been unable to spend as much time with her as I should, or would like. I feel stressed and unhappy about this on a daily basis.

Are you getting the picture here? The past year has sort of, well, KICKED MY ASS. If I took one of those "how much stress are you under" tests online, my computer would likely explode into flames. Sometimes, lately, I feel like I, myself might spontaneously explode into flames.Some of this stress is "good stress," like children maturing and my new job, but it's still stress - and there has just been a lot of it in recent months.

I know that I remain incredibly blessed. I take some time for gratitude each day; I really do. I understand that none of my children have serious illnesses, and we have an income and a roof over our heads. I take absolutely none of that for granted. But seriously, this past year has just been....overwhelming. I know we have to turn the corner soon on the deluge of Life's Big Moments coming one on top of the other.

It's funny how some periods of your life are like this, testing your coping skills, and challenging you to push yourself harder, trying your best to set a good example for your children in how to roll with whatever fate throws your way. This past year has made me realize how much more important it is to appreciate every single moment, as it's happening, because you never know what tomorrow - or even the next ring of the phone - might bring.

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BABBLE BLOGGING

VISIT KATIE'S PERSONAL BLOG

I am the mother of a teenage girl

kgranju — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:36:00 GMT

Everyone told me that raising a teenage girl was going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. Well, all I can go on is my own experience, and here's what I can tell you: raising the teenage BOY has been the hardest thing I've ever done, while my teenage girl has made my job pretty easy so far.

Me with my girls.

When I was my daughter's age (8th grade), I was a geeky, bookish, horse-crazy child, who was completely freaked out by the changes happening with my body, but too scared to talk to anyone about any of it. Frankly, I found puberty really embarrassing. I remember agonizing over how to ask my mother if I could start shaving my legs....in the 9th grade!

My daughter, on the other hand, is incredibly self confident about her body, and herself. She's got a very good sense of who she is, and she and I can (and do) talk about anything and everything. That makes me really happy. Unlike some parents, it hasn't bothered me a bit to see her becoming a young woman; I've just been thrilled to see how comfortable she is with the whole thing.

However, we do live in a culture that hyper-sexualizes adolescent girls at younger and younger ages, and while I don't want to hold her back, I do sometimes have to hold the line. I am trying really hard to strike a balance between empowering her and protecting her. I think that excess in either direction can be really bad for an adolescent girl. For example, I do let her have Facebook and My Space accounts, but she has to let me "friend" her - meaning I check her accounts regularly - and sometimes I tell her when a photo she has posted is inappropriate for one reason or another (you should SEE what some girls my daughter's age post on their social networking sites!). I let her make most of her own clothing choices, but I do have a few rules: no high heels yet, and no pants of any kind with words written on the rear end (a la J Lo) to be worn outside the house. She's wearing make-up now, and I think I let her wear more than a lot of moms of 8th graders, because she really loves experimenting, but when she's gone overboard, I tell her she has to tone it down before going out.

So far, dating hasn't been an issue because she goes to a parochial school with so few boys that the pickins are slim; these are the same 15 boys she's known since 1st grade, so they don't hold tremendous appeal. She did get asked to one high school dance, but she told me she didn't really want to go, so she told the boy that her parents had said no. I am sure that next year, in high school, the dating issue will become more front and center, and I need to do some thinking about what my guidelines will be. Mainly, I want to spend a lot of time talking with her about what HER guidelines will be. I want her to feel like she's driving the bus when it comes to her love life, not me or her father. We will be here to back her up, step in when necessary, and catch her when she falls, but she needs to learn to make good decisions, feel comfortable saying no, and figure out what really matters to her in choosing people to date. I didn't learn that stuff until well into adulthood, but I'd really like my daughters to get the hang of it much earlier!

I feel really lucky that teenagehood is going so well for her (and for me!) so far. And I'm actually excited about what the next four years will bring. She's a cool chick. I'm lucky to get to be her mama.

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BABBLE BLOGGING

VISIT KATIE'S OTHER BLOG

My kid has one foot out the door already

kgranju — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:47:00 GMT

An update on eldest child: I am happy to report that H's recent change to the private hippie "unchooling" high school seems to have been 100% positive for him. For the first time since I can remember, he seems excited about being at school, and self-motivated (as opposed to me standing over his bed each morning, hollering at him to get out the door to school) to get where he needs to be each day, and to participate in what is going on at the school. Two of his friends transferred from his old school to the new school at the same time he did, so he immediately had friends there, and he's made new ones as well. He just seems generally much happier than he has been for a long time.

The school is definitely very unconventional. Although he has actual classes, he also has tremendous freedom there to take his interests wherever he wants to go.He doesn't have real homework, and right now, his primary school interest is sound mixing - - you know, like music engineering, using actual instruments, as well as messing around with looping and mixing software on the computer. He has asked for DJ equipment for Christmas, and he says he'd like to eventually start spinning at parties.

It's very hard for me to let go of my worry that as a junior in high school, he should be paying more attention to Hemingway and chemistry - just like I did - and less attention to things like illustrating a children's book (another school project) or mucking around with music software for entire afternoons. But after living through the past four or five years when he became increasingly negative toward and disengaged from anything related to school, it's nice to see him truly interested in something, and making some effort at it. Before, he hated school so much that he had mentally checked out, even though I was forcing him to show up each day. He wasn't learning anything, and he was miserable. Something had to give, or I was really afraid he wouldn't graduate at all. Now he seems excited about school, and life, and learning.

Another big change is that I am seeing a whole lot less of him lately. H would move out of our house and get his own place in a heartbeat if I would let him, and if he could afford it. But I've told him he's stuck living at home until he turns 18, plus he hasn't made any effort thus far to earn the cash necessary to pay for his own place. Since he says he wants to live independently for his senior year of high school, I've been encouraging him to get organized around that idea, and begin earning and saving some money. We'll see if that actually happens.

In the meantime, however, he is following my requirements regarding being at home, which are pretty minimal at this point. He has to be by 11 on weeknights, for example. Unfortunately, since I am almost always in bed before 11, there are a lot of days when I don't see him, since I leave for work before he leaves for school. We do talk on the phone and text each other a few times each day, every day, and I try to make time for regular mother-son one-on-one time. I pop into his bedroom to give him a kiss on the forehead each morning before I leave for my job. And tonight, he and I are going out to dinner together - just the two of us. But in general, I just see very little of him these days. He has a friend from his school who is legally emancipated from his parents, and who has his own apartment - within walking distance of the school both the boys attend. Needless to say, this guy's apartment has become a very attractive hangout for H. I think that it's sort of like his second home these days.

I worry about him all the time because he's away from me so much now. I sometimes literally wake up in the middle of the night with a sudden terror that I'm not there to oversee what he's doing, and something bad is going to happen to him. Is he making good decisions? Is he showing good judgment? Am I going to get a call at 3am on a Saturday night from the ER, or from the police, saying that my teenage boy has done something incredibly stupid? But really, that's something I no longer have much control over. He's got one foot out the door, and is pretty much "cooked" as my parents use to say. Whatever decisions he's going to make, or choices he pursues are largely beyond my influence, and I am certainly not naive enough to believe that he isn't engaged in some stuff I wish he weren't doing. At least he isn'tt driving, so that's one less thing I have to worry about. I just have to hope that the intensive parenting I've put in with him in the past 17 years will continue to resonate with him even when I am not around enough to keep him safe until he matures a bit more in his decision-making faculties. As not all of his choices in adolescence thus far have been particularly wise or healthy, I have to hope he's at least learned from some of the dumber things he's already done.

When I was 17, I was a year ahead of H in high school, and I, too had an emotional and social life that was increasingly removed from my parents' oversight. Before I turned 18 - the day after high school graduation - I moved out of their house with their blessing, and took off for Europe, and then college. Except for brief stints of a couple of weeks here and there, I never lived at home again. I made some excellent decisions, and some very bad ones during late adolescence. I had some great experiences, and some terrible ones. But I always felt like my parents had my back during that turbulent period, even when I was many miles away - literally or figuratively. I felt empowered by their apparent trust in me to lead my own life, without a lot of active interference from them. And I counted on them to help me pick up the pieces when I made a complete mess of things, which I did on several occasions before reaching true adulthood.

I hope I can do that for H. It surely is hard to let go, though. And I really miss him already.

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BABBLE BLOGGING

VISIT KATIE'S OTHER BLOG

Paying tuition for free school

kgranju — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:07:00 GMT

The situation with my 17-year-old eldest and his extreme hatred for school (manifested by extreme under-performance in school) has really come to a head in recent weeks. Remember how I said I wasn't going to worry myself anymore with whether he did or did not choose to make As or Fs for the remainder of his high school career? Yeah, well, you know how it is when you are the mama. It's hard to just turn the caring thing off. He's miserable and disengaged at school,and it's making me feel like I have utterly failed him. So as a sort of last ditch attempt to get him more engaged, and more excited about learning and achieving before he finishes high school, I have decided to let him try a different school. It's a very small, very unconventional private high school modeled after the Summerhill "free school" movement. I have spoken with a number of alumni and parents who say that, despite the school's radical approach to teaching and learning, it was just what they (or their child) needed to jump-start learning.

I am offering my son the opportunity to try it for a few months, but if he doesn't fully engage there, or of he doesn't take advantage of what is available with this self-directed learning approach, it's back to boring, oppressive public school for him for the remainder of high school. My hope is that he will love it, find his academic groove, and he graduate from the school next spring with a clear direction for where he's headed next. We shall see. I am trying not to get my hopes up.

Let me simply say that having a child who despises school like my eldest has since about 7th grade certainly has to be one of the more frustrating parenting experiences. Yes, I am about to pay money to send my child to hippie school. Sigh. Am I crazy? Maybe, but I know my kid is smart and he doesn't seem capable of manifesting that where he is now. So we'll give it a go. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BLOGGING

Entering parenting purgatory

kgranju — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:58:00 GMT

My eldest child just turned 17. There have been certain ages throughout his life that have seemed like huge jumps forward to me, and 17 is one of them. To me, a 17 year old boy just sounds a lot older than a 16 year old boy. And then there is the fact that in less than 12 months from today, he will legally be an adult. At that point, he can do whatever the heck he wants and there won't be a darn thing I can do about it. Some days that sounds like heaven, while other days it sounds like hell.

But before the heaven or hell that will come with his legal emancipation next year comes the period we are in now - a period that I find to be an awful lot like parenting purgatory. He is neither adult nor child.

For the next 11 months, I still get to tell him what to do, but I am experimenting with how much to loosen the apron strings - how much to let him begin to really own the consequences of his personal decisions and actions. And when it comes to mothering my complicated, brilliant, lazy, sweet, kind, thoughtless, shy, musical 17-year-old firstborn, figuring out when to push, when to pull and when to let go entirely is a tricky, tricky thing.

I have already watched my son make some mistakes during his adolescence. Some of them have been very painful for me to observe, but none has yet been life altering. They have all been trial and error missteps - relatively minor blips along his journey. Now, though, we are entering a period where he will begin to face choices that can ripple out through his adulthood. Less and less can I rescue him from his own screw-ups, or make his good decisions for him.

For the past three years, I have nearly driven myself insane trying to force him to study - to get him to understand that his decision to slack his way through high school would eventually limit him in ways he would find unpleasant. However, I can now tell you through hard-won parenting experience that you can lead a stubborn teenage boy to the library but you can't make him work. You can punish, cajole, threaten, argue, cry, holler and stomp your feet, but ultimately, either he will decide to take high school academics seriously or he won't.

And now that he's 17, I've decided to hand that responsibility and worry back over to my nearly-grown son. I will no longer shed any tears over his chosen academic path. He knows I am here to cheer him on, to pay for tutors, to drive him to the bookstore, or do whatever else he needs to support his academic endeavors, but the decision as to whether he will make As or Fs for the remainder of high school belongs to him. And yes, the decision as to whether he will go directly to college at age 18, something I always expected with 100% certainty that all of my children would do - or take some years off before college to travel, go live on The Farm, or even work at McDonald's - is also his decision to make, and to own.

On the other hand, I struggle with not wanting to baby him in other ways, like continuing to do his laundry, or to pay for the extras he should be paying for himself at this point. Old habits die hard, and it just seems like yesterday that I was tying his shoes and patting his back to get him to sleep. Sometimes I dream that he is still 4-years-old and he's climbing higher and higher on the monkey bars, and if I don't position myself just perfectly under him, he'll plummet to the ground in a pile of broken bones when he falls, which he surely will. I always wake from the dream in a panic. And then I remember that he's now nearly six feet tall.

Some parents end up with a child who makes this fundamentally disruptive transition period of late adolescence easy on them. I have not. I do have complete confidence he'll emerge from this purgatory period as the good and honorable man I have raised him to be, but I suspect we are in for a few more bumps along the way as he learns how to be an adult, and I learn how to let him be one.

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BLOGGING

The parenting battles I can't seem to stop fighting

kgranju — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:21:00 GMT

My eldest child, 17-year-old H. favors a sartorial style heavy on hemp necklaces (which he creates), tie-dye shirts and flip flops. I'd love to see him in snappier attire - because he's so handsome - but I assume he'll eventually retire the tie-dye, just as the rest of us did.

Since I know that the faux-hippie garb is just a phase, I mostly leave the issue of how H. dresses alone. It's his business, and even if I wanted to, changing how a teenager clothes himself would be an exercise in parental futility. I know this. I get this.

But there are two pieces of H's dresscode about which I seem unable to keep my mouth shut. You see, he has this hat that is completely NOT in keeping with the rest of his relatively acceptable yuppie Deadhead look. I like to call it his Kevin Federline hat. I don't know where he got it, but it's awful. It's a trucker cap of garish kelly green and white, with a perfectly flat bill. It's very thuggy looking, especially since he only wears it backwards. And he wears it often.

When I see my son in this hat, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle, as I fight the urge to comment yet again on how much I hate that damn hat. I've explained to him that it ruins his otherwise put-together look. I've told him that girls must hate it. I've offered to buy him a new hat to replace it.

None of it has worked. He continues to wear the Godawful KF thug hat on a nearly daily basis. And now that he knows how much I hate it, I suspect that he sometimes wears it just to get to me, when I've irritated him in some way. And it does get to me.

I've considered disappearing the hat - just making it go away and then lying about my involvement in its absence, but I know that would be Wrong. Right? Plus, he would know it was my doing, no matter how much I protested my innocence.

The other issue is that of his exposed boxers. H. is a very lean boy, with no hips to speak of, and his pants have a way of riding down to about two inches below his boxer waistband, exposing his underwear. And really, I don't want to see his underwear.

This is not the same look as those baggy-pants kids who purposely let their pants ride waaaaay down low, prompting some lawmakers to take notice.. This is more subtle, with just the merest hint of undies peeking above his belt. But it's too much. And it drives me nuts. I find myself constantly telling him to pull his pants up, which he never does. It's literally the last thing I say to him when he gets out of the car each morning at his high school. I don't say, "Have a good day!" or "Study hard!" Instead I find myself barking, "Pull your pants up, son," in the sternest voice I can muster, as he ambles off to class, backpack slung over his skinny adolescent shoulder. The last glimpse I get of him each morning is a flash of boxer waistband, turning the corner into the school building. This does not make me a happy mama.

I realize that these are battles I cannot win. And I am violating one of my own parenting mantras (choose your battles) by engaging with him on these two issues. But I can't seem to let them go.

I am sure that my mother would tell you that this is just payback for the horrifying haircolors, Flock of Seagulls bangs, and really short denim miniskirts that I favored circa 1984...

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG VIA RSS

FOLLOW KATIE'S BLOGGING ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK

READ MORE OF KATIE'S BLOGGING

Why I hate "I Kissed a Girl"

kgranju — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:43:00 GMT

It's been the earworm that won't let go, that song-of-the-summer, "I Kissed A Girl" by formerly Christian pop-tart Katy Perry.

This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion

It's not what
I'm used to
Just wanna try u on
I'm curious for you
Caught my attention

(CHORUS)
I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

(V2)
No I don't even know your name
It doesn't matter
You're my expiramental game
Just human nature

It's not what
Good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets
So confused
Hard to obey

(CHORUS)
I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

Can I just tell you how much I haaaaaate this song? It's apparently got kids all over the country flirting with the idea of same-sex experimentation, but rather than making teenagers more accepting, I fear it actually trivializes the issue in a very negative way. The song makes being gay sound like something a teenager just tries on for fun, like a new hair color.

In the homophobic culture we live in, gay teenagers continue to struggle. They struggle with acceptance and self identity. High school itself is a real minefield for these kids, many of whom are harassed and bullied. The song, which is so wildly popular with teens and even 'tweens, characterizes being gay as a choice, and as a choice that's more than a little dirty and rebellious. It's none of those things.

I hate this song so much that whenever it comes on in the car now, my kids are as likely to turn the radio dial as I am - not because they, too dislike the song, but because they don't want to risk having to listen to another Katy-Perry-inspired lecture from me on the evils of homophobia.