photo credit: pixabay.com

Let me start this off by saying something that should go without having to be said: I love my children very much. Even so, the tween years may just put me in the ground. Or, more likely, they’ll make me desperately wish that my body didn’t hate alcohol so much. Sure, the “tween” years are typically defined as ages 10-12, but it’s clear that dd is advanced for her age, since we’re seeing signs of tweenage at the tender age of 9 years old. *cough*

I remember pretty vividly what I was like as a teenager. Let’s say it wasn’t pretty for my parents. I feel like I spent most of my teen years grounded or in some kind of pre-grounded status, hovering between “I slammed that door” and “I’m about to slam that door”. It was the standard issue, run-of-the-mill thing where you want to have freedom and independence (to a point) and constantly feel like you are bumping up against boundaries or requirements that seem restrictive.

“Do the dishes”

I think I pretty much constantly avoided doing the dishes, leaving them for my already overburdened mother, because I just found them to be a chore. I pretty much always considered doing the dishes an awful task until I had dd and suddenly found my sink overrun with dishes and my “works” for my breast pump. My life felt completely out of control: I wasn’t able to produce enough milk for my newborn daughter, I had absolutely no idea how to communicate with this tiny individual who seemed to expect that I’d know EVERYTHING about taking care of her, and there was the rest of my life to balance with all these new responsibilities. Doing the dishes suddenly became hypercritically important. To this day, it’s understood that I’ll disappear into the kitchen for as long as it takes to get the dishes done following any dinner party or get-together, to the point where people have to track me down. It’s not that I’ve become anti-social; I’ve become anti-dishes-in-my-sink-and-on-my-counter-overnight. Call it irony, if you will. I prefer to think of it as cosmic payback for all the crap I put my mother through.

“Clean your room”

OK, so this is one where I’m still pretty much a mess. My “filing system” at home and work is typically chaotic piles that look like posed pictures for a manual on how to be a hoarder. Occasionally, I’ll just lose what’s left of my cool and ritually toss things en masse into a trash bag, and haul it all out without much in the way of sorting or dividing. I’ve learned to let go of my attachment to things I’ve collected over the years. And so it is that when I look at the kids’ rooms and see stuff all over the floor or their dressers, I just nod and consider it genetics. My mother used to threaten to go through my room with a steam shovel. It’s more likely dh will take that hard-line with the kiddos, while I’ll just roll my eyes and move along. As long as the clothes are clean and there are no mammals in the house other than those I’m related to by marriage or blood, I’ll generally shrug it off. I’ve been to friends’ houses where the clutter was so thick that you couldn’t walk without having to step ON things or sit ON things. We’re nowhere near there–and there would be either an intervention first or we’ll get invited to be on a reality TV show (which would trigger an intervention).

“Watch your mouth”

Ah, this is my downfall. My ass continues to be smart to this day (as my father will surely attest–though I’d like to point out that this is MOST DEFINITELY a dominant gene that he passed down to me). After all, better to be a smart-ass than a dumb-ass. And so, it’s completely unsurprising to me that my children have inherited this trait as well. “Backtalk” is actually something that’s both annoying and completely necessary, in my mind. Sure, the kiddos will tend to lose nine out of ten arguments on things where they just want something for the sake of winning the argument, but if they give me a real justification for why they think I’m so wrong (and they’re wrong), they may win. Lately, the tween hormones have gotten dd more on the shrill shrieking tip than just the standard backtalk; it’s like she’s found some really awful frequency that would make most dogs run for cover. I’d actually rather that she just fussed at me or pushed back on me verbally rather than tried to rupture my eardrums.

And yes–I fully expect that there’ll come a time when the kids start swearing at me/us. What they don’t hear from us, they hear from their friends at school (which is how it worked for me). Self-censorship only goes so far. I could avoid using every profane word and they’d still learn them–plus more. THANKS, URBAN DICTIONARY.

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We’re lucky that dd still thinks boys have cooties. It’s 6-year-old ds who has a close girl friend (he’s too young for those last two words to be together). Frankly, I’m not sure how ready I am for the talk beyond what I’ve already had–and we have already done a variant of the talk. Well, I’ve had one with dd. I assume I’ll need to do much the same for ds at some point soon, but it’s hard for me to forecast when.

“I have to help every day. It’s so boring!” – ds

I get it, kid, I really do. I feel ya. Been there, done that. Reliving this and watching them start down the path of *all the hormones at once*, I feel badly that it’s yet another thing I can’t shield them from. And yet, it’s a rite of passage, so here we are.

Time to buckle up; it’s gonna be a long few years.