I got a call from the school the other day regarding my son. I had stepped away from my desk for just a moment, and my coworker called me on my cell to let me know. She had been concerned, but I wasn’t. A call about the Taz wasn’t exactly a monumental event. It happened quite frequently. What did strike me strange, however, was that it was my daughter’s school calling about my son. Apparently trouble travels…..
I called the school and talked with the secretary. She informed me that the Taz was sitting in her office. Confused, I asked her what was going on. She told me that DQ had decided not to take the bus that day, and had either jogged to his school, or had jogged home. The Taz, not wanting to run the risk of taking the bus to my parents’ house alone and being locked out without a key, decided that the best thing to do was to get off the bus at his sister’s school and wait for me to pick him up.
Thing is, I knew DQ hadn’t jogged home. Our home was 10 miles away across town. And I didn’t understand why she was jogging to her brother’s school when the bus went straight there. Something wasn’t adding up. I texted her, asking her where the heck she was. She texted back and told me that she decided to go to 7-11 instead of going home.
There is a moment in every mother’s life when their child inflicts some extreme emotion inside of them. Sometimes it is pure elation. Sometimes it is love so strong that you realize you never knew love, not really, before they burst into your life. Sometimes it is the need to protect them from all that is bad in this world. And sometimes it is the desire to cause them so much hurt because they have just made the stupidest choice of their life.
And you know that you ain’t seen nothing yet.
She is only 12 years old. And as I ranted to her about the pure idiocy of leaving her brother alone to fend for himself while she went god knows where, and how she could have been hit by a car and no one would have known because she has no ID on her and no one knew where she had gone, and how in the hell did she think she was going to go home after her little “jog” over to 7-11, I couldn’t help but realize that I was acting just like my own mother.
And she was acting just like me.
It’s amazing how we’ve come full circle. Here is this young being that has the attitude that she knows it all. She didn’t flinch once as I took her cellphone, iPod, and computer away and gave her orders about which rooms I wanted clean in my house by the time I got home from work. She didn’t seem to have any reaction at all. She just shrugged, casually said she was sorry, and gave no good explanation to her thought process about not taking the bus home like she was supposed to. It was very reminiscent of the non-verbal middle finger I used to give my parents, which eventually became very verbal. And as I talked to my mom about it, I could hear the humor in her voice at the way payback’s a… Well, you know.
It’s also one of many times when I feel I owe my parents a very large thank you note for all they put up with when it came to my tweenage and teenage antics.
Do you have a teen or tween? How bad is it? And what more do I have to look forward to?
Wine Country Mom 
Wow.
You guys are so much more rebellious than I ever was. Of course, I lived in the country, so I couldn’t get into THAT much trouble, even if I wanted to…
Crissi, you really need to speak with a child psychologist and get some professional feedback regarding this blog and whether you may be glorifying negative behavior on the part of your children. You may be doing them both long term damage at the expense of a blog entry. In this specific case, a lot of kids do not distinguish between positive and negative attention, they simply see it all as attention. You should really ask yourself what the purpose of this entry was.
I hear what you’re saying. And I totally get it, and thank you for your constructive concern. They’re getting to an age when I have to be really sensitive about what I include in here. With that said, what I put in here is about 10% of what our lives really entails. And when I put posts like this in here, it’s for other parents of tweens to be able to know that, no, they’re not alone, and to get feedback for myself and other tween’s parents to learn how to handle this change we’re going through. Also, know that what I write here is not just the bad, but the good also. Believe me, I get flack on the good posts too because I am “bragging” about them. This particular post was mainly a musing on how I gave my parents hell when I was a kid, and now I get to see the beginning stages of what they must have gone through with me.
10:54, you honestly believe a girl DQ’s age is acting out to gain some kind of fame or notoriety on her mothers blog? Apparently you are not clear on how kids these days view the internet. She most likely has a facebook page, a twitter, a myspace, YouTube channel, etc.. Images and stories about her appearing online are about as exciting to her (and her friends) as watching paint dry. Odds are, the majority of her peers aren’t even aware of this blogs existence. WineCountryMom has never made herself out to be an authority on parenting, she is simply sharing her day-to-day experiences — good and bad. She will often times impart some advice or suggestions, but (like today) she also asks other parents for opinions or thoughts. Suggesting that her kids will “act out” simply to be the subject of her blog is kind of silly.
First, thanks so much for commenting on my blog. (And, yep, I understand… from one mom of a tween to another!)
The one comment above appear rather harsh to me. I’m curious: do your kids know about your blog? Do you share what you write about?
I hear LOTS of opinions about this… and I’m very curious.
My kids know about it, and occasionally read it. My tween reads many of the posts since they publish to Facebook, and yes, she has a Facebook. My son, at 9, knows about it but doesn’t read it unless it gets published in the newspaper. As far as them acting up to get in my blog, uh no. The truth is they’re good kids who act up occasionally just like any kid their age.
Hey 10:54, just out of curiosity, are YOU a child psychologist? Yeah I didn’t think so. So maybe shut your trap and go read someone else’s blog if you have a problem with this one. Thanks very much.
Hey all, just a reminder that comments should be on topic and not aimed at insulting each other. 🙂
Trying to stay mostly on topic here, but I would like to respond to the comment that ‘a lot of kids don’t distinguish between good and bad attention’.
That’s true. I’ve seen it. Primarily among kids who DON’T get GOOD attention so seek to get attention any way they can…if a child doesn’t get love and affection from their parents it is very common for them to begin acting out in order to at least get an acknowledgment of their existence. But children who receive regular POSITIVE attention from their parents rarely find it necessary to resort to such measures, and bad attention is, properly, something to be dreaded. If the average child could not distinguish between good and bad attention, then upbraiding them for improper behavior would certainly be way out, as they would see it as a reward for their actions, no?
Anyway, if anything, I would think that a tween being compared to her own mother in her mother’s blog might be turned OFF similar future behavior, rather than encouraged to engage in said behavior again.