Oh, Yeah, That

Understanding our kids’ development stages is nice for tea, but limiting for parenting.

My youngest daughter was addressing my oldest daughter and me. In moments, she would be boarding a bus to a teen sleep away camp. Her words mattered. We had not had our precamp mother/daughter talk. 

Theorists think of teens in developmental rubrics; “young teens” as under 14, “mid teens” as under 16; and “older teens” as anyone else who still lives at home, occasional parrots, lizards and stray cousins, included. Moms, all the same, think of teens in an analogous, but dissimilar way; “young teens” as last seen when the clutter in their bedroom reached their windows, “mid teens” as capable of negotiating curfews with a single sigh; and “older teens” as powerful enough to scale tall limits without sighing, and as savvy enough to dig deeply through younger teens’ clutter and to actually find them.

Yet, Moms’ most wisdom-based, i.e. derived from having to wash all of the laundry unearthed during older teens’ excavations of younger teens, naming conventions still lack something, still fit the wrong rhetorical pigeon holes, and still fail to glisten, when served up next to life’s eventualities. In short, understanding our kids’ development stages is nice for tea, but limiting for parenting.

For instance, it is not so much that a teen getting ready for camp needs a parent to check on hair scrunchies and on sun lotion, though both verifications help, or that a teen needs a parent to tag cloths or to count sanitary supplies, though, again, both verifications help, as it is that a teen needs a parent to check feelings. Kids need to know we actively care.

However, they need to her pronouncements of our caring at their convenience An adolescent, who is functioning reasonably well, wants Mom to be there, but does not necessarily want to attend to Mom’s discourse. Such a child, in fact, might actively choose to ignore such communication (as indicated by that child’s glazed over look or by his or her continuity with his or her headphones).

Consider that in our home, my youngest daughter wanted my oldest daughter, not me, to make sure that the clothes she packed were “just right.” She wanted my oldest son’s nifty compact sleeping bag. She wanted my youngest son to leave her alone. She wanted kisses from Daddy.

As for Mom, in that kid’s book, my jobs were: to chauffer her to her bus, to sign her forms, and to pay her fees. She consented, after a bit of negotiating on my part, to let me take her out for breakfast, but only if my other daughter also came along; wardrobe strategies had not yet been finalized.

When it was time to give hugs and to ascertain that water bottles had been packed in my young teen’s carry on, rather than in her suitcase stowed beneath the bus, I tried once more to give my little daughter of sugar and sagacity. Her response was terse. Blithely, my dear offspring retorted, “oh, yeah, that.”