The Guilty Parent

If I’ve ever given the impression that I know everything about being a mom, then you haven’t been reading long enough to see how I screw it up on an hourly basis. The Twitter hashtag #momfail was created with me in mind, I’m sure.

Along those lines if I’ve ever led you to believe that I’m giving my daughter my blessing to have sex when she becomes a teenager, think again. I know I’ve talked A LOT about it, both on this site and at Lifetime Moms but that’s because I passionately believe that without education and the ability to communicate with our teenagers about sex, we’re pulling the covers over our head and pretending that it doesn’t exist. (more…)

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I can be wishy washy, I can back out on discipline, I can let bedtimes go by without even batting an eye…

And this is why:

Le Sigh.

I’m not going to lie to you and tell you how much I’ve enjoyed having the kids home all summer.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed moments. Perhaps a few days or a week here and there but overall… I can’t wait for the bus to roll up to my house in three days! (I have a yearly lunchtime margarita party when the kids go back… will you be there?) There are only so many things to do in the country and my kids are living proof that summer vacation boredom sets in faster than stink on a pig (sorry. I couldn’t resist the country/farm innuendo).

In fact, if I had the option for year round school, I would be first in line. I would camp out in the rain or sleet or snow for a chance for my kids to go year round. I’d be like those concert groupies that pitch tents and live outside ticket booths weeks before concert tickets go on sale. I’m just saying, I’m not above it.

Was that too harsh? Maybe, but when you work from home like I do, it takes all of three weeks of summer vacation before my kids are at one another’s throats, in my hair, or calling out how they have nothing to do (I come with a list of chores every summer but oddly enough no one wants to take me up on it). It takes all of those three weeks for me to start counting down to back to school time.

Besides, by the time August rolls around, I have kids that are more than ready for me to get out of their hair as well. The feeling is mutual and we aren’t ashamed to say it. In fact, yesterday I threw my hands up in the air and screamed to the heavens, “IS IT TIME FOR SCHOOL YET?!” To which Bug replied, “NO BUT I CAN’T WAIT!”

See. The kids and I agree. It’s time. School should start.

This year may be as wonderful as it is bittersweet too. Peanut has finally mastered daytime potty training and so I’m considering putting him in preschool for a few hours a week. I think it will be a good thing for him to play with other kids his own age, (I’m fun for about 10 minutes) and also have his own “school” experience. Plus, I’m sure he needs a break from me as well.

We’ve already begun the back to school nighttime routines, bedtimes and even morning routines. That means everyone up and dressed before noon (including me). It’s my small way of celebrating every day that the first day of school is around the corner and it’s a great way to make sure kids aren’t thrown into the school routine too fast. Inching our way in to the back to school routine has always been a way for the kids to come to grips with the fact that summer is over and it’s time to get ready for learning again.

It’s not just the kids though that need to get back into the routine, it’s me too. Summer time meant I varied my work schedule to work around their school day. By 3pm, I needed to be wrapping up projects and getting ready for after school activities, dinner and anything else we had going on. I also slept in since they slept in… Man, I will miss that.

I’m wondering though, who else is looking forward to the kids going back to school besides me… should we have a club for it? Would it be wrong to partake in an afternoon cocktail in celebration if we did have a club? Should we keep the husbands out since they don’t get what all the celebrating is about?

This is just off the top of my head but I’m pretty sure I could make this a nationwide campaign for moms everywhere to celebrate going back to school.

Don’t get m wrong. I adore my children, all of them but I adore the school year a smidge more than I probably should.

A recent Twitter conversation with an old friend reminded me of why I’m glad I don’t helicopter or push the kids more than I do. It’s not for a lack of wanting them to succeed, I do. But I feel more and more every day that our kids are under enough pressure to be successful on their own so why should I add to it?

If that makes me a slacker mom, then bring it on.

The core of our conversation rotated around our two oldest children. I was looking for some information on the best way for my teen to get into video gaming; writing about it, reviewing games, etc. He’s considering being a game designer when he’s older and is just now starting to ask what he might do that would be fun, but helpful to him. So I asked my friends on Twitter.

My suggestion to him was start a blog about video games, computer games and the like. Get into the web 2.0 space and start learning from the people already out there.

My friend’s suggestion was to find him courses in Math, English, and Japanese.

Really? My goodness. The boy barely has body hair and we’re already looking at courses for the future. I just picked up his 8th grade class schedule today!

At any rate, my friend and her daughter are already planning for her Master’s degree. The girl is only 10 months older than my son.

This is where I take pause and try to remember that our kids will likely be facing a tougher job market than we did. We were graduating when the market was good, people were buying, selling and our economy looked all bright and shiny like new penny. So it makes some sense to want to have them prepared.

While my friend is positive that she’s not pressuring or pushing her daughter, I still wonder what would happen if I took the same standpoint in my own house.

Mass. Revolt.

So while I’m a slacker and dead set on NOT pushing or pressuring my kids to grow up and move out tomorrow, I’m also conflicted. They have a much harder world than we did (and my parents and their parents and so on) but they also have more options. More avenues that they can explore.

But the pressure is on. It’s there. And maybe that makes me an even worse mom for not sitting down this young man who’s voice cracks on every other word he speaks right now, and start looking at colleges and exploring his options.

After all, my friend’s motivation for getting her daughter ready now is that she doesn’t want her kid to be 24, living on her couch and attending college part time. I don’t either but I refuse to believe that all these decisions need to be made now, or in a year from now.

Can’t we just let them grow up first? At 13 and 14, many teens can’t even choose what they want for breakfast or decide what to wear and here we are expecting and figuring out what’s going to happen to them four or five years from now.

Maybe some teens are that driven and ready to get on with the future but for others, I expect that there is as much confusion about the present as there is the future.

Rather than prepare and plan for them, I feel we should spend some time solidifying our bonds with them. I don’t always have clean socks for them, dinners might be thrown together at the last minute, and we’re not gathering college guides by the truckload but we’re talking about what is mattering to him right now; girls, school, friends, and yes, video games.

I’ll tackle the future… in the future.

image credit: brokenarts

I haven’t been feeling well lately so my bed and television have become my BFFs this past week.

Which of course meant a chance to catch up on the daytime TV.

Aside from catching up on my favorite soaps and a healthy dose of Noggin and Sprout with Peanut, I caught Friday’s Oprah and the revisit with Dr. Laura Berman.

I know you will remember how in April, Jennifer posted about why she would never watch Oprah again. I loved her post even though I respectfully disagree with some parts of her post. So to watch this episode on Friday with two teens who claimed to “be ready” to have sex with each other,

credit: geo cristian

was not so much an eye opener, as it was a breath of fresh air and an affirmation of how I feel about talking to my kids about sex (and now my teenage son).

I mean lets get real, kids are going to have sex, despite the preaching of abstinence and telling kids not to do it (I believe Bristol Palin is a prime example of why that doesn’t work). I was (cover your eyes and ears if you don’t want to see mom and dad), 16 when I had sex for the first time. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t fabulous either. It would take a few more years and sexual experiences for me to finally get comfortable with sex, my own body, my own sexuality and the power I had as a woman. It’s astonishing to me that we aren’t talking to our kids.

Was I talked to about sex growing up? Yes… and No. The REAL TALKS came after I was having sex and they came from my father. (shocked yet?) I give my dad HUGE PROPS for talking to me (I think it was a year after I had sex for the first time). Did he want to? *snort* Probably not! I’m sure he would have been thrilled to never have that discussion but he did it. I gained so much from that strained, awkward, and challenging discussion in our tiny kitchen. He never went to the topic of self stimulation (I think that would have been the end of him right then and there!) but we talked about being safe, making good decisions and he opened the door for me to say a few things that I had been thinking.

I don’t think that my soon to be 10 year old daughter is ready to learn about self pleasure and gratification either so I’m waiting on that. However, thanks to a young female family member and a few sleepovers away from me, she has learned a few things about sex and where babies come from. I found all of this out recently and at first I was enraged that this very personal conversation had taken place. I was beside myself with anger that the talk that I wanted to have with her had been taken from me. It took all I had to not go through the roof. Going through the roof would have gotten me nowhere so I calmed myself and talked to Bebe about what she knew and what she learned from her older, and not so much wiser female family member.

The details aren’t important, but I did learn that there is still power in talking to your child. Bebe knows that some of the information she got was incomplete at best. She knows that in time, when her body and mind are ready she will be able to have a baby too, and she now knows that this information I’ve given her, the correct information, is for her ears only. It’s not her place to share it with friends or her brothers. I’ve given her the gift of saying it’s OK to ask questions and learn more. It’s OK to want to understand about your body and what it can do. I’ve also given her the information that not everything she hears is correct.

Back to Dr. Berman and Oprah; I’m glad they are having these shows. Times have changed. It’s ridiculous to expect our children to remain innocent forever and it’s our moral obligation as parents to talk to them about what’s happening to their bodies and their minds when they become teenagers. Just because we are educating them does not mean we’re giving them license to go out and have sex. BUT at least they have the correct information, they have the whole story (as Dr. Berman took Courtney through the entire thought process of what could happen after sex including what does staying together a long time really mean to her and her boyfriend).

Kids grow up faster today than they ever have. Peer pressure and information from peers is not only the norm but it takes the place of parental supervision for a lot of teens. I’m not about to stick my head in the sand and pretend my kids won’t turn into sexual beings. I’d like to think I’d be as realistic as Pierce’s mom (the young man on Oprah’s show). If it were my daughter or son, I would (and will) take them to buy the protection that they need too.

I’d like to think my kids will wait until they are married to have sex but in case they aren’t…

I know that not all of you are going to agree with me here. I don’t expect that (let the hate mail begin). This is a sensitive and highly controversial topic, but if you have kids, at one point or another you’ll have to make a choice about the discussions you have and the knowledge they need so I think it warrants talking about now. I was lucky that I had a proactive parent in my life, who has much as it pained him to see me grow up, he didn’t stick his head in the sand.

As I said earlier, I learned a lot from my dad in that very awkward discussion but the most important thing I learned was exactly how much he cared for my well being and safety to suck up his own embarrassment and reservations about teenage sex to have an open and honest talk with me.

That’s the same thing I want my kids to learn from me.