Let's talk teenagers, by whom I am totally surrounded. I have never lived with so many at once. My first child left home at 16 and for all intents and purposes has never come back. He visits from time to time, eating me out of Honey Nut Cheerios and filling my refrigerator with tofu and hummus, but his visits are never very long. Now his sister has reached the magical year of 18, my youngest boy is weeks from 14, and the baby is in her 13th year.
I have a confession to make. As much as I love my older children, and as proud as I may be, this is not always my favorite age. I don't often regret experiencing the first child's later teen years largely via telephone, text and email, 100 miles away. Sometimes ignorance is bliss (now that he's 20, that is truer than ever).
I look back at those long gone days of childhood, when all I needed to do was kiss a booboo to make it better, rock a child with a fevered head, sing a lullaby to soothe a bad dream. I know, I know--there was so much more hair-pulling going on at the time, but when I choose to reminisce, I don't bother with the annoying stuff! Those are good years. I try to tell mothers that as often as I can. It doesn't get worse, but it does get different. You'll miss those little people, even as you are delighting in the new-found big people.
By the ripe old age of 18, the wisdom we need to hear most is the knowledge we are least willing to listen to. Sure, there were plenty of people willing to save me from making bad choices, but I thought I knew everything. Like Dorothy and the ruby slippers, the lessons learned by making my own mistakes were lessons I had to learn for myself. Do I wish I had listened to my parents more? Absolutely. Do I think I rolled my eyes and stomped my feet and threw a young-adult style little hissy-fit on occasion? Most definitely. It's a part of letting go, on both sides. As much as I would love to save my children from themselves, it is better if I watch as they make their own way.
That is not to say that I do not offer my opinion. Repeatedly. In various forms, and forums. Sometimes my suggestions/thoughts/insights are met with immediate flippancy or argument. Sarcasm is spoken fluently and regularly in my house: If there were college credits to be had, we'd all be tenured professors. But it has been my experience that those conversations immediately dismissed by the teenager as stupid and irrelevant are later pondered, taken in, and occasionally (gasp!) acknowledged as worthy.
Someone once described parenting in the teen years as being pecked to death by chickens. I figure the chickens will all fly the coop long before they can be the death of me. But whether they take off at 16, 18, or 24, I will have earned my bragging rights and my battle scars.
