I had heard warnings about Middle school age kids and all the challenges but I was still quite unprepared as a mom. My loving, smiling, affectionate child turned into someone I didn’t recognize on most days. He was distant, defiant, emotional and obsessed with his social media. I would try to talk to him but that seemed to annoy him more. We resorted to snooping through his phone, speaking to parents of his friends, talking to counselors and reading parenting books. I wasn’t sure if he was depressed, angry, hormonal, or just hated us. I didn’t know how to help him but was afraid of ignoring it and letting things get worse.
I wasn’t a first time mom of a teen and I had dealt with some craziness but this seemed worse. I think the social pressure side of it was much more intense. I did realize that many parents of kids this age struggle. I once had a woman I never met start talking to me at the school and telling me her daughter hated her. I was surprised at her candor but my heart broke for her. How helpless and hurt she must feel to pour her heart out to a random stranger. Little did I know that I may feel a bit similar one day.
Parenting is hard since your child keeps changing and by the time you start to understand their needs at one stage, they grow out of it. It’s also hard because there is so much letting go. You get attached to your baby and then he’s suddenly a toddler running away from you. As you start to know and love the toddler and his antics, he starts going to school and exploring a new world. Then you get to appreciate the conversations with this little person but suddenly he’s a tween and a teen who wants to be independent yet also pampered. You enjoy the new stages but still miss the ones that came before.
At the teen age it is hard to know how much freedom to give them. We cannot know everything they are experiencing or doing. Social media makes this difficult and especially with Snapchat where posts disappear. They want their privacy but are still too young and vulnerable to be left alone. You hear of so many cases of depression and teen suicide that there is no way you should ignore potential signs. You have to stay connected and vigilant.
This is why I was so stressed and concerned. I had to make sure my child knew he had love and support and try to get in his head. This took a combination of limiting time on social media, speaking to counselors at school, forcing more family time, and just being there for him. Things did improve and we are all smiling a lot more these days. I am glad he’s out of middle school. However, I’m sure there will be a new challenge tomorrow so I just need to hang on and enjoy this parenting roller coaster.
Stuck in a house together, socially distancing from the world but completely trapped together with your family. Many people have mentioned they are driving each other crazy. It is understandable. Our relationships were not built on this much togetherness. Some people are better tolerated or loved in small doses. However, we have to survive this and find a way to lean on the only people around. We have to stay six feet away from the others.
There is so much stress and panic over the Covid-19 virus. Everyone is on edge, worried about their loved ones and trying to figure out how to adjust their daily lives to be safe. This is a first experience for most of us living in the US. It is not a good scenario, however we can look at some of the positives that can come out of this.
Recently my teenage son was talking to someone and mentioned feeling stressed out and they replied ‘what’s stressful at your age?’. He mentioned his exams but that got me thinking about how teens do have a lot of stress. They are no longer at that carefree, naive part of childhood and yet they are not mature enough to understand everything. This creates a potentially dangerous combination and that is probably why you hear about teenage depression and even suicide.
We watched The Mummy movie that just came out this weekend. I wasn’t encouraged by the critic reviews but it seemed interesting from the previews and user reviews. We also generally enjoy Tom Cruise movies so we went. It was better than the reviews I read but definitely not a great movie. I liked the first couple of movies in the Mummy series but they were pretty bad later on. This one goes somewhere in the middle. There was no Brendan Fraser so that made it different as well. It was less campy and humorous than the old movies. The action and effects were good and Tom was good to watch. However, I thought it was much more gross and gory than the others. In fact, one of the gross scenes was completely gratuitous. There were also a lot of zombies which I did not expect and I’m not a fan of those. That being said, it was still a good big screen watch if you’ve already seen Wonder Woman and want to go to the movies. This movie also seemed like it was setting the stage for a franchise of Dark Universe movies with other monsters. It had Russell Crowe in an interesting and unexpected role as well. Maybe the future movies will be better!
This past weekend my family went to see the long-awaited Wonder Woman movie and we were not disappointed. We are a family of comic/sci-fi/superhero buffs so we were all excited and not happy that life interfered and made us wait until Sunday to watch it. I remember watching the Wonder Woman TV show as a child and playing her with my friends. I was and still am amazed by Lynda Carter so I had my doubts about Gal Gadot. I think she’s beautiful but I couldn’t imagine her in this role from what I’d seen of her in Fast and Furious. Luckily, I changed my mind after her cameo in Batman v Superman. She did a great job and I was impressed at how she portrayed the strength and innocence of the character.
reenasramble 