Nine Differences Between Parenting Children and Teenagers

My kids are almost all grown. In fact, by the end of the summer, I’ll only have one who’s still a teenager, so I thought I’d share the differences and similarities between parenting little ones and teenagers.

1. You still say, “It’s bedtime.” And you still do the happy dance when you say it. But now it means “Dad and I are going to sleep, don’t burn down the house,” instead of “Let’s get the little ones to bed and have a glass of wine.”

2. Instead of saying, “Eat your dinner,” you say, “You ate all the (fill in the blank)? We were going to eat that for dinner.”

3. You still say, “Enough with the computer games.” Actually, there’s no difference with this one.

4. Instead of you saying, “You’re not wearing that.” Your teenagers say, “Mom, you’re not wearing that." (BTW, there’s nothing wrong with mom jeans, just saying.)

5. Instead of your kids waking you at 5am, you shake them and say, “I don’t care if it’s Saturday—it’s noon, get up and eat breakfast.” (And they seem to miss the correlation between number one and number five.)

6. “Be careful” used to mean “don’t fall off the swing.” Now it means, “you will be hurtling in a 4000 lbs metal conveyance along the highway at 65 mph per hour with all your siblings in the car—BE CAREFUL!”

7. You used to carefully consider whether a particular movie would be too scary for the kids. Now when your son asks you to watch the latest sci-fi flick, you say, “Will this give me nightmares?”

8. “Let me help you tie your shoe” becomes “Uh, can you help me synch my Kindle with my phone?”

  

    9.  And I love you still means I love you, only more.

Baseball: A Squirrel's Memoir

Although spring is one of my favorite seasons of the year, there is one aspect that I hate. Baseball. I can tolerate baseball on television. I can sit next to Cal and embroider, and we have painless husband-wife bonding time. But that’s not what I hate. What I hate is organized baseball teams. Okay, it’s not that exactly. I’m really glad that Jake is playing on a high school team—good exercise, male war bonding rituals, etc. What I hate is bleacher duty. Freezing my butt off in the stands during the early spring. (How can February be considered spring? It was two degrees above freezing this morning.) I hate marinating in my own sweat and serving as mosquito bait by early summer.

I’d hoped when little league was over that we were done with sports. Little league was its own exquisite torture. Besides three boys on three teams playing at three different locations at the same time, Luke also became an umpire at age 12 when he passed the umpiring exam. And because he was big for his age 6’1” and broad and, therefore, more physically intimidating, he was the behind-the-plate umpire, who got screamed at by parents and coaches alike. (This was New England and they scream at umpires. Yeah, that was fun for me, sitting in the stands and having to keep my mouth shut.) Oops, sorry for that digression.

Now before you think that I was one of those women who was never exposed to sports, who never played, I wasn’t. I played women’s softball. I was the catcher. (I think I was assigned the position because it was the spot where I could do the least damage.) And everything was fine, until there was a play at home base. I got on the bag, crouched, and readied my glove. As the ball came towards me, I caught a glimpse of the runner. She was a freight train. I was a skinny, stupid squirrel standing on the tracks, keeping her from softball glory. But I steeled my muscles and my resolve. I would catch that ball, and she would be out. My teammates were counting on me...Freight-train girl plowed right threw me. I ate dirt. And the idea of balls, gloves, and bats as a fun pastime was forever lost.

Yeah, so baseball has started. Jacob is excited. Let the games begin. I’ll be that mom in the stands cheering the team and yelling, “Go, Jacob. Run over the catcher! You can do it.”