Advice from the battlefield. With a seriously funny edge.
“Teenagers are like those cool tropical fish you get after you’ve mastered goldfish.
Who am I kidding? No one can master the keeping of goldfish. Or pre-teens. Or teenagers. You graduate only to bigger kids, but with bigger issues and bigger appetites. God help us all. Especially me?…
Keep your head up – here are tips I offer from years of battleground experience.”
I know, I know, I’m old as dirt. Over the hill. Practically ancient when it comes to you and your hip ways. Tweens and teens everywhere snicker madly when the old people offer advice because what the hell would we know about actual life.
Bwahahahaha!!!
More than you will ever know, baby. More.than.you.will.ever.know.
Crackle, crackle, crunch crunch.
Hear that? Those are the eggshells scattered all over our floor these days.
We’re navigating tempestuous waters here. Some days it’s smooth sailing, others the sea is gray and choppy with a tornado warning to boot, but BrightSide and I are in this for the long haul. You take what life throws at you and keep on swimming.
Wasn’t it just yesterday these kids were all skinned knees and fighting over whose turn it is? Wait, that was yesterday. But you know what I mean. We’re swimming with the sharks these days.
But to survive the sharks, all you need is a plan.
Last I heard Bear was aiming for professional basketball player or a brain surgeon when it comes to life goals. Basketball. Or surgery.
After I was fully supportive of my daughter’s ambitions I tactfully slipped in that she might want to consider becoming a lawyer. What with her proclivity of arguing things into the ground and all.
If you’ll bear with me for one moment, I’ve gotta do a bit of shameless mama bragging on these kids o’ mine.
These babes are the bomb diggity. They’re smart, funny, talented, and beautiful by any measure. When they’re unhappy it’s palpable. When they’re happy, joy radiates from them like warmth from the sun.
Gem passed along this little nugget of wisdom recently: be where your feet are. It’s a good phrase for me – short, sweet, to the point, and extremely visual. No floundering around trying to grasp hold of some existential philosophy. When I find myself spinning off into my head I just try to remember: be where your feet are. It works.
BrightSide’s always been better at putting this into practice than me – staying present in the moment instead of getting stuck in his head. So every once in a while, when he notices I’m losing my way, he’ll remind me. He’ll remind me to be where I am.
Sure, some might say we grew up roughing it by today’s standards…but maybe we were the ones who actually gained in the end. Is it possible, as the author says, that “we just don’t have the cojones our parents had”?
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re getting a raw deal where this parenting gig is concerned. When did adults start caring whether or not their kids were safe, happy or popular? I can assure you that Ginny and Big Jerry were not wiling away the hours wondering if my brother and I were fulfilled.
Big Jerry was stoking the fires of his retirement savings and working, and working some more. Ginny was double bolting the door in order to keep us out of the house, and talking on the phone while she smoked a Kent. Meanwhile, we were three neighborhoods away, playing with some kids we’d never met, and we had crossed two major highways on bicycles with semi-flat tires to get there. Odds are, one of us had crashed at some point and was bleeding pretty impressively. No one cared. We were kids and if we weren’t acting as free labor, we were supposed to be out of the house and out of the way.”
Are Today’s Parents Getting a Raw Deal? | The Huffington Post
