I've decided I much prefer toddlers to teens. Certainly toddlers can exhaust their poor mother physically with all the chasing, tying shoes, wiping noses and bottoms, fixing vittles, and the other myriad and sundry activities required for raising little people. It's enough to leave a young mama longing for those independent years when the kids can do stuff for themselves. But don't wish too hard.....
Having offspring at both ends of the spectrum now, let me just tell ya: Teens are every bit as exhausting. They may not drain you physically any more, but they will stretch your emotional and intellectual energy to capacity....then need more. Don't get me wrong, I love my teens. Not that I haven't murmured to the contrary recently, but I generally find life, um, stimulating with adolescents.
Something else I've noticed is how much more I worry about how their actions reflect on me. I'm a rather self-absorbed kinda gal, and I've always been concerned with what others thought of me. I use to be a pro at 'tweaking' myself, rearranging my personality so I'd fit in with a certain social situation. Unfortunately, that little dance doesn't end in high school. As a young parent (expecially in the conservative circles I used to run with), I felt constantly under the gaze of my peers. If Bucky-Boy was respectful and kind around others, then by golly I was gonna have my kid live up to that standard too. Even if I had to shame him into acting that way. Not modeling it, mind you. Just imposing it and leaving the poor kid to figure it out on his own. Sick.
So just when I think I'm moving past this wacked parenting paradigm, I find myself with teenagers on the brink of adulthood. I'm still worried about how their actions reflect on me, but now I don't give a noodle what others think......instead I worry about how they'll cope with the crap I've handed to them. Those obnoxious attitudes and immature behaviors that they reflect back to me every day. I see in them the unrefined rawness and the vulnerability that still lurks under my calm, cool facade.
I used to think I had all the time in the world to grow up and get it together so that my kids would have a slightly normal mother and therefore have a decent shot at being slightly normal themselves. Now I understand that was a severe miscalculation. Before you have a chance to mature, The Powers the Be hand you children. And when you're finally moving toward your 40's, behaving in a less selfish, more loving manner, those kids morph into teenagers just to remind you that YES, you are *still* from outer space just like them, regardless of polite manners and meticulously applied personas.
We all must walk the same worn path to adulthood....one that includes rolling eyes, deep sighs, ecstatic highs and horrifying lows. It's exhausting for everyone, yet profound LIVING begins to happen for me if I can just grab hold of Grace and realize the only difference between them and me (besides some stretchmarks and wrinkles) is life experience. I don't need to worry how they'll survive the particular goofiness I've passed down to them.....it's happening everywhere throughout the world, throughout time...the awkward emergence of unique, if quirky, individuals who all need to learn to play nice. We are all learning the lesson of being kind, not right. It's just that you (think you) can force toddlers to do it. Teenagers must discover it. And we all discover best by observing. Not by being told over and over...
I think perhaps I'll just climb aboard the spaceship with my teenagers, and enjoy the ride.
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