First of all, I have some business that needs to be tended to before we can get to today’s post about teenagers and gypsies. Right around the holidays when everyone (but me) was spending time with family and friends and eating, drinking, and making of the merriment, I was hosting a contest with a give away. Like the holidays, that contest had ended.
And we have a winner.
Because she alone entered more than I had other entries, the odds were strongly in her favor to win. Congratulations, and a free copy of My Memories Suite, go out to Annie Younger! Annie I will be emailing you the code to use when you download the software so that there is zero cost to you.
Now to today’s post.
I was looking around the internet the other day for a collaborative website (think Babble, or BlogHer) that includes A) Single moms, B) moms of teens C) Single moms of teens or any combination of the three.
I mean, there are places for singles women, newly divorced/going through a divorce women, pregnant women, women with fertility issues, new mommies, mommies of newborns, multiples, toddlers, kids. But once our children near the end of their childhood and stand on the cusp of teenhood, all of sudden, us mothers are, well on our own.
Babies are all the same*.. change them when they need it, feed them when they are hungry, teach them to walk and talk and keep them from bringing the house down around them and us. With teenagers we mothers have to navigate hormones, periods, boobs, pimples, dating, boys, mean girls, driving, curfews, attitudes, smart mouths, rolled eyes, slammed doors and stomping feet. Also? The silent treatment. There is no longer the question of breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, spank or time out. Now it’s too young to date, when to set curfew, how short/tight is too short/tight.
Parents of teens need a place to vent and get support when they hate us, and we just can’t take one more slammed door or rolled eye. And that’s just us. Their attitudes are so much worse and volatile.
Take for instance today, the girls have been gone most of the weekend, spending the night, hanging out with friends. Today, I made them stay home. I mean, after all, they do live here. Bad idea. By 3:00 I was ready to set them on the curb hoping a band of gypsies came by and picked them up. They could not sit on the same couch together without the UFC breaking out. They argued because one of them seriously thought she owned the jar of pickles in the fridge and threw a fit when the other ate one of ‘her pickles’. (I couldn’t make this up) They couldn’t be in the same room together without fighting at decibels I wish I couldn’t hear. Where is the place I go to find out I’m not alone, there are other moms living in the hormone charged war zone that is a home of more than one teenager? And how do they get through a day without killing one or all of them, or at the very least, running away?
How is it that this group of mothers has been overlooked and ignored? Are other moms of teens looking for a place on the internet to call ‘ours”’?
*That is not to say that babies are easy. Especially first babies when you have eleventy billion questions and you’re sure you’re doing everything wrong, and you’ll screw up your kid before their first birthday. Trust me, you will.
I have a 17 year old son and a 12 1/2 year old son (and an almost 3 year old son). Yesterday I took all 3 of them grocery shopping. Before we went inside I looked at them, baby included, and said…if you piss me off you’re walking home, without your phone. It’s like a 7 mile walk. I honestly was wishing one of them woulda ticked me off. It doesn’t get better. It gets worse.
Pamela Gold recently posted..Hiding Out
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Becky Reply:
January 9th, 2012 at 2:03 pm
@Pamela Gold, My youngest (12) has to keep her hands in her hands in her pockets at all times while we are shopping. She compulsively wants to touch everything in the store.
It got worse last night long before it got better.
Becky recently posted..Where do you go when you want to set your teens on the curb hoping a band of gypsies will come along and take them away?
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My daughters are two-and-a-bit years apart, and the eldest, who is 10 and a half is in the early stages of preadolescent moodiness. I can’t see it getting better any time soon.
Andie recently posted..If you don’t have anything nice to say, STFU and go order your coffee.
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Becky Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 12:42 pm
@Andie, To be honest, it doesn’t get any easier. And I’m doing it basically alone as their father lives over 2 hours away.
Becky recently posted..Where do you go when you want to set your teens on the curb hoping a band of gypsies will come along and take them away?
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I’m here. And I don’t send my teens away. I leave..
Yep, I blog and I have teens, I just can’t really write about them because they KNOW I blog and they check everything I write… Drop on by when you need to vent! My team is seventeen, fourteen and eleven.
Leanne recently posted..Sometimes I yell the stupidest things…
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Becky Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
@Leanne, I have been unemployed since September, so the few precious hours they are in school is basically my time to get my stuff done and look for a job. My girls know I blog and when they do something particularly funny or pissy, and I happen to reach for my laptop they yell “Don’t blog this!!!’ or Don’t Facebook this!
I try not to write about specifics of their life b/c being a teen is hard enough without mom splashing it all over the internet. But what about mom? What about my need to say “Can I sell them? Please?”
Becky recently posted..Where do you go when you want to set your teens on the curb hoping a band of gypsies will come along and take them away?
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I *just left a comment on Blogher on your post. I am in 100% agreeance with you on the “no place to go”. As much as I miss being called Mommy, we’re more at the Mom or MA! stage. I have to dig thru these sites to find any decent content, advice or humor on raising teens/tweens. We say what we’re going thru and new moms would be HORRIFIED that we would EVER speak of our sweet babies that way. Yeah.. take a number of 5-7 years and we’ll see what song you’re singing then, sister! I say we just start our own
Kristen Daukas recently posted..Teens, Tweens and Finances
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Becky Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
@Kristen Daukas, Cute adorable do no wrong babies I brought home from the hospital have been replaced by hormonally charged, human beings with attitudes and brains and logic and mouths.
And yet, nobody ever warns you that is going to happen when you bring them home.
Where’s the What to Expect when You’re Ready to Run Away book?
Becky recently posted..Where do you go when you want to set your teens on the curb hoping a band of gypsies will come along and take them away?
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I wholeheartedly agree!!!! I tried to do something about this in my community last year when I was selected to be on a panel of single mothers who got to decide on a project that the local community foundation would fund. I was outvoted by all the single mothers with small children in the group. Mothers of small children have play groups and school functions where they are constantly coming into contact with other moms. Once the kids get to be teenagers, there are no support groups, and the kids would rather die than have you show up at school. This can be the toughest time to be a single mother and also the most alienating.
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Becky Reply:
January 10th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
@Jenn Janness, It’s like we are the parenting demographic that everyone wants to pretend doesn’t exist. Teens get such a bad rap b/c there are so many troubled teens out there who get all the attention. What they fail to understand is, if we as parents had more support from the communities we are members of, there would be fewer troubled teens out there b/c we could do more for/with them.
Becky recently posted..Where do you go when you want to set your teens on the curb hoping a band of gypsies will come along and take them away?
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