Calling BS on Some Stuff I Don't Like

10 Things Only Boy Mom’s Understand

8 Things Girl Mom’s Need to Know

Hang in There: 12 Ways to Survive Your Child’s Teenage Years

These are just a few of the RIDICULOUSLY-titled articles I’ve made up in my head just now. I’ve done so to demonstrate my disdain for blog posts that narrowly-define motherhood and enforce gender stereotypes, but they are similar to actual articles I’ve read and I’m just going to go on record saying I don’t like them.

I am – at this moment in my life – a mother in all of the above categories and if I’m to believe the tenets of the articles, all of the following is true:

• Boys eat dirt. They like things with wheels and games with balls. They smell bad, empty your refrigerator daily, and bring critters into your house.
• Girls decorate your house in glitter, cry a lot, are moody from birth, steal your shoes, and make you buy lots of clothes.
• Parents of teenagers need meds or therapy or both to survive.

I am here to call bullshit on all of it. The first two are nothing more than a modern-spin on Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails or Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice. I’d like to think we’ve come farther than that. The third stereotype is usually a result of adults forgetting what it’s like to be a teenager. Now…maybe it says something about me that I have no trouble remembering what that was like – maybe it says I act or think too much like a teenager now.

This I know...I have a 14-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy and this has been my experience:

• Both kids ate dirt and in fact BOTH had to be told at least once not to lick the car.
• They both smell – in different ways and at different times – but they both take regular showers without anyone begging them to… Except when my daughter doesn’t wash her hair before a swim meet because it’s bad luck and makes her swim cap fall off. But that may be unique to us...
• They both eat shocking quantities of food because they are both growing and incredibly active.
• My daughter, when she was 6-years-old, donned a pair of gardening gloves to put a snake into a bucket…my son once freaked out because a ladybug was on him.
• Glitter is something that is frowned upon in my house and my daughter does not care. Glitter is for spirit posters and it is to be used outside the house.
• Both kids cry for undiscernible reasons and display moodiness at random times. Because…hormones. Duh.
• We all share shoes but the only one who steals them is the dog.
• Clothes are not a huge priority…both have their own style and ask for things periodically. Thanks to school uniforms the wardrobe arguments in our house are limited to social events and church.

In short…my kids don’t fall into these stereotypes and my guess is that they are not alone. But I get that this is now and always has been part of our culture – boys wear blue and like tractors, girls wear pink and like tea parties. Whatever, I don’t want to fight a culture war.

But I do have something to say about teenagers and my personal experience in raising some so far:

These are the good old days.

It’s troubling to me that the existing paradigm seems to be that only through the Grace of God will any of us parents live to tell the tale of our children’s teenage years. If I went into this believing that, I would probably see more bad than good.

Instead, let me tell you what I love about having teenagers and what you might have to look forward to:

• Teenagers have opinions and that leads to conversation. Conversation is language development and language is words and I LOVE WORDS. I guess that some of these conversations begin with whining, but I don’t speak “whine” so I just ignore it and it stops. They argue too – but I’m okay with that because they do so respectfully which means they’ll be able to do so in life and they have learned when it is appropriate to argue and when it is not. They have learned through practice and that is why it doesn’t bother me.
• We can all share clothes and – more importantly shoes. I can wear my daughter’s Uggs when my feet get cold and I can wear my son’s Adidas slides when my feet hurt after a long run. Now, it’s not a two-way street with my son (because I guess he hasn’t found a need for tall black boots or pink flip-flops) but it is with my daughter. She asks before borrowing and unless I’m wearing them myself I say yes. She knows that if they end up in the dog’s mouth (or otherwise lost or ruined) she will lose the privilege temporarily or forever depending on how new/expensive/loved said shoes were.
• They understand my emotions and my needs – because they have so many themselves. When I need to be alone, they let me.  When I am writing – they apologize before each of their many unnecessary interruptions. They support my running and my personal goals just like I support theirs. They are beginning to see me as a person and not just a glorified Sherpa who gave them life and keeps them fed.
• They laugh with me and with each other and while it’s not the frequent giggly laughter associated with their toddler years, it is every bit as satisfying – maybe more satisfying due to its rarity – maybe because we share similar senses of humor. The four of us laughing together is my nirvana.
• Contrary to what targeted marketing may ask you to believe, they smile easily really. I read an article today about how parents of toddlers should appreciate them because when your kids are teenagers you’ll miss their smiles. I wanted to ask the author, what she was doing to make her kids frown all the time. It reminded me of this commercial from a few years ago...this family was on vacation – at an amusement park or something -- and the mother was narrating the elusive search for her sullen teenage daughter’s smile (it was similar to what the narrator of a wildlife show might sound like while looking for a rare woodpecker in the forest). Anyway, it was a lame attempt to suggest that only a trip to this theme park was going to bring a smile to a teenager’s face. The truth is that I am frequently able to do this for free and without standing in a queue.
• They understand time and space. This is huge. That means they don’t ask “Are we there yet?” 15 minutes into a 10-hour drive to the beach – they can feel that it hasn’t been 10 hours yet and they can read the clock. It means they don’t try to stuff their security blanket down the toilet because they can just look and know that it doesn’t fit.  These are things I do not miss.
• They can (and often prefer to) entertain themselves. I think this may be one of the most satisfying things about watching my kids grow up. They are learning to enjoy their own company. They don’t need me to be the ringmaster of a circus to save them from boredom. Instances of them flopping onto the couch with a deep dissatisfied sigh are becoming less and less common.
• They are slowly becoming adults who will (hopefully) not need to live in our basement (which we do not have) and who enjoy our company without needing us. I don’t need to be needed – certainly not forever.

My point is this: whether we have boys or girls…regardless of what stage in their development we celebrate most…articles -- like the ones I'm talking about -- which purport to highlight something profound about parenting are actually deceptively shallow. They create anxiety that we’ve missed the best time of their lives, that we are missing out on a particular gender, that our kids who don’t fit into gender stereotypes aren’t normal, or that we aren’t going to survive the next phase of their reality.

And who the hell needs all that? I think the best we can remember with each day…each moment…is that THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

In terms of enjoying each stage of your child’s maturity, that means if things are not the way you wish they were, looking for the silver lining is a good way to pass the time while you’re waiting for the current phase to pass. And if you love things the way they are...live into that gratitude. Enjoy each day because things will be different soon and there's no way to know how any of you are going to manage that phase.

And if those articles make you think you need a girl when you have a house full of boys…or a boy when you’ve got a house full of girls…well, you’ll have to navigate that decision on your own.

But if it was me, I sure wouldn’t make that decision base on a blog post inspired by a centuries-old nursery rhyme.