Dear Todd (We have a Teenager)

October 30th, 2017 Dear Todd, Turning the corner to middle school this morning, our son groaned as he looked at the clock in the car. And my inner Ally McBeal turned my face into giant teeth and I ate his head. What I said though was, "I think I've mentioned we need at least 20 minutes to get to school." To which he replied, "I was ready and in the car at 7:39." I then decided to play the "attorney" side of Ally...and replayed our morning for the plaintiff... "May it please the court, the Plaintiff freaked out when I said, 'It's 7:38' while he was tying his shoes. I believe his words were, 'Shoot! I thought it said '28.' And then I recall a request to grab his lunch out of the fridge, upon which I discovered there was not one. And while I internally struggled with whether to let him starve today as a natural consequence or take pity on him because of all the hardwork he put into the Red Blood Cell presentation that h...

October 31, 2017 Dear Todd, How can one holiday go from magical, and fun, and a personal favorite to exhausted, stress-filled bullshit? It's not a riddle. It's parenting. It's several things... (1) the double costume hell of the "dress like your favorite literary character" at school coupled with, "But for REAL Halloween I wanna be a psycho clown killer riding on a T-Rex." (2) The the "My friends are Trick or Treating over there and I'm not invited, and I don't want to Trick or Treat with the little (only by 23 months) kids." (3) The problem-solving of how to make a teenager feel "big" only to finally come up with a solution  and get squashed by the, "Oh I am invited!" And then there were 2. (4) A nice invite from the youngest's group "Does he want to go with the kids in this group?" (5)And then an invite for the middle, "We'd love to have her in our neighborhood."   ALL G...

Oct 26, 2017 Dear Todd, Last night, between the hours of 5-9, our daughter rolled through what would otherwise appear to be some sort of emotional drug withdrawal were she not 12. The 0-60 shift from REM’s “Shiny Happy People” to Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” was really impressive. And not one narcotic was involved. The first “trigger” was signing up for Rock Climbing Club. Now, I’m sure you are thinking, “Well duh...she is wary of new experiences.” But, no no...this spectacular meltdown was rooted in signing her name. Not what she was authorizing, but the actual signature. I believe we launched with “My handwriting stinks!” And gradually escalated to “I hate my name!”  Admittedly, I did not see this one coming and just kept trying to talk her off the ledge. She was pretty sure she had the ugliest name to write when I was saved by the boys wrestling—something I never thought I’d say—and had to take them over to the high school. When I returned, she was dancing in the k...

October 25th, 2017 Dear Todd I’ve had a hard time keeping track of what’s happening day to day and haven’t written in a while. The world seems to be crumbling all around us and so I’ve just been moving through it lately—trying to keep our (not so) little people alive and kind. But, tonight I got a reminder of the stage of life in our home. It’s a swirl of homework, chores, reluctance, someone feeling left out at school, someone feeling included for once, struggling to get to sleep and then releasing all tension and breaking into tears of laughter as our 13yr old recounts a moment in his English class. The student meant to write “I was wrapped into the darkness....and upstairs was an attic...that had a fiberglass witch inside.”  But due to having a desire for language mixed with an inability to spell...read, “I was raped into the darkness...and upstairs was an addict with a fiberglass witch inside.”  Clearly a very different story.