Tag Archives: parenting teens

Dec
20
2019

What Freedom Tastes Like (Apparently: Porkroll)

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It happened earlier this week: On Tuesday, my youngest turned 17 and left the house before sunrise, returning a few hours later triumphant, with his new driver’s license in hand. I often say that he’s not the worst teenager I’ve ever met, and generally cheery, but this new found independence sent him into a profoundly manic state.

“This is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said, sitting at the counter in our kitchen examining his new license. He couldn’t stop smiling and said it was the best birthday present, even though I’d just given him new AirPods.

We sat and chatted for a bit and then he ordered a porkroll-egg-and-cheese on a roll (no salt/pepper/ketchup) from a nearby deli, which — if you live in New Jersey — is apparently what freedom tastes like. Then I watched as he slid into the Honda Civic I’d leased a few weeks ago and backed out of the driveway to go pick up his celebratory sandwich and head to school and bask in all the birthday good wishes.

It wasn’t until later, when I was thinking about my youngest child’s new set of wings, that it occurred to me that for the first time in 27 years, I was no longer pinned to one of my children’s pick up and drop off schedules. That I, too, had been set free.

I’ve been towing kids around for so long that when I had my first baby in 1992, new parents were instructed to strap rear-facing infant seats into the front seat of the car. Like, a crybaby was my copilot for a good year until his sister came along and all of a sudden, all cry babies were mandated to be moved to the rear.

I shuttled my kids all over creation, like every other mom, in vehicles littered with crushed goldfish and empty juice boxes they’d stuff into cupholders, leaving a sticky residue on everything they touched. I can’t tell you how many times I had to disassemble a car seat to wipe barf from its every nook and cranny, and as this was well before the dawn of smartphones and iPads, we listened to a lot of Broadway cast recordings and could sing the entire libretto of The Music Man and Oklahoma at one point.

And as my four kids were spread out over 10 years, all that driving went on for a very long time.

The driving pinnacle came when I had four kids in four different schools, had gone back to work full time and was in the midst of a contentious divorce. I’d race to pickups muted while listening in on conference calls while the high school kids argued about who should have been picked up first. I even outsourced driving the youngest back and forth to preschool by signing him up for one that provided bus service. 

Eventually — meaning 17 years later — they started to get their licenses and we slowly began adding used cars to the fleet so they could get themselves where they needed to be (school, work, practice). When my third kid got her license, I finally had someone who could also help with errands and she gladly went food shopping and to Costco for a toilet paper haul. And she happily drove her little brother to and from wherever he needed to be.

But when she went away to college five years ago, that driving gravy train screeched to a halt and I was back shuttling the baby around. 

The upside to the fourth kid, though, is that he’s pretty resourceful and usually gets himself where he needs to be. My biggest driving responsibility the last few years has been getting him to school each morning, which I kind of strong armed my neighbors into sharing with me, dangling the promise that once my guy got his license, he’d gladly drive their kid to school until he got his own license. 

In fact, when I texted my neighbor on Tuesday to tell her the good news, that we’d NEVER have to be part of the terrifying drop off situation at the high school, she replied, “That’s a fabulous Christmas present for us all!!”

My third kid lives right outside DC now and she and I Facetimed on Tuesday after her little brother got his license and she joked that now I could just send him to the market to buy his own ham, which is what he eats every day for lunch at school and it seems like we’re always running out and I need to go buy more. 

“You just need to give Nick a credit card and you never have to do anything again,” she said, and we laughed at how true that was.

He’s lined up a babysitting gig for tonight — which means I can go out without worrying he’s going to throw a rager at our house and that I also don’t have to pick him up anywhere; and on Sunday he can drive himself to a 6 p.m. indoor lacrosse game a half hour away so I can go to my girlfriend’s holiday open house; and on Monday, he can be the Uber driver for me and my girlfriends so we can have a glass of proseco at our annual holiday lunch. 

Honestly, this kids growing older thing is really working out for me, and it was only 27 years in the making. 

Did you know I send out a newsletter on (most) Fridays, sharing all my faves-du-jour plus snippets from what’s going on in my life? Well, it’s true and you can sign up to get it plopped right in your inbox each week, by signing  yourself up.

If you are reading this on your phone, scroll down to the bottom, past my face, until you see NEVER MISS A POST.

If you’re on the computer, simply look to the right for the same form to plug your email into. 

Sep
28
2018

Football Mom

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On Monday during my son’s junior varsity football game against the local Catholic school, he tackled a kid running with the ball who fell on top of his head and kind of knocked him silly. It was one of those situations where the game paused and all the players took a knee while my son sat there looking dazed, and then we all clapped when he got up and moved to the sidelines, where he immediately got pulled out of the game.

When I told my friend Dan a few days later that my kid had a very mild concussion from the incident, he asked, “Are you surprised?

“He plays hard,” he continued, as I pushed 10-pound weights over my head and thought mean things about him. “You had to know this was going to happen.”

This summer when I took my football player for his annual physical, we ended up seeing a different doctor than our usual pediatrician. He’s new to the practice, I’d never seen him before, and he was very tall and spoke with an accent that I pegged as Russian (which was later confirmed), based on how opinionated he was about everything. Especially football.

“You play American football and not the real football?” he asked all jokey, and went on to tell us that he would never allow his own sons to play America’s favorite sport, and then pointed to his head. “It’s very bad,” he said.

And I smiled and shook my head and was like, “Well, thanks mister. I guess I suck,” and we later made fun of him on the car ride home, doing our best Boris and Natasha.

The decision for my youngest to play football in high school was mostly my own. He’d never really played before, but I pushed him to try freshman football because A: I knew he’d like it, B: I thought it would be a good way for him to make some new friends and C: I envisioned myself in the stands wearing a shirt with his name on the back cheering for the team when he was a senior. His two sisters liked the idea, too, and helped me coerce him into showing up at the high school that summer for a workout with the rest of the freshman team.

And he loved it.

He’s a sporty kid and a decent athlete and has the great luck of good genetics, which has rendered him on the taller and bigger side of his peers. He’s also a total bro, and football is about as bro as you can get. He immediately bonded with his teammates and embraced the entire football culture.

And so did I.

I bought myself and my three older kids t-shirts to wear to the games and we embraced our baby’s efforts. I even started to learn stuff (read: pay attention) about football, like “What’s Up With the Punt?” and “That Yellow Flag Means Something Bad Happened.” I really started to care.

Fast forward to this year, he’s even started to get some varsity time as a sophomore, and it’s been exciting to watch him play under the lights. His sister came home from college last Friday night to see him play, and we monitored him on the sidelines, standing with his hands on his hips, helmet on, waiting to get in the game. Finally, my daughter noticed he wasn’t standing with the rest of the team. “Mom look,” she said, pointing to the field, “he’s in the game.”

He’s playing tight end, and we watched as he blocked the other team during a few plays, and then after another snap, we saw the quarterback draw the ball back and launch it into the air towards my son, who grabbed it and ran for the first down. As he was tackled by the other team, we heard the announcer say his name over the loudspeaker and my daughter and I looked at each other, she had tears brimming in her eyes, and we clapped and cheered. All the other players’ parents sitting around me stood to give me a high-five and I immediately got texts from friends further away in the stands, cheering for my son with lots of exclamation marks and emojis.

It was thrilling.

Our team ended up getting clobbered that night after a brilliant opening drive in the first quarter where we made an easy touchdown. The other team came back and scored and repeated that about four or five times, while we were thwarted at every attempt. We’re a public high school in an area where everyone sends their kids to private schools, so it’s a rag tag football team — kinda the Bad News Bears of football — playing a team who had a kid drafted as a sophomore by Notre Dame. An uneven match, at best.

But the thrill of watching my son’s catch and his run was what I left that game remembering, not the miserable score. I loved watching him, and his teammates, play with their whole heart.

I watched him all summer working towards that moment on the field. Heading off most mornings for 7:30am practices to lift in the weight room and work through plays on the school field under the hot summer sun in full pads and helmet. Earlier that summer, he’d been working out with his lacrosse team, going to crossfit two mornings a week at 7:30. He never complains. He never balks at going to a workout or a practice.

So of course, when he gets the chance, he’s going to give it his all, even if that means diving at another player and knocking his feet out from under him, and suffering a blow to the head, as had happened at this week’s JV game. Athletes sustain injuries when playing hard in any sport — I know a woman who’s daughter suffered from chronic pain after sustaining a concussion playing lacrosse and I’ve watched a boy fall hard on his head during a basketball game — but there’s lots of evidence that puts football at one of the worst for an athlete’s brain.

I knew all of the risks going in and still, I let him play. In fact, I strongly encouraged him to play football.

The day after the game where my son made his fateful catch, my college girl and I went into New York City to meet her sister to check out her new office in one of the new World Trade Center buildings and explore her new neighborhood. We ended up eating brunch at a restaurant in Le District, kind of the French answer to Eataly, and sat at a table along the water overlooking New Jersey across the river.

The girls split a carafe of white wine and we talked about my younger daughter’s classes this semester and reviewed my older girl’s new office digs (amazing), while picking at the salty fries that came with their burgers. Suddenly, my college girl stopped and said, “Oh my God, Annie! We didn’t even tell you about Nick’s catch!” and she recounted the whole play. How he easily caught the ball and ran along the sidelines to get the first down. And then how we heard his name announced over the loudspeaker, and how my younger daughter cried watching her little brother play so hard and well.

I looked up from the plate of fries and saw my older girl beginning to blubber over the news. “Stop it, “ she said, her face starting to mottle and tears welling in her big blue eyes, “now you’re making me cry.”

I told this story a few days later to the varsity football coach as we stood in the athletic trainer’s office after that JV game. As she assessed my son for a possible concussion, I told the coach about how proud we were of him. About how thrilling it was to watch him play.

In the end, our doctor determined he’d been mildly concussed from the hit, mostly due to a continuing headache he had the following day. He’s been taking it easy ever since and sitting out of practices, and will remain on the sidelines during this week’s game.

But next week, he’ll be back on the field, giving it his all. It’s really a brutal sport, all these big men charging at each other and trying to take each other down, while we all sit on the sidelines and cheer. And I’ve embraced and encouraged my son’s role as a gladiator in the game.

I hope it was the right decision.

Do you channel your inner Connie Britton and embrace your high schooler’s Friday Night Lights experience? Do you regret letting him play? I mean, I’m involved now, but would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

Aug
26
2013

Parenting 101: The Good, the Bad and the Yucky

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405091_466573723395477_1792569133_nAs a blogger, I try to balance sharing my life’s story with protecting the innocent.

Well, usually it’s the not-so-innocent who are howling about what I write here and looking for protection.

I want to be honest, to write about the yuckier side of life here, but I also don’t want those I love to feel thrown under the bus as I tell my version of what’s happening. And that’s really all it is, my side of the story.

But I’m a manipulator, too, because like everyone else I have an innate desire to paint the picture I want the world to see. I mean, it’s what Facebook was built on.

I want you to think that I had a passel of kids and then went through this super-crappy divorce but have come out the other end all enlightened and spreading joy and happiness throughout the land.

But that’s just not the case.

I am highly flawed. I often don’t know what to say in important conversations or how to course correct when situations veer wildly off-track. My knee-jerk response to challenging situations is to shut down. I just opt to do nothing and leave the issue woefully unaddressed. I avoid conflict like it’s tuna fish.

And I hate to apologize.

I’d like you believe that while there are the occasional blips in my house – like kids leaving crusty dishes in the sink or my freaking out over loud music while driving to school – overall my family is generally on solid ground.

But that just would not be true. We are on slippery ice and just when we find our balance, we see cracks threatening to spread beneath our feet. Stability can feel tenuous, at best, sometimes.

I wish I could tell you my recent whirlwind trip south to bring my college kids back to school was a bittersweet ending to a nice summer together. I wish I could tell you that the days leading up to it were filled with quality time together and that we all realized how much we loved and would miss each other.

But that would be a lie.

I was happy that the oldest two were about to disappear for three months. I had had enough of them this summer to see me through to Thanksgiving. And they, I believe, of me.

And by the end, I had stopped speaking to the oldest, who drove himself back a few days earlier. In fact, his dad and I brought his sister down and got her set up in her new off-campus apartment and we never even saw him.

We are that mad at him right now.

And I don’t know what to do, how to resolve the situation. How to wrap my brain around the idea that sometimes – regardless of how long you breastfed them or how many books you read to them or nagged them to practice their instrument or eat their broccoli – your kids will make decisions that disappoint you.

Maybe, as with so many parenting situations in the past that seemed so dire when I was in the thick of them – like when one kid refused to take Honors English or another returned home late one night bombed – time will help to make sense of the situation.

The passage of time and distance from the situation has allowed me to see that a child has got to want to be challenged academically, not pushed into it. And that kids are stupid and sometimes drink too much Fourloko.

So this trip did not result in any picture-perfect moments. There were no heartfelt embraces or Come-to-Jesus reckonings. It was more like, “Good-bye and good luck.”

On the bright side, I did spend the eight-hour drive home with my ex-husband and we had pleasant conversation. He even came into the house – for the first time since we split up for good four years ago – to use the bathroom and then fixed something that had been broken and ignored forever.

I mean, you couldn’t have told me these things were possible four years ago.

But then later that night, he sent me an angry text, assuming the worst of me about something unrelated. He couldn’t just call and say, “Hey, I noticed this, what’s up?”

He immediately went on the offense and sent a text that zinged a “WTF” at me.

But unfortunately, I just couldn’t deal. I thought about calling to talk to him about it. To assure him I harbored no ill will towards him and apologize, once again, for doing something that pissed him off. But I just didn’t have the energy.

I left it somewhere on the side of the road during the long drive home.