Since before my daughter was born, I have been avid about trying to keep up with all the parenting resources out there. I might not always agree with them, and sometimes they just make me laugh, but what few choice bits of information I walk away with are well worth the occasional “You’ve got to be kidding me!” moment. Until now. Now, I’m getting stumped. I’ve found lots of info for raising little ones, finding family friendly movies or books, dealing with the early stages of school, and also lots of info for parents of teens – dealing with high school drama, online dangers, driving issues, and all that other exciting teen nonsense. But the tween years? Those seem to be some sort of black hole of parental information. Which seems weird to me, because it seems like its that exact transition period, the time where your kid is growing out of Pixar, but not really ready for sappy teen-romances like Twilight, way too old for the Bernstein Bears, but not quite ready to delve into Neil Gaiman, that is the most tricky. It seems that way to me, of course, because that’s the exact era we’ve entered with our daughter.
On one hand, I’m incredibly excited. This is the stage of childhood I’ve been looking forward to all along. It’s a chance to do all the things I said I would do differently as a parent, not just based on my own childhood, but based on the childhoods of all my lovable, but dysfunctional friends. It seemed like almost all of us got just old enough our parents could leave us home without a babysitter without worrying we would do ourselves or the house major harm and BOOM, they were out that door. Like that “Fairly Odd Parents” show but without the magic fairies. But this was when we needed our parents most – it’s that crazy awkward era where you aren’t really a kid, but you aren’t really a teen yet and the opposite sex has stopped being icky, but you haven’t really figured out why yet, and your body is doing weird things and you don’t know why because if you ask any adult they just get weird looks on their faces and change the subject. (Your childhood experiences on any of this may vary.) But my point is – I think this period of time is really important and not enough parents pay attention to it.
I see this time as a tremendous opportunity. My daughter still thinks I am cool and have all the answers, and she is mature enough for me to introduce her to many of my hobbies, my favorite music, books, and movies. If the general rumors about teens is true, I have maybe a couple of years to instill her with an appreciation of both classical and grunge rock, Victorian era action novels, British comedy from the 80s, and why I vote the way I do, along with the millions of other things I want to share with her before it’s too late. I’m constantly thinking of books to suggest to her, movies to watch with her, music to make sure to play in the car… Now that she’s mature enough for things that had to “wait until she’s older”, it’s like an exciting new challenge. But it’s a challenge my husband and I seem to be dealing with on our own sometimes. Because this whole new world comes with whole new questions and challenges.
PG-13 alone can drive you nuts. Is she old enough to watch “Cloverfield”? No. But she really wants to. But no, it would freak her out. But “Dark City”? Ok, with some parental editing. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy? We are good to go. Then there are books. I feel comfortable giving her Jules Vern, but Lovecraft I was a little worried about. Turned out I didn’t need to be. Although we did hold some of the more… descriptive… short stories back for now. Until she’s older. But how much older? So difficult to judge.
And so we come full circle. Having more resources about how to traverse this tricky era would be nice. Maybe it’s just too complicated. Maybe what’s okay for one kid is just way too intense for another kid, and what’s cool with me is not cool with other parents. But still, I think the next generation would be that much better off if parents embraced this time frame as a great opportunity to connect with their kids and build a relationship that, who knows, might lead to a smoother teen experience, rather than treating it as the time you spend building up the sandbags in anticipation of the great teenage rebellion everyone says is coming. Maybe I, too, will find myself embarrassing my daughter by sporting my black lipstick while blaring Nine Inch Nails when I pick her up from school, and she will sigh, roll her eyes, and say “Mom! The 90’s is SO OVER.”, but I can at least hope that secretly, when she’s in the car, she will say “Mom, can you put on Nirvana? I’ve had “In Bloom” stuck in my head all day.”
Julie Scott also reviews totally wicked awesome things over on Our Kind of Stuff.
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