Today is my “ahhh” day

This is THE day this week that I do not have school-related things on either side of my work day, and it’s bliss.

Last night, I had 20 people in my house.  TWENTY!  We all sat in my dining room.  This dining room:

My dining room, taken 2 years ago when we first moved in. Only slight variations since.

How?  I’m not sure.  We have 8 dining room chairs, 4 kitchen island chairs, my office chair, Mouse’s desk chair, 2 desk chairs in Lemon’s room, plus 6 deck chairs.  So we made a BIG circle around the table, and it worked.

The meeting was of fellow parents in Mouse’s grade.  I’m a huge proponent of what we’ve deemed our “Parenting Exchange.”  The entire grade is invited to each meeting, which we have every 6 weeks.  The meetings are relatively formal – we have topics chosen ahead of time, and we have a facilitator (just a parent – rotates around the group) who keeps things on track, both topic- and time-wise.  We really only use the meeting to check in on what other kids are doing, what other parents are wrestling with, how honest are kids are being when they pull out the inevitable “but all my friends are allowed to!”

We started when they were in 6th grade, and the town started having dances, the kids started asking if they could walk further and alone (our town is conducive to that), the homework started to get harder, etc.

There are some parents who never miss, but others come only occasionally, and others still have been only once.  It doesn’t matter – we still invite everyone every time.

I find it invaluable not only because of the actual conversation or things learned, and not only because of the connections that we truly do make with other parents that we might otherwise not — but because our kids watch us. They know they do this.  They know we talk.  I don’t only talk to my friends – I talk to my entire community.  So if they want to skip a class and wander around our village with their friends – they can’t think “pfft, mom’s at work, she’ll never find out.”  They have to worry about EVERY mom.  EVERY dad (we often have as many dads as moms, by the way).  That is my favorite part.

And my kids aren’t even sneaky.

But having 20 people over made for an insane day.  I left work early to come home and prep the house.  WD pitched in x10 (as usual), so I didn’t need as much time as I took.  We also had to find Mouse a place to go, because that is one of our “rules” – the kids should not be home when we meet (so they don’t learn things they have no business knowing).

After everyone left – by 9:15, I had to fight with one of my children.  Because life’s not complete without at least one argument per day when living with 2 teens.

I asked Mouse to find a place to go from 7:00 – 8:30.  We have friends who live steps away in 4 different directions.  Literally steps.  Literally across our small street in 2 directions, plus around a very short block corner.

But what does she do?  Knowing she has (a) homework, and (b) the messiest room in the universe that MUST be clean by Thursday a.m.?  She makes plans with a friend who lives the furthest away, starting right after school.  WD negotiated with her for some time after school – reminding her that if she hangs out all day long, using “Mom said I have to go somewhere” as the excuse, she’d have to come home straight after school tomorrow to clean her room and do homework, and she’d have to clean her room that evening, even though it means she cannot watch Glee.  She said, “Awww.  But okay.”

Guess what the fight was about?

Not so much that she could not watch Glee, but more that Lemon and I were daring to watch it anyway!!

What??!!  That’s not fair!  You never watched it with ME last year when SHE couldn’t!

But that was because she was doing her homework, not hanging out with friends.  You made your  choice.

It’s not because I was hanging out with friends!  It’s because YOU are making me CLEAN MY ROOM!! 

See how I made her letters red?  To convey her anger?

We also had a lot of bickering about the meaning of the word “grounded.”  Saying that she has to clean her room by Thursday (housecleaning day), and that she has to be in the house in order to clean her room, does not mean she is grounded.

Yes it does! because I can’t go anywhere!  That’s being GROUNDED!  

No, that’s telling you that you need to clean your room.  Which is in your house.  If you finish at 3:30, you can do something else.

What am I going to do at 3:30?  There’s nothing to DO at 3:30!!!

Whaaaa?

Fortunately, she finished off her hissy fit with lots of energy that she put toward cleaning her room!

If only she skipped the hissy fit.  It would have been nice.

Although I did feel bad for her, because (a) Glee featured a song from her play this year – the song she auditioned with (Anything Goes), and (b) her sister, out of habit, hit the “delete” button on the DVR when we finished watching.  Oops.  Thank god for Hulu.

 

Putting off the Laundry

WD and I ended up with no kids again last night.  This time, overnight.  That was a treat … or should have been.  We didn’t do anything.  I had a thing to go to, and he had kid-wrangling/transporting duties.  I got home close to 10, and we jumped in the car to go get ice cream.  But then I remembered I hadn’t eaten dinner, because I worked right up until it was time to go to the thing, and didn’t have time.  So we watched a relatively weird and unknown movie while I scarfed down the dinner he’d made me, and then we ate our ice cream, and then we felt so fat that all we could do was go to sleep.

The “thing” I went to is one of my favorite things about my community.  It was a meeting of parents of kids in Mouse’s grade.  The whole grade’s worth of parents are invited, and we get together in each other’s homes, and talk about the challenges involved with parenting 7th graders.  Last year, we talked about the challenges involved in parenting 6th graders.  last night’s topics included “Managing Stress” (i.e., grades and/or social nonsense) and “Body Image in the Wake of Changing Bodies.”  Where my entire goal was stressing to the parents of boys who thought this topic wasn’t for them that it IS for them, because their boys won’t stop talking about the girls’ varying degrees of flatness nor not-flatness, and maybe they should talk to their boys about that.  Of course, the boys whose parents I really wanted to send the message to were not represented.  Oh well.  I’m sure Mouse will survive her late-blooming, just like everyone before her on both sides of the family tree have survived their late-blooming.  My poor boobie-less child(ren).  Don’t worry my dears, one day, you’ll be 16, and then you’ll get your period, and then you will have boobies.  I’m sure you’ll be fine in the intervening 1.5 (Lemon) and 4 (Mouse) years while everyone else grows and matures and develops while you continue to feel like 12 year olds.

While I was working and then chatting and community-building, the girls each had at least 2 and maybe 3 activities they were figuring out and traveling between.  WD ended up weaseling out of transport duties, but he was holding down the fort and passing out food as the kids whirled through the house.  Lemon went shopping, then to a performance at the high school, then to a friend’s for what turned into a sleepover.  Mouse went out for afternoon pizza, then to a friend’s, then to the school’s ice-skating event, then to a friend’s for what turned into a sleepover.

So I’m sitting in the parenting/community thing, where our “ice breaker” was all about how we set limits on technology and many of us were talking about the “no cell phone at the table” rules and the “no technology after 9 p.m.” rules and other ways we keep our kids focused on thigns that matter in life, and I’m off to the side texting 2 and 3 way conversations making sure we had parent permission for all of these different things and that plan-changes worked okay with one another, etc., etc. Nice example.  I even texted another mom across the room to make sure she knew that 6 girls were sleeping at her house that night. That mom and I may or may not be the organizers of this little meeting.  Hello, bad example?

And I learned in private conversations after the meeting that other moms knew that our girls went to the movies with boys.  So now I can confront my little lying Mouse without letting her know that I am an evil snooping mother.  I admitted that to a couple people last night.  One thought I was within my rights, the other frowned at me.  I still frown at myself.  Sort of.

Every time the girls have a sleepover, I have to get up at an ungodly time (for a weekend) to turn off their alarms.  I wish they wouldn’t do that.

Now I think I will read a book … another non-laundry activity.

 

Sharing and Support

Last night was another one of those times when I really wished that my social event would end up canceled.  I could not be the canceler, because I had a crucial role.  But man, was I just swamped and exhausted.

Things have stayed crazed at work, and I am still looking forward to the weekend that will be work-free.  Maybe it will be this weekend … but I’m not sure.  It wasn’t last weekend.  It wasn’t Halloween weekend, it wasn’t the weekend before Halloween.  So I guess it’s been a month since I had a solid weekend, and we traveled to my parents’ house, so it wasn’t necessarily restful.

Yesterday was particularly crazed at work, and while most things wrapped up by 3:30, other things cropped up at 6.  even though I had to leave at 6:30.  So when I finally left at 6:50, and raced home (hard to do when dependent on Boston’s T trains …), and wolfed down some shrimp stir fry while changing out of a suit into jeans, and barked at WD about what snacks he bought for me to bring along … I was really wishing I didn’t have to be somewhere by 7:30.

But that changed quickly.

The meeting I went to was one of parents in Mouse’s 7th grade.  It wasn’t organized by the school, but rather is parent-run.  We started it last year, when the kids were in 6th grade, with the intent of having a forum to talk about our kids’ growing older and maturation process, and also to allow parents to stay “in the loop” about what our kids are up to.  (All parents of the grade are invited – it is not a selective group.)

So if Mouse comes home and says “Mom!  all my friends are allowed on Facebook!”  I can give her that “I know you’re not being honest” look and say “that’s not what their parents tell me!” And she will be thwarted, and will look down at her shoes, embarrased that she was caught in a lie, and she will stay off Facebook.*

Topics we’ve addressed include: “dating” (we had a spell of that during 6th grade; my daughter was definitely involved), homework, technology, screen-time limits, allowance, increased independence (i.e., are they allowed on the accursed T?  Who the hell knows why they’d want to go on the accursed T …), bullying, boy/girl friendships (NOT dating), after school supervision, and more.

For a while last year, it felt like we had the same set of parents every time, and most of them were parents of girls.  This year, though, different people are coming, and more boys are represented.  Last night’s discussion was pretty robust, and I think we all enjoyed the conversation.

In order to make the discussion meaningful, we have a set of “guidelines” – when the group first started, it made the meetings feel a little stilted, but the goal of the guidelines (which, from what I’m told, are the standard guidelines for most support groups) is to keep conversation on track and appropriate.  We are all very busy, and while it’s fun to get together and chit-chat for an hour and a half, and we could probably do it for longer, that’s not what we’re seeking through the establishment of this group.  So we have a facilitator each time, and we have pre-set topics, and we watch the clock.  Beyond that, the guidelines just work to remind people about confidentiality, and about respectful conversations.

I was the facilitator last night.  I so didn’t have the energy for it, going in.  But once we got going, I was happy to be there, and loved being a part of the community.

And I highly recommend similar groups for people with pre-teens and teens.  I was involved in the formation/organization of the group for both my girls, and think it is so valuable.  When it was Lemon’s class, I often went feeling clueless about the stage she was at, how I was supposed to respond to concerns of a middle schooler, etc., and appreciated those in the room with older children who could talk about coming through the other side of the nasty middle school years.  Now it’s Mouse’s group, and I am one of those with an older kid, and I do feel a little more secure in the handling of a tween (even though my girls are so night & day, I don’t know why).  Some people feel that because they’ve been through it before, they don’t *need* the group.  But I find the community so important.

I also find it very valuable that my kids know I have the community.  They know that I know their friends’ and classmates’ parents, and that we talk.  They may be less inclined to sneak around, in light of that knowledge.

There is also value in listening to other parents and hearing the way they do things.  If a parent says every. time. that she/he is fine with the kids gathering in her basement to smoke pot?  Yeah.  I’m glad I know that.  If there are parents who seem to not be aware of the fact that the kids are growing and maturing and think it’s FINE to leave kids with chemistry home alone at the age of 13/14/15?  I’m glad I know that.  It will inform my decisions when I am faced with “mom, can I go to ____’s house?”  I may ask different questions, and I may have a different answer.

Yeah, I’m glad I went.  I’m also glad I got home early enough to have some fun conversations with my girls & husband before they scurried off to bed.  We also had fun polishing off the brick of Brie that WD sent with me, and dripping bits of fig preserves on top, and generally enjoying the yummy-ness together. Although, I got so little of the Brie, I kind of wish my kids had less refined pallets …

 

 

* In reality, Mouse isn’t interested in Facebook, or the computer at all, really.  Her only interest is all the free apps on the iTunes App store,  especially those that make farting sounds.  No, she is not an 8 year old boy.  She is a 12 yo girl.