Towards the end of summer, my middle kid, MJ, expressed some big plans, in her usual way: quietly but with conviction.
Now that school is in full swing, she has shown me that these So-Called Plans are very much in the works.
When your child enters 6th grade, it raises no red flags of potential mother daughter disconnect–at least it didn’t for me. This is the age they’re still trying to figure out what is going on and how to fit in–without looking like they’re trying too hard. To them, you still pretty much know everything and are their greatest advocate. But 7th grade is a different story. They have crafted their own road map now, and it looks nothing like the one you gave them. They have it completely dialed, know the rough terrain and are willing to plow through it and all we can do is act like the back seat driver from here on out.
But I wondered how quickly MJ would develop this 7th grade mentality–for survival if anything else, because she was new to this middle school, neighborhood, city and state. Just add hormones and sudden self-awareness and I’ve got a whole new kid. And her summertime promises of I’m going to be popular and I’m going to make my own path had me eating out of her hand like a squirrel: Yes! Chomp chomp chomp! You got this! Chomp chomp!
However, she is quiet and a little quirky and until last week, kind of oblivious to her looks. And so, the intersection of popularity and making your own path tend to, well, never ever intersect. Until she got out her new road map and made some real adjustments and is in the process of figuring out how to navigate on her own.
The upside is that she has the entire school to herself this year. There are no siblings to relay unwanted stories up the food chain and she can try out new versions of herself without anyone reporting it to home base. She has complete authority to shape shift into whomever she wants, free from any of our judgement, which is great. I mean, it’s one thing to be the quiet middle child in a blended family with seven kids—it’s another thing to be the only one in your family with a new school as the center of your universe.
I have been checking out parenting books from the library like mad lately. I tend to flock to this information haven whenever I feel a developmental crisis coming on. I check out books with titles like “Are my kids on track?” and “Mothering with Courage” and really anything that has the word teenager in it. Like, my check out status has my librarian believing I’ve never done this before. These library binges for me are much like shopping when you’re hungry: Everything looks good. But, I’m not gonna lie, I’m awful at soaking up this information. Most of the time it doesn’t stick because it doesn’t apply. There are too many variables to consider (like having a big family), so I just use it as material to help me fall asleep at night and hope the rest of the words soak into my brain while I’m in La La Land. Well that and I just try to stay on the same road she’s on, even though she’s clearly signaled she’s in the passing lane.
Let me just say that sometimes, lessons from the middle child can be the most pleasant—even though we’re talking about another one of my tweens, transforming into a teen and dodging my childhood development desire for a pat on the back. But there’s still time to get this right! Even though I’m prepared to use my husband as a meat shield while another one of our kids turns 13, I’m working on indulging her perspective mid-metamorphosis.
The jump from tween to teen is a big one. It means leaving awkwardness behind and becoming mindful of making a place for yourself in the world. It also means suddenly caring about how you might look to others. This is a complex stage because I always want my kids to just be themselves, to not feel as though they need to conform. This is how we make the world a different and more forgiving place. But I’m just now learning that it’s just as important for them to try out other versions of themselves, knowing that this is who they are. I’m just happy to still play a part, even if it’s in the smallest of ways.
So Called Mom
Life is just so much less staged in these moments, and I feel more connected with the realness, with my kids and my family. These are not Pinterest worthy moments: the house is a mess and the dog is shaking off his smelly wet body everywhere and the cat is eating pizza off the table and the kids are hitting each other and I’m sitting in the center of it all in that moment of truth. You know the feeling? That moment where an inner voice says to you: At one point, this was exactly what you wanted. And better yet: Do you still want it?
At the beginning of our recorded life together, I was not that keen on being on camera all the time. When Pascal was born, a short year after we met, I was still camera shy—or at least still worried about how I looked on camera. So when Pippin assumed we’d record the birth, it was met with a resounding no. Not when I was the leading lady, huffing and puffing, uncomfortable on my back—with the potential to suddenly not be able to communicate that I wanted him to “turn that freaking thing off.”
I now understand his reasons. I think he just thinks his family is the most amazing thing walking the Earth. He doesn’t see the mess of life; he sees family poetry. And if he blinks, it will all be aged out. Whether it’s dancing in the shower, the kids laughing, in the hospital with a broken arm, my yelling at a kid or even bawling my eyes out—it all has it’s logical place in our world together. I would even go so far as to say I get ticked off now when he’s not recording , especially during a critical family moment that we will never recapture.
These screens feel like they are taking over at least this family’s life. I read somewhere that even Steve Jobs didn’t let his kids have screens—any of them. Could he maybe have known something that we are now learning the hard way: These things are addictive. When I put down my phone, it’s only to look at my computer. If I can’t change my habits, how do I expect my kids to?
They hijack our conversations. They make stronger bonds with things that are meaningless to our family: videos about kittens or people falling; a stupid comment OR an irrelevant article. Or jokes and phrases that don’t make me laugh because they aren’t even real words. Very recently, I have felt like I need a dictionary like it’s a foreign language. Ghostride the flounce, on fleek dafuq. By the way, POS isn’t what you think it is. It’s way worse. And so far, they do a great job at KPC. It’s a constant game of catch up that I’m confused about, because I swear I’m still hip. But I’m not, because I order these phones to be put away. Now it’s officially me who isn’t joining the conversation, because I have no idea what is going on.
What kind of example was this teaching them? To work day and night and never take time to explore who they were? Their school left no room for them to follow their passion or explore being an individual in a big family. I saw them growing up too fast. I saw them overworked and really, really unhappy.
He got the urge to become “normal” and insisted on going back to school. I think he actually just wanted to gawk at teenage girls like any other 16 year old. MJ applied and got into an arts-based middle school over the summer while Pascal formed a posse of girls from the neighborhood and wanted to give elementary school a shot. Earth was the last one remaining—though it was mostly our call to keep her in another year. Milla and Phoenix have yet to experience homeschooling. Milla thinks she wants to learn from me for high school, but I know this will change over summer. Phoenix, I have no say. I’m only the other mom. And of course that baby, Leopold, will always be homeschooled. Even though he isn’t a kindergartener yet, doesn’t mean I haven’t already started with him. 
