On Being a Mother of Teenagers…

It’s funny, when the kids are young, you feel like they will be young forever. And then one day, you turn around and they are all grown up!

I can’t believe my kids are teens. My daughter is 16 (soon to be 17) and my son is 11 (soon to be 12). They are both taller than me and incredibly smart. (I’m really not bragging here. Half the time I don’t know what they are talking about….)

The other day, I let my daughter drive to get some practice for her road test. Although we were getting a bit close for comfort to the cars next to us, she did pretty well. While we were in the car, Ariel, a song by Dean Friedman, came on the 70’s Sirius radio station. Wow, what a blast from the past. I got so excited. Both kids thought I was nuts!

One day, my son had a bass lesson. The bass teacher (no one knows his name but he’s been coming to the house for weeks) was chewing gum. I was in the other room and I heard my son asking him to spit out the gum. Okay, I thought. Should I run over there with paper bag?

There’s never a dull moment when the kids are around. There’s always something unusual that happens. Including when I asked my daughter if she wanted to practice for driving today but she insisted that she had too much homework and my son wanted to go to Subway because on the Biggest Loser, the contestants went to Subway. Of course, we went to Subway. (I didn’t even know there was a Subway in Island Park!)

This evening, while I was at work, I get a call from my son, “mommy, go faster, because I’m starving!” When I asked my daughter to put up something for him to hold him over, she said, “I’m tired. I’m trying to sleep! I’m cold and I had to walk home in the rain!”

Although sometimes I get frustrated with them, you gotta love them! They really are the best thing that ever happened to me!

What I love most about being a mother of teenagers is that they see things a little differently. And that’s makes me look at things differently too!