Teenager on Board

My nest is now three-quarters empty.

Last weekend we drove our daughter, my third child Janet, up to a boarding school in Massachusetts to begin the second semester of her freshman year in high school. A new chapter begins for both her and the rest of the family, at least the three of us left at home: me, her dad and younger brother Jack.

My husband attended boarding school during his high school years, but I was a public high school kid. Where Janet was concerned, we had batted the idea of a boarding school back and forth over the past year, with Jon being more pro and me more-or-less on the fence. I knew it would probably be best for her academically. But I kind of enjoyed the public high school social experience and for better or worse also liked having her around. I also found pleasure in seeing her buddies both here at our house as well as in the halls of New Canaan High and on Elm Street. I miss them already.

The decision to withdraw her from the high school and enroll in boarding school happened quickly. She asked if she could go, our batting around ceased, and the search for the right school increased. And within two weeks it was done. Boom! Instant teen on board.

It’s a big decision this one of sending your child off to a private, residential secondary school. All sorts of factors – financial, academic, emotional, and social – must be considered. Often the decision isn’t so monumental. Many families come from a long line of boarding school graduates, from great grandparents down to the current generation, so the conclusion of where to spend the high school years is foregone. Jon’s family has that kind of history. Mine is mixed – mom attended Miss McGhee’s in New Orleans and my dad graduated from Mendota (Illinois) High; my brother had a boarding education as a middle-schooler. And as I said, I am a happy grad of Weston High.

Often a student needs a smaller, more concentrated classroom environment in order to succeed and private or residential schools can accomplish this more readily than a public school. A stricter dress code and/or discipline expectations may also be easier to enforce in a private school setting than at home or in the local middle or high school. Oftentimes boarding school traditions are embraced by the parent who has been down that road and they would like those customs visited on their children.

We have friends in town – in fact the mom is a former classmate of Jon’s from The Kent School – who have sent both of their children to their mother’s alma mater. Although they miss the kids, the concept of them going away to school was hardly foreign. Dad got teary initially, but I think now he’s adjusted. I may need some advice from him on how to do just that.

Our second oldest son also went away during his junior year, only to return to and graduate from New Canaan High, so this is not my maiden voyage with the whole kid-away-at-boarding-school. But it feels different. And raw.

While there are certain things I will not miss - among them being the arguments over computer curfew time, or appropriate school attire, and being tense every morning wondering whether or not she would make the school bus (If she missed it – which she was wont to do at least twice a week – I would be deprived of some extra sleep and wound up driving bleary eyed to school bed-headed and be-jammied. Won’t miss that. Not for a nano-second) - I will miss her, the Janet-ness of her on a daily basis. The unexpected hugs and giggles for me only; the sharing of friend “drama;” the scoop on the Jonas Brothers; the hormones that coincide with my own; the fact that my eye-liner or favorite pair of Uggs or body scrub will not be disappearing.

As we said goodbye to her last Sunday in front of her dorm, I was paradoxically both of full heart and heart-broken. I hugged her maybe a second longer than I think she was comfortable with and as I pulled away tears immediately filled my eyes. Janet winced.

“It’s okay, mom,” she said, turning a little pink nonetheless. I thought of the lyrics to a Billy Ray Cyrus/Miley Cyrus song (“Ready, Set, Don’t Go”) she enjoys:

(MILEY:) Lemme go now. (BILLY RAY:) Don’t go! (MILEY:) I’ll be alright, I’ll be ok. Know that I’ll be thinkin’ of you each and every day. (BILLY RAY:) She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do… (MILEY:) This is where you don't say what you want so bad to say (BILLY RAY:) This is where I want to but I won’t get in the way. Of her and her dream. And spreadin’ her wings…

(MILEY:) I'm ready to fly!

I will learn to get more on board with the child away at school. Change is good. And if nothing changes, nothing changes.

Does it get any Easier?!

I don’t think it matters whether you have one child or a dozen, at some point – or at many points – you are going to wonder aloud, “How old does the kid have to be before raising them gets any easier?”

I don’t have an answer and I have four of the suckers, ages 11 to 24. So one would think I might have some sage advice. And yet I don’t. Certain ages seem easier to negotiate than others, but crucial mitigating factors sneak in there, and one mother’s easy is another mother’s walking, talking nightmare. Not comforting, I know.

I was recently moaning over the telephone to my sister-in-law out in Wyoming about some teenage trial or other. She said to me, “Well, Julie, it’s not your first time at the rodeo.” One doesn’t have to be from a western mountain state to fully appreciate that statement. And it’s a pretty great one, isn’t it? “Not your first time at the rodeo” is now taped to my computer. Perhaps it will become a new mantra. And when I say it I picture myself as either the rodeo clown – dodging and weaving and being laughed at – or as one of those fairly confident looking, really cool, fringy and fuzzy chaps- wearing cowboys sitting high and solid aboard a bucking bronc. I’m twirling my hat around my head, yee-hawing, just before I am catapulted off and up and head-first into manure.

I would have to say that the teen years are the hardest, the most challenging, but that statement seems a no-brainer. With hormones and identity-searching raging, being a teenager and RAISING a teenager is fraught with conflict and confusion. Yet as stated earlier, mitigating factors can make the teen years either a piece of cake or a piece of scat. It’s in the “lap of the gods,” as my late, great mom used to say.

Blake wasn’t an altogether awful teenager. He was and is a man of few words, friends, wants and needs. Any “age-appropriate” faux paus’ were few and far between. His younger by two years brother, Kenny however, was the opposite – more words, more social commitments and needs and wants that seemed bottomless. Where Blake erred on the side of caution, Kenny decided early into his teens that “caution” was a concept for and of which he would not have any part. My teen daughter, Janet, is not unlike her brother Kenny – right down to the same birth date – yet the factor that makes her experiences different is that she is female. That’s something we have not experienced in terms of the teenaged years, so things are at times really foreign. Are girls easier than boys, or the other way around? If I comment on the truth here either Janet or Kenny will likely poison my morning Diet Coke, so perhaps I’ll go with “it’s a toss up.”

The middle school years aren’t a walk in the park either, and my fourth and final child is right smack in the, well, middle of them. Even though it’s a been-there-done-that thing I can nonetheless occasionally be discovered curled up in the fetal position wailing, “Does it get any easier?” By now one would think I’d know the answer. I do, I do know the answer, and it is “Not yet.” Although, to be fair, Jack is hands-down the easiest child I have had to raise, but at only 11, there’s still plenty of time to terrorize. I need to be cautious not to become too complacent… he can execute a sneak attack at any moment.

“I couldn’t hit a wall with a six gun, but I can twirl one. It looks good.” ~ John Wayne

While raising children doesn’t truly get any easier, I can at least try and look as if I’m doing it in a fairly effortless manner. You know, “act as if…” Act as if I know exactly what to do when a tantrum presents itself, or a kid forgets to phone on mother’s day, or a son doesn’t feel like working full-time, a daughter doesn’t realize the meaning or purpose of a clothes hanger, or a sixth grader insists that his bedtime can be just as late as a ninth grader’s. Act as if I don’t long to escape to my own private island, sans everybody and anything but some sunscreen.

I suppose easy isn’t interesting. Which makes my life quite the rodeo indeed.

The Passion of the Child

Hell hath no fury like a child scorned.

It is Major League Baseball playoff time, a time of great joy and/or sorrow, peppered with shouts of obscenities or triumph, at least in our house. Both my husband and son, Jack, are rabid Yankee fans, although I question Jack’s loyalty when the Yanks are behind; he becomes something altogether different than an adoring admirer when the chips are seemingly down for the Bronx Bombers.

When he was younger, the screams and cries – although explosive in nature – were more along the lines of: “Stupid Yankees! What the heck?!” And, now, the 11-year-old younger brother of two older male siblings with questionable vocabularies, substitutes the words “stupid” and “heck” with more colorful terms. This only results in more exasperation when he is properly parentally scolded, while I silently curse both the Yankees and my son for losing control of the game.

Jack’s buddy, Drew, is a Red Sox enthusiast, and his mom Robin reports that their house is just as tense during games. Once this past summer, Jack went over to Drew’s to watch a Yankees-Red Sox game, and Robin and I both braced for a young boy massacre of epic proportions. It never materialized.

When a person, especially a person on the left side of puberty, has a passion for some person, place or thing, it can be fabulously fierce.

Last week in Food Emporium I witnessed the meltdown of a tiny, blonde female toddler when she was not allowed to have a Scooby-Doo Pez dispenser, which hung directly at her eye level at the check-out counter. She was fondling it with longing as she simultaneously tugged on her daddy’s shorts.

“Pez, pweeze! Pez pweeze!” she implored, saucer eyes gazing pleadingly upward.

“No, honey. Not today,” answered her father, prying the Pez from her now vise-like grasp.

The accompanying scream was startling and anguished. As her red-faced dad pulled her away by the waist, her small arms outstretched achingly in Pez Scooby’s direction, as she cried “Nooooooooooo!,” sounding like a lover wailing at her paramour’s departure for war.

I recall the histrionics of my high school girlfriends and me when boyfriend disintegration would occur, as of course teenage relationships are wont to do. The physical and psychological pain seems unbearable and near-animalisitc sounding sobbing feels like the only solution to rid the body of the toxins of rejection. As heartbreaking as it is for a 14-year-old girl, it feels nearly as powerful for the powerless mother; the passion of the parent to protect is instinctive.

Often the attempt to protect a child from disappointment is futile. Losing and disenchantment and frustration are simply part and parcel of life. Without those three, joy would not seem as precious, success not nearly as sweet.

Those pithy clichés – “soldier on,” “this too shall pass,” “it could be worse,” “maybe next time” - and my husband’s favorite – “I want gets nothing,”do little to rectify a passion purged at first blush. Yet I think the child will retain these time-worn and time-honored “slogans” each time they feel thwarted in the future. I want to believe that in their heart-of-hearts that know that they will live to see another day, that the odds of a team winning again will come to fruitition that a Pez Scooby-Doo will some day make it onto the check-put conveyer belt.

The Yanks have made it to and won the World Series 20-something times before and the whole deal is a dream to be dreamed every year. I need to convince Jack to put a little more faith in the pinstriped boys of October.

Either that or move out until the playoffs are over. The latter sounds preferable.

Resolution Solutions

New Year’s Resolutions are pretty much made to broken. There are good intentions behind them – or at least behind some of them – and the naming of such behavior-changing objectives at the start of a new year is a good lesson for both parent and child; it’s the follow-through in which the true lesson lies.

For my eldest child and son, Blake, I resolve to: Breathe and wait patiently – or as patiently as I can muster – when weeks go by without an email. I resolve to stop bugging him every other email about purchasing a cell phone that works internationally, so that he can call me from his base in far-off Okinawa. I additionally resolve to cease inquiring as to whether or not a marriage is in his future, either short- or long-term. Experiencing grandchildren before I am too much older and grayer and less spry would be really nice, but I will zip my lip in 2008 (can’t promise the same for 2009 however).

For my 22-year-old son Kenny, I resolve to: Keep remembering that he is just 22 and not necessarily ready to settle down with a “real” job. Any job is preferable right now, but I resolve to gently remind him of that fact, not get right in his face. The urge to lay a gigantic motherly guilt trip on his young self is strong to tremendous, yet I will endeavor to position such a trip in a more tactful, less obvious (but hopefully quite effective) manner. I additionally resolve to resist contacting him the nano-second something goes awry with my computer or I-Touch or other such similar electronic, technological device.

For my daughter, Janet, I resolve to: be less judgmental of certain actions and fashions. I may not agree with the why’s, but I will try and let her be her, whatever the metamorphosis entails this freshman year. I will also be extra careful about using words and phrases more appropriate for a teen than a middle-aged mother of four. Slang like “whatevs,” “kickin’ ,” “word up” and “hooking up.” To me, “hooking up” means meeting with someone, but apparently in teen-dom it means something altogether less innocent.

For youngest son and child, Jack, a sixth grader, I resolve to: stop asking him if he has a girlfriend, quit reminding him to do his homework while he is in the midst of doing it (only to me it doesn’t look as if he is since the television is on), and bring an end to playfully requesting he score a dozen points for me in his basketball games. I didn’t realize he took that silly suggestion to heart and the pressure was a pain, to say the least. Of course I hope he resolves to lighten up and recognize a joke when he hears one!

Kids should make resolutions too, even if they last but a day or a week or a month or two. Everyone has area for improvement, even those who are still in the process of growing, maturing and finding their way in the world.

“Stick to your guns,” “Follow through on your responsibilities,” “Finish what your started,” aren’t simply annoying parental axioms. They are time-honored and often-tested truths that we can all benefit from on the journey to becoming better, more service-oriented, more self-esteemed human beings. Actually, not just humans being, but humans doing.

In terms of much uttered wise suggestions, though, lies the ever-popular, “Do as I say, not as I do.” If you’re gonna state a resolution, model to your kids that you can actually execute it.

I resolve to resolve that oft-unresolved suggestion. How about you?

InTEXTicated Kids

Tweens and teens texting all over town on their cell phones gives new meaning to the phrase, “Thumbs up!”

How do they do it? And how do they do it with such lightening fast speed? Why do they do it instead of just calling? (Probably the same reason most of us resort to email instead of picking up the old-fashioned telephone: it saves time). Somehow in this still-new millennium the written word speaks faster then, well, the spoken word.

Walking down Elm, sitting outside of Starbucks, pulling up in front of New Canaan High or Saxe or the Outback and you will find child upon child with heads bent down towards their cellular devices thumbs working feverishly. They even drive while texting! That seems to be taking things way too far.

Goodness! It was hard enough for me as a teen to learn to type with my fingers let alone use my thumbs to send a message on a keyboard as small as a cell phone’s. I am a total dork trying to use my thumb to scroll down my contacts with my right thumb, and trying to read the tiny type with my feeble eyes, and then correctly hit send with my left thumb to actually speak. I often mean to call Jon, my husband, but end up hitting “Jen,” my friend, instead. Ditto “Hoelzer” instead of “home.” It’s a malfunction of eyes and digits!

But the kids – yikes! Maybe it’s those early years of video game controllers and all of that thumb muscle toning that’s built their dexterity and swiftness. Tap-tap-tap-tap-TAP! Some message or other goes hurtling through the networks of Verizon, Sprint, Cingular and T-Mobile, et al and just as quickly a response is announced with a tune or a tone.

“Why don’t you just call him?” I ask Janet or Jack incredulously. And this generation’s “intelligent” answer is always, “Because!”

There is even a service/web site thing called “Twitter,” in which you can text dozens of your friends at any given moment: “At the beach” or “Sitting outside of Dunkin’ Donuts” or “Going hiking in Jackson.” My 22-year-old son Kenny does this. I don’t get it; who cares? Do all of your friends really need to know what you are doing at that exact moment?

The texts I receive from my daughter can be occasionally annoying and suspect. Suspect because if I get one during the school day I can picture her plain as day thumbing away beneath a desk during Mr. Dockum’s science class. Annoying because the text may read, “I have a free in half an hour. Wanna bring me a *$ ?” (That’s shorthand for “Starbucks.”) The time I received that particular ditty I texted back: “How ‘bout No!”

It is impressive and intimidating and fascinating watching these thumb typing bandits as they walk, talk, sip beverages, chew gum, snack, shop and/or watch t.v. or school sporting events. It’s simply intoxicating for them.

And we’re left scratching our heads with our fingers, opposable thumbs clumsy and slow and uncool.

Real Men Say, "Ask Your Mother” by Michael Turpin

I was having one of those moments the other night with my son. We were watching a Yankee game on Friday night. He was draped across my lap like a warm comforter. “Dad,” he asked. I waited like a proud father for his profound question - - perhaps about the meaning of life or whether we can do more to stop global warming. “What’s Playgirl magazine? “

“What” I asked lurching up in my chair and vaulting him across the settee. “This kid in my class says he models for Playgirl magazine.” I hesitated. The air was thick with pregnant anticipation. While I was pretty sure no sixth grader in Saxe was doing extra curricular model work for Larry Flynt Enterprises, I decided to hedge my bets. It was the end of a long week. I was tired. “Better ask your mother….”

Like adroit wingbacks in a rugby match, husbands have for generations been skirting their duty to answer the tough questions for fear of losing their status as “the popular” parent. Moms get the grunt work - - the bitching, the cajoling, the punishments, the consequences - - they are the wardens of domesticity. Dads often act like the Red Cross coming in and meeting with the prisoners, asking how they are doing and if they need anything. They inadvertently undermine policy and morale. Dads get home later in the evening during “the witching hour” and are appalled by the suggestion that they should help after the hard day they have endured at the office or having to share a three seater on the Metro North. They are thinking, “where are the slippers, pipe and shaken martini?”

As I was speaking to a friend on the phone the other evening, I could hear some yelling in the background. I could just make out a high pitched teenaged voice…” Dad ….was fine but …ruin everything….life. You…….my life…. prevent …….going out….night”

I asked my friend what the commotion was all about. “ I told my daughter it was ok to go to town tomorrow before I checked with the boss. I think I stepped in it. She’s in arguing with her Mom”. He realized too late, there is zero upside to saying “yes” to anything. My theory is this need to make domestic decisions without consultation stems from being in control all day at the office and wanting to bring that control home at night. “I have a lot of people reporting to me at work” complains one executive. “but the way they react to my judgment at home, it’s as if they are amazed that I can find the office or get dressed each morning”.

Dad’s want rapid popularity and the kind of loyalty you get when you give someone a bonus at work. This explains agreeing to a sleep over, unaware or not paying attention to the fact that the boy has had two consecutive sleepovers, fell asleep in his mashed potatoes at dinner and was grounded less than two hours ago for going on to the computer using his sister’s email address. It could all have been avoided by just saying, “ better ask your mother “. Instead, Mom will override this uninformed intrusion, resulting in an irrational child and Mom being pegged as the bad guy. Dad’s response? “ What’d I do ?”

It is the same, day in and day out, each house a region overtaken by juvenile Taliban and Al Kidda - - irrational adolescent militants who believe in a theology of sugar, electronics and lack of accountability. Martial law seems to work best in these regions of dissent and the absence of authority creates chaos.

It has always been this way. On the battlefield of life, my Mom was the master sergeant and my father, the clueless second lieutenant right out of West Point. It was my mother who knew how to talk to the troops. She understood what they worried about and had a sixth sense about any slight change in behavior. If a kid was too quiet at dinner, something was weighing on them. She could lull anyone into a confession where you would share your deepest fears.

Doctor Ruth, as we called her, was the female incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Mrs. Freud – Sigmund’s mother. The Case of Wetted Wood is a Turpin holiday favorite recounted every year as we relive the adventures and interventions of Dr Ruth. In this particularly confounding case, the feminine sleuth could not locate the wafting odor of ammonia emanating from one of her young son’s bedrooms. The mystery was further complicated when aged shag rugs were removed in each boy’s room to be replaced with wooden floors. A rotted hole in the wood was discovered behind a bedroom door. The workers deduced that a leak from the adjacent bathroom shower was the culprit. Dr Ruth was not convinced.

Something was not right. The occupant of the room seemed too cooperative that week and very circumspect. Upon interrogation, the suspect cracked and confessed that for the last six months he had been urinating behind the door because he was too scared to walk to the toilet at night. This explained the ammonia smell, the rotten wood and the constant presence of the housecat in the boy’s room at night. Dr Ruth saved the family thousands of dollars and even went so far as to protect the identity of child - - the penalty for such an egregious act would have entailed more lashes than a conscripted sailor on a British Man Of War.

The difference between the 60’s Dad and today’s dad is that the upper case “D’s” felt no social or personal obligation to be helpful. They were the hunters. Everything else as far as they were concerned was gathering. They did not even disguise the fact that they were less engaged and basked in a sort of clueless nirvana on domestic issues. They abdicated everything and were informed on a need to know basis by their spouses. Today’s father is expected to participate more but it’s my theory that some out there secretly long for the era of less accountability and resist the siren’s call of equal duty. This breeds a passive aggressive behavior that is exhibited in eye rolls, partial listening, martyred sighs and incomplete grocery store runs. In the end, gents, we must grudgingly accept it is a new day. When it comes to movie and sports trivia, go ahead and blurt out the answer because you know it. But on all other things personal or domestic, it is the ultimate sign of self awareness to offer one pat response: “better ask your mother”.

Birth Order Myths and Maybe-Truths

Since the days of Cain and Abel, birth order has fascinated us and formed who we are and perhaps what career we choose, as well as our relationships with siblings, our spouse, and with our friends. Along with the genes and personality traits that our parents pass along, the order in which they conceived and popped us out into this world helps to make us who we are.

There are variables, however, to the theories that firstborns are usually more responsible, smarter and strive to please more than second-or-third borns. Or that middle children have less of a clear-cut role in the family, or even that the youngest expects others to make decisions for him and takes on less responsibility. Often the sex of the child as well as the dynamics in blended, single or divorced families throw a wrench into the accepted birth order suppositions.

I am the eldest of two and so as the first-born of course I am smarter and more responsible than my younger brother (good thing he lives in Maryland and never reads this column; I am obviously kidding about being superior). However, according to a Dr. Spock website, the oldest are “typically responsive to the parents’ expectations” and that was certainly a truism growing up. The second-born, or youngest, says the site, is “easygoing… charming and manipulative.” That’s accurate of my brother. While he was rebelling, I felt a strong need to fulfill my mom and dad’s hopes for me as a diversion to his crazy antics of adolescence.

My own four children are a bit all over the map in terms of the birth order traits.

Blake, the first-born, enlisted in the Marines right out of New Canaan High, so clearly he took on a leadership role in life as well as in the family. He was always the peace-keeper and protector growing up and still is. Another website states that the first-born may respond to the birth of the second child by feeling unloved and neglected. I know I certainly felt that way and was constantly taunting my brother as being dropped on the door-step instead of being born to our mother, and I enjoyed trying to figure out ways to “get rid of him” as a child. Blake reacted to Kenny’s birth by chucking a Matchbox car at the baby’s face, resulting in a butterfly stitch to the forehead. There were other such incidents until each reached their teens; they are now the best of friends.

Kenny has the distinction of having been the youngest for eight years until I remarried and had his sister, Janet. Her birth catapulted him to the position of the middle child, a rank that’s often described as discouraged, becoming the “problem child.” Acting out for the middle kid is a way to garner back his or her parents’ attention. Spot on for Kenny. And Janet – who not only shares Kenny’s status as middle child, but also shares Kenny’s birth date – has revealed some of those tendencies as well, though not as strongly as her brother.

Janet, like Kenny, had/has a double place in the hierarchy of my children in that she is the oldest of the Evans’ kids, so she shares many first-born traits, too, which can counteract the characteristics of the typical middle child. Being the only girl throws in a whole different set of actions (and hormonal reactions) to the sibling mix. Her older brothers at first protected and coddled her, then felt she was a royal pain, and now for the most part have reverted back to their original nurturing ways. How we, her parents, deal with her is also a direct correlation to her birth order(s), sex, and personality traits of additionally being a part of a family with two older half-siblings. I spoil her the most by far.

“Baby” Jack really doesn’t exhibit the typical traits of the youngest in the family, but he has experienced the inevitable parental responses to being the last child born. While Blake’s baby book is filled to the brim with duly-noted milestones and dozens of photos, I couldn’t even begin to tell you where Jack’s is located in the attic (or is it the basement?), and it merely notes his size and weight and includes those inked newborn feet the hospital produces. I can recite the time of birth, birth weight and length of Blake, Kenny and Janet, but draw a blank on Jack’s vital newborn statistics. I don’t recall what his first word was and almost always forget to bring my camera to school events or to the field of play! His sibling’s landmarks are memorialized and memorized properly. The birth order experts postulate that the baby of the family usually feels smallest and weakest and is unable to take on responsibilities, but nothing could be farther than the truth for my youngest guy. In fact one quote reveals that: “unburdened by the high expectations that many parents have for their eldest children many youngest experience greater success than their siblings or they will make their mark in life in a very individualistic way.” That’s my baby!

A competitive will, a free spirit, a sense of superiority, a need to be babied, all of these things can – and often are – explained by birth order. So many forces collide to shape our personalities and our approach to life, and it’s spellbinding to watch it all in the faces of our children.

“Location, location, location.” It’s not just a real estate mantra, is it?