The Pilgrims had it Right

Do you have a funny Thanksgiving story? One that just has to be retold every year? The year the dog got the turkey or all the Great Aunts got tipsy while making the gravy? What about a special tradition in your family? Be it silly or somber, is it what signifies the holiday to you and yours? Say, a maiden aunt's crookneck squash turkeys made with colored toothpicks and construction paper. They sat precariously on their little toothpick legs, among the floral centerpiece and old wedding silver. And of course, those certain foods and recipes that your group's Thanksgiving table will never be without. Aunt Sue's Broccoli Salad or long gone Visie's yeast rolls. One taste, and she's back in the kitchen with you, bossing everyone and holding court.

Hands down, Thanksgiving is the best holiday of all. Understand, I love Christmas as much as the next person, but the shopping and decorating and weeks of leading up to, and days of taking down, are not exactly relaxing. It's the holiday that goes on forever. And all those expectations that have to be met. It's nerve-wracking. It's expensive. It's exhausting.

Thanksgiving. Now there's a holiday. You still get the family without the fuss. It's fallish. It's festive. It's fun. Everyone in one place without a game plan. There's time to catch up. Time to reconnect. And best of all, time to remember.

As the preceding generation leaves us, it becomes harder to stay connected. When my Mother and her sister were gone, the cousins all kind of floated, loosey goosey. First our Grandparents, and then our Mothers were no longer in charge. We realized very quickly how much we needed each other. We realized we wanted our children to have what we had been so blessed with. We grew up together with a strong sense of self. We had a knowledge of where we came from and who we were. The greatest gift we could give to our loved ones memory (and the greatest gift to ourselves) was to continue instilling a strong sense of family. Additionally, when we are gone, the younger generation will have each other to support and love them like only family can. They share a history because they have shared their lives.

Cousins move out of their house so you can stay there while your daughter is having heart surgery. Sister-in law's have Valentine parties for your grandchildren and shop better for your family than you do. Brothers sit with your husband while he smokes 25 Thanksgiving turkeys or dog sit their niece's Jack Russell, a dog only family could love. Brothers know why you are who you are, because they were there too. They know all the inside jokes. One key word and you look at each other and burst out laughing. Floyd! HA HA HA. Cousins bring baby presents and cry with you at funerals and have Easter get-togethers because Thanksgiving only comes once a year. Nieces and Nephews grow up with each other and then, these cousins start the marriage and new baby cycle all over again. That's the way it's supposed to work isn't it?

How about it? Put those Christmas lights down! Leave Santa in the attic a day or two more. Let the pumpkins and the mums stay for the weekend. Don't miss this holiday getting ready for the next one. May your Thanksgiving be memorable. May your Thanksgiving be happy. May your Thanksgiving be delicious. And most importantly, may your Thanksgiving be blessed with the gift of family.

Enjoy Being a Girl

I take my nine-year-old granddaughter to gymnastics every week.  It's a long drive across town, giving us some time to chat and catch up. I look forward to our commute. Tonight, between wanting the lights on her house to look like the Griswalds this Christmas and that a new friend at class believes in ghosts, she threw out a boy in her class told someone that he " liked"  her.   Keeping a firm grip on the steering wheel, I casually asked her, "what do you think about that?"  "Not too much, she answered.  My daddy says I have to be driving a car before I can have any boyfriend but him."
Sigh.
Safe for now.  But in the blink of an eye, her Father won't have a chance.

Does it seem to you that your pre-teen daughter has gone boy crazy? Here are some things that you may be seeing in your new boy-crazy pre-teen:
* She may call or text a boy she likes ten or more times a day.
* She may dress differently and lose interest in school, sports and other activities.
* She may become distant and private.
     There are ways that you can discourage this behavior in your pre-teen as they are neither capable physically nor emotionally with dealing with serious relationships at their young age.
     You can discourage early dating and other boy-girl activities. Kids need a time to be with same sex friends to learn social and intimacy skills. Girls who start dating before they are psychologically or socially ready may not know appropriate ways to act in close relationships with the opposite sex and can feel pressured to imitate older teens or show "maturity".     
Most importantly you should reinforce your daughter's self-esteem, helping her to discover her intrinsic value as a person and her unique strengths and talents, Too often, girls enter the teens with harmful social conditioning--believing that if they don't have boyfriends, they have nothing. 
     A pre-teen girl who is confident and sure of herself will not look to anyone else to make her feel good about herself.  She knows who she is and where she wants to go.  She pursues her own interests and stands up for herself and what she believes in. She has developed close friendships with other young girls who are also confident and open. She doesn't take herself too seriously. She been given the tools by her parents that help her navigate successfully through the teen years and on to college.  Our beautiful pre-teen is on the road to a happy life.

Back to the Future

John Kinnear

Author of AskYourDadBlog.com

...

John Kinnear has a great blog called AskYourDadBlog.com.  He writes a letter to his young daughter, imagining her as a teenager.  A song from his youth comes on the radio and it reminds him what it was like to be 15.  It's always good to remember.  It's an important tool as we navigate parenting. Chrissie

Dear Duchess,
I had a ridiculous moment in the car on the way home from work on Friday. "The Freshmen" by The Verve Pipe was on the radio.
If you're not familiar with the song (and since you weren't a teenager in the '90s, there's a good chance you're not), it is an overwrought ballady barf of a song about some teenagers who didn't take some advice and then one of them dies, or something, and at some point in a made up future the singer is wailing about how innocent they were, and how it wasn't their fault because they were MERELY FRESHMEN!!!
HEYEEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEEAAEAAEAHH!!!
Anyway, I love that song. I love it because it takes me back to a very specific point in my life, where I too was innocent and nothing was my fault and things happened that seemed much more important than anyone besides myself thought they were, and I couldn't control them, and that really upset me because we WERE MERELY FRESHMEN!!!
HEEEYYAHEAAEAEAAEAAEAOOHHEEAAEAEAAEAAEAAAH!!!
So there I am, singing along to this wonderfully awful song, and the strangest thing happened. I thought of you and started tearing up a little in the car. Not 2-year-old you, 15-year-old you.
Why? Well, I started crying because I realized at some point during the second chorus that I had completely forgotten how incredibly hard it was to be a teenager.


Dear Duchess,
 (I call you Duchess on the blog because in 2013, we have this illusion we call privacy),

You know that thing that is going on that you think is the most important thing to happen in the history of you... or even of the world? You know, the one that has your stomach all balled up and tears leaking out from your eyes every time you tilt your head the wrong way? It's that problem that has everyone telling you that they know how you feel because they've experienced some bastardized form of said problem, and if you just give it some time, everything will feel better and you'll look back on it and laugh. I need you to know something. It is the most important thing in the world, and knowing that someday you may or may not care about it isn't going to make you feel any better. Perspective is only valuable once you have it, and right about now your perspective is telling you screw perspective." I'm on board with that. Because whether something is the end of the world, or it just feels like the end of the world, it still FEELS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD!

Here's the hard part for me: Not only can I not fix that thing that is eating you up inside, I'm probably too old and detached from what you're going through to even understand it. Old me is going to look at you and tell you I love you, and you're going to scream at me that your life is over and that I will never understand, and you're right about at least half of that. I probably won't ever understand you. But I did once. I promise.
When I was a teenager, I parked my car in an alley once and screamed at the top of my lungs while repeatedly slamming my fists into the steering wheel. I sat, balled up, on the floor of my shower one time and cried until the water was ice cold. I wrote poems for girls. I dreamt of being liked and being popular and getting the part in the musical or the position on the football team. I longed for those I couldn't have and lost those I did have. I went through long patches of my life where I felt immensely lonely. And every time, I didn't know if it was the end of the world or if it just felt like it -- and I didn't care. And it was only made worse by the fact that my awesome and loving parents just didn't get it. And now I'm the parent who doesn't get it. So, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that future me doesn't understand. 2013 me does. Maybe in the future, you'll be able to upload a hologram of 2013 me and tell me about how much of a jerk I've become. I'll compliment you on your laser hair and you'll complain about how future me hates that it cost $4,500 dollars. Then I'll go to give you a hug, and you'll go to hug me back and you'll fall on the floor because I'm a hologram. We'll laugh a little and that will make hologram-me happy, or at least appear happy since I most likely won't have emotions because I'm a hologram. Then you'll say good night, turn hologram me off, and switch your iPillow to the classic rock station where, I hope to god, "The Freshman" by The Verve Pipe is playing. Because, while future me may not understand what you're going through, The Verve Pipe always will.
I love you, honey,
Still Kind-of Cool Dad from 2013
P.S. HEYEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEAAEAAEAAEAAA!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umEXpGHc0E&feature=player_embedded

Sugar and Spice?

Ann Brennoff, a contributor to the Huffington Post offers some insight about teenage daughters. If you have one, you'll nod your head and know exactly what she is talking about.  If your daughter is not there yet, just wait.  (Jaws Theme rises) It's Coming. Oh yes.  It's coming.  

Eight years ago, when my eight-year-old daughter was sweet as sugar and my then 5-year-old son a holy terror, someone wise said to me "It all changes when they become teenagers." While my now 16-year-old daughter is still as sweet as sugar and my 13-year-old son limits his terrorizing to the soccer field, there are definitely some changes.
Here are 6 things only a mother of a teenage girl understands:
1) It's OK for them to have secrets, even though we are hurt when they keep them from us.
While we miss hearing every detail of their school day and activities, teenage girls like to keep some things to themselves. Actually what they like to do is tell their friends, instead of us. That's an ouch. While we know that moving their confidences from us to their BFFs du jour is just part of the independence process and not a bad thing, we suspect that all moms initially will feel a little hurt. I sure did.
The first time my daughter slammed the top down on her laptop when I came into the room, I assumed she was up to no good. "What are you looking at?" I asked.
"Nothing," came the reply.
"Not nothing," I escalated. Turns out she had been innocently Skyping with some friends about homework. So why slamming shut the laptop before I could see? Because feeling that they have their own lives makes teenage girls happy.
Sometimes, you just need to allow them to draw some boundaries.
2) PMS is real.
Yowsa, is it ever. It's important to know that later that week, there will be apologies offered for every door slam, eye roll and "you wouldn't understand." Little brothers know to steer clear and that this isn't the time to put their stinky feet in their PMS-ing face or ask their Big Sister to play Minecraft with them unless they have a death wish.
It's hormonal. A force larger than them takes occupancy of their bodies and they become the scene in the Exorcist where the little girl's head spins around her neck. It is awful; it is ugly; it is best to stay away.
3) It is better to let their Dads teach them to drive.
In my family, teaching my 16-year-old daughter to drive has several rules. Chief among them is that nobody tells me when she was behind the wheel until it is after the fact.
Teaching a teenage girl to drive is something that Dads start and Moms finish. It isn't that Dads are more patient or smarter or better drivers. It's that they see the driving lesson as an opportunity to listen to the game on the radio without interruption, unless of course, she crashes. This makes them happy and more relaxed -- again, unless of course she crashes. And Moms, well, we are nervous wrecks and nervous wrecks don't make for good driving instructors.
4) The best you can hope for is that they make their own mistakes, not repeat yours.
Lectures, warnings, stories of your failures shared from a deep place in your heart may stop them from doing the things that caused your own mother to go gray. But rest assured, mistakes will be made -- just different ones. It feels to us that the risk bar is so much higher now than when we were growing up and screaming at The Beatles was seen as an act of revolution. And because we are so convinced that today's dangers are so much more, well, dangerous that we want to just shout louder, shake our teenage daughters by the shoulders more. It won't matter. You just need to trust that everything that came before will kick into play and they will make smart choices. And when they don't, that they know you will still love them and will do your best to fix it because that's what moms do.
5) Sex isn't a four-letter word.
Moms spend a lot of time worried about how and when their daughters will become sexually active. The worst advice someone shared with me was this: Put a condom in her purse and hope she remembers to use it. Not that simple. I started talking to my now-teenage daughter about sex when she was five or so -- using age-appropriate language, of course. I explained how a girl's body changes, how she would feel, etc. But in addition to teaching her about the act of sex, I also taught her the difference between sport-sex and intimacy. Sex in a loving relationship feels much different than a one-night stand. So far, so good.
6) Diet is a four-letter word.
I used to tell people that as a size 10, I would always be considered 30 pounds overweight in Los Angeles. I meant it as a joke, but like all good jokes, sometimes there is a grain of truth in it. I stopped saying it when my daughter became a teenager. Body image is huge in the lives of teenage girls. They stand in front of the mirror for hours, twisting and turning and trying to decide if the comfy jeans they wore last week are now Public Enemy No. 1.
I want my daughter to be healthy (she is), exercise (she does), and appreciate how good food can complement your life (she has always had an inquisitive palate). We don't talk about dieting; we talk about maintaining good health and doing right by our bodies. And we also talk a lot about how some girls don't eat right. And yes, I know enough not to bring it up when she is PMS-ing