As I’ve mentioned, oh, 76 or so times, I have four teenagers in the house. Which means we have very little of some things (leftovers, tranquility, time, clean laundry), and a lot of other things (drama, chips and salsa, deodorant, hormones).
And as the culture around them accelerates to 5G-speed–despite my kids’ lack of a fully-developed frontal lobe–my husband and I are working hard to keep communication open.
A few nights ago, I got a call from my son from his military base. Wanna know what was great?
He called me because he had a bad day.
Y’know what’s not a good sign? When there’s water dripping from the light fixture in your downstairs bathroom…when someone’s taking a shower upstairs, in the bathroom right above it.
Oy, vey.
Last week, I brought happy-hour Sonic drinks to my friend’s empty sixth-grade classroom. She’d decked it out as only excited teachers can, with pillowed reading corners complete with fairy lights, innovative seating, and wave bottles she’d made herself, with glitter inside.
We chatted, and I laughed about her curiously-labeled drawer of Bummer Pencils. A bummer pencil, she explained, is one she’s picked up off the floor or from a desk, maybe half-chewed or with no eraser. She saves those–I’m assuming she disinfects them?–for the time when a sixth-grader raises their hand with the news they have no pencil.
A few months ago around the dinner table, the topic of conversation landed on what Disney character best described each of us.
My husband was Mufasa from the Lion King; my oldest has always born a resemblance to Cars’ Lightning McQueen, while my second son makes us laugh like Tow Mater (and happens to be going through a Duck Dynasty phase? I digress.) I may have had some references to Mary Poppins, or Ms. Potts from Beauty and the Beast. (Sigh.) The jury’s still out on my daughter (maybe Belle, maybe Lilo).
But my youngest son is a whole lot like Dash from The Incredibles–often seen merely in a blur. Friends have likened him to a cartoon character before, so this isn’t new. He’s also my two-sports-at-a-time kid nearly every season.
My daughter was 14 months old when she got glasses and began to wear the felt purple eye patch I’d stitched for her. Coincidentally, it was the same month, she started walking at last and pushed through her first tooth. We’d noticed she frequently went cross-eyed.
It wasn’t until she could talk that the opthalmologist was able to understand she didn’t have a muscle problem. She had a genetic condition from my side called Dewayne’s Syndrome, from a missing cranial nerve.
When my kids were younger, I tried my hand at writing a children’s book.
It was the story of a boy in a small town whose grandpa had a magical house: The House of Broken and Beautiful. His grandpa was beloved, though some who didn’t know him suspected him of evil.
A couple of my kids have recently joined the other two in pursuing some personal fitness goals.
So y’know, that’s cool.
In a couple of weeks, my youngest turns 13. Which means I will soon be parenting four teenagers. Which means my prayer life is thriving.
As some parents of tweens chatted with my husband and me last week, I recalled some of the best advice given to us for parenting teens: Keep them talking. Keep the relational bridge open.
It’s great advice for all of parenting, right? But at times with each of my kids, that’s required supreme effort.
When my four kids were little and life resembled a 24-hour Bounty commercial, I read a statistic in Parents magazine that something like 78% of new moms, when choosing between sex and sleep, chose sleep.
Um. Duh.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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