My Tween

Change is necessary, and I know it, but it’s hard sometimes isn’t it? Most of us don’t deal well with change.  We like things the way we like things, we like routine and relish in the safety and comfort of habit.  Dave would be the first to tell you that I am a creature of habit.  It’s why, although I love to go on vacations, I also love to come home and get back to the way things are supposed to be.  Too much change and I feel out-of-control and will get a headache.  I love to take the Christmas decorations down, I love to send the kids back to school, and I like a certain amount of order to my day and week.  Of course, Dave would also be the first person to tell you that organization is not my thing, so it’s a routine, but a relaxed one.

I am always struggling with change as it relates to my children.  Bringing that sweet baby girl home from the hospital upset life so completely!  I just had no idea how much a 7 pound baby would thoroughly turn the house upside down, inside out, and squeezed in the middle.  I figured I might be up at night for a couple of months but that all else would go on as before, except that now there’d be a cute, little pink sweetie pie cooing in her swing watching it all. 

I remember the futility of trying to plan my day:  since she nursed that morning at 5 a.m., she’ll be ready again at 7:30, which will work out well, because her well visit is at 8:30, we’ll sneak in the feeding, head to the doctor, nurse there after the appointment, hit the grocery store on the way home, etc.  But my sweet little stinker, probably sensing a shot was in her future, pooped so explosively, up her back, in her hair…two minutes before departure time.  And at the doctor’s office, she decided she wasn’t ready to nurse, which completely blew to pieces the plan to go grocery shopping, because we all know you only take a happy, dry, well-fed baby to the grocery store.

But I got better.  I changed (because I had to), and adapted to her needs.  We figured it all out.

As the children left the baby phase behind, however, I find I am not adapting quite as easily to their grasps at independence.  When Maddie first started wanting to choose her own bedtime book, I had a little tantrum in my head.  I didn’t want to read that stupid Blue’s Clues book again, I wanted to read the nice nursery rhyme book and sing “Hickory Dickory Dock” to her!   Eventually I realized it wasn’t about what I wanted anymore.  When Ben and Jack started making preferences for foods, books, etc. I was ready, and it was okay.  But I had a hard time letting Maddie make choices, which I look back at in horror, but she was MINE, ALL MINE!  And now she was becoming less mine and more hers.  It was hard.

I think I’m having this attack of nostalgia because that baby girl is “graduating” from 5th grade this week.  Now, I realize that this is just a symbolic ceremony celebrating her movement from elementary school to middle school, she’s not heading off to college or somewhere equally horrifying, but still.

I’m not ready for middle school. I’m not ready for teenagers on the school bus.  I’m not ready for makeup and boys and peer pressure and dances and for that time when she stops adoring me and starts separating herself from me, because I know it’s going to happen!  Sure, it’s healthy to let her make choices and learn independence and responsibility or to pick her own self up when her choices turn out to be not so great.  But I’m not there yet. 

It’s not about me, though, is it?  I’ve got to step back and let her do it all, let her try new things, allow her deal with disappointment and that yucky mean girl stuff and the roller coaster ride of puppy love, although I hope she knows I’ll always be there cheering her on, or ready to help her dust herself off, or maybe sing a nursery rhyme or two to her maybe if she’ll let me? (Stupid Blue’s Clues book…you started everything.)

I’m not liking change right now. Not no how, not no way.