Tween time

Tim is singing at the top of his lungs in Spanish.

I’m not sure why. I’m not sure why he’s singing; I’m not sure why he’s singing in Spanish as opposed to English; I’m not sure why he’s singing so loud.

But he’s a pre-teen – and in less than six months, he’ll be a full-fledged teen, no more “pre” about it – and I’m discovering that it turns out we in fact will not be the one household that avoids dealing with adolescent mood swings. We’ll be like all the other households with 12- or 13- or 14-year-olds, trying to figure out why our child is jubilant one minute and catatonic the next; refusing to put the sweatshirt he’s worn for the past six days in the laundry while also taking daily showers these days, whereas up ‘til last month it was a struggle to get him to wash more than once or twice a week.

I suspect mood swings are more difficult for other parents to take than for me, and I say that not because I’m a more patient or tolerant parent but because for us, there’s an unexpected up side. As a younger child, Tim had steady moods, but they tended to be on the somewhat subdued side. He was almost never jubilant, unless it was at the end of a victorious baseball game or coming home from the circus. These days he emanates jolliness and good cheer at the strangest times: getting off the bus on a Tuesday afternoon, for example, or leaving the supermarket with me. There are the bleaker moods as well, particularly in the morning over breakfast when he doesn’t want to begin the new day just yet, but I’m used to those. It’s the bounciness that’s a novelty to me.

So if the past few weeks have been any indication, we’re in luck with our nearly-teen. He’s happy with everything that being almost 13 entails: middle school, with its classes seriously focused on academic progress; school dances; even the local cultural events I’ve been dragging him to for years suddenly appeal to him if it means he can sit with his friends. What’s more, he’s almost always pleasant and polite to me these days (other than during those early-morning breakfasts), in part because he is so often requesting permission to use my computer so that he can instant-message with his friends.

We still have another child to squire through the pre-teen years, and she’s the one who has been blessed with a sunny disposition since birth, so the tables might turn. Fair is fair; I’m afraid we’re owed a stormy adolescence somewhere along the way. But right now we’re enjoying the ride: daily showers, text messaging, study sessions at the library, and everything else that it unexpectedly encompasses so far.

Tweendom arrives - and so far it's all good

It’s something of a cliché for parents to gripe a little bit about the onset of that phase once known as pre-teen years and now more commonly called tweendom. From a chronological perspective, we’re in the thick of it, given that Tim will turn 13 exactly six months from yesterday, and yet from a developmental perspective it feels like we’re just getting our feet wet. Perhaps he was a little bit of a late bloomer.

Holly, meanwhile, may be something of an early bloomer. She too seems like a tween all of a sudden, and she’s only 8 ½.

And yet you’ll hear no griping from me about tweendom. Not today, anyway. To my surprise, I’m finding it entertaining and interesting in ways I never anticipated.

For example, the music. Holly has been downloading songs to her iPod and playing them over the speakers so that she can dance. Her dancing reminds me more of Turkey’s traditional Whirling Dervishes than anything you’d see on MTV, but given her lack of interest in sports, I’m happy any time I see her physically exerting herself, and the dancing definitely meets that criterion. Plus the music is, well, interesting. I can’t say I choose to play it when she’s not around, but it’s still good for me to be exposed to something new. Taio Cruz, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, the Back Street Boys – I mean the New Kids on the Block – I mean Big Time Rush. Yes, that’s it, Big Time Rush. Okay, so they don’t sound so new to me at all. But the other ones add something to my scope of musical awareness, and that’s something from which I can definitely benefit.

Meanwhile, Tim is keeping me amused with his newfound devotion to instant messaging. In the evening, he and a couple of friends get on their computers and tap away. He lets out the occasional chuckle or comments to me about their news: “Mom, Austin just picked out a new baseball glove! Katie is going skiing at Mount Cranmore this weekend!” I always like to hear what other families we know are up to, and this is the first time Tim has appeared to take any interest in what his peers do when they’re not in his presence.

Tim is choosing to get out of the house more, also, which is an advantage. He goes to school dances, Friday Night Live parties, and last weekend a middle school dodgeball tournament. He’s always been such a homebody; when it’s not baseball season, he practically hibernates. I’m happy to witness his newfound animation and willingness to try new experiences, even experiences like dodgeball. And what’s even better is that both kids now take showers without being asked.

Tim will be an actual teen and not just a tween in less than half a year now. We’ll see whether that suits me – and him – as well as tweendom does. Holly, meanwhile, still has years of dancing, loud music and eventually instant-messaging with friends yet to go. Some parents bemoan the end of the early childhood years, but I have the sense that things are getting increasingly interesting around here, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Between child and tween

As the holiday weekend ends, I’m feeling particularly aware of the various facets of Tim’s current age (or, to use one of my mother’s favorite expressions, “age ‘n’ stage,” which she says so often that at one point in my twenties, before I’d mentally parsed it out, I wondered why everyone we knew seemed to be going through an “Asian stage.”). Often Tim and I go our separate ways for much of the day – he’s at school, I’m working; he’s off playing baseball, I’m at home making dinner; he’s doing homework, I’m reading to Holly – but now it’s summer vacation and we seem to be moving in tighter circles, in closer proximity to each other.

He came downstairs while I was closing up the house last night and asked if he could have some ice cream before bed, knowing there were a couple of pints in the freezer left over from our earlier Fourth of July cookout. I hesitated. “Normally I’d say no to ice cream twice in one day, but I guess it’s okay,” I told him. Although the idea of my kids overeating worries me, the wiry build Tim has had since he was a toddler has not changed one bit even now that he is almost twelve; his ribs stick out still. As he scooped out some mint chocolate chip, I could imagine him as a teenager, going through bowls of ice cream every day the way teenage boys do and still as skinny as ever. “He eats as much as an army, and never gains an ounce,” I’ll tell people, knowing that’s typical of teen boys.

Yes, he’ll still eat ice cream and not gain an ounce of fat, like now, but when he’s a teenager he probably won’t do some of the most endearing things he’s done this weekend. On Saturday we spent hours at the public beach in a neighboring town; there were fireworks and a concert scheduled, and we arrived early so the kids could swim in the pond. Tim and Holly played their favorite swimming game, throwing a ball into the water and then racing from the beach to see who could reach it first, and they made leg-bridges for each other to swim through. Once swimming time ended, Tim pleaded with me to throw a toy football back and forth with him (“Throw it away from me so I have to dive for it, Mom!” he ordered again and again), and at one point when Holly wanted to demonstrate a dance she’d made up but said she needed a platform to stand on, Tim obligingly crouched on the beach on all fours and let her stand on his back to do the act. “It only hurt when she stepped on my neck!” Tim proudly announced afterwards. When the fireworks began, the kids lay side by side on the sand and watched.

But yesterday Tim was all pre-adolescent as he and I helped my father transfer hay bales from the hay wagon into the barn. His answer to everything I said for a solid hour, from “Oh look, there’s a little black snake on that bale!” to “Tim, could you throw the bales a little closer to the edge of the wagon?” to “Good job, honey!” was a thoroughly exasperated, “Mommmmm!” My father and I laughed because in his irritable contempt, Tim sounded so much like the teen he will eventually be. And despite my amusement, that made me reflect on how soon he won’t be a child anymore. He’ll still eat large bowls of ice cream and he’ll probably still help us unload hay bales, but he won’t race Holly into the waves to retrieve a ball, or lie next to her on the beach during the fireworks, or ask me to throw a football with him.

Seeing our kids grow up is perhaps the most natural but also the most blessed part of parenting. When all goes well, we take it for granted that we will see them pass from one phase into the next, and I often express little sympathy with the mothers who say “Right now it’s really hard being up at 5 AM, but I know someday I’ll miss these days!” “You won’t,” I want to tell them. “Think that if it makes you feel better now, but you won’t. I’ve been through that part, and my kids now sleep until eight or nine in the morning if they don’t need to be up for school, and never once have I missed the 5 A.M. wakeups of their toddler days.” Not the sentimental type, I’m pretty easily convinced of the value of moving on, enjoying each stage as it arrives but then being ready to say goodbye to it.

But this weekend I found myself feeling differently. At age (‘n’ stage) eleven, Tim gets a twinkle in his eye when he’s playing on the beach or making up songs to amuse his grandparents (they and Tim have a private joke involving a jingle about Australian cleaning products that I will probably never understand, but it makes all three of them laugh). Even if his personality doesn’t change, I know some of those particular activities, that horsing-around of boys his age, will probably fade away in time.

I’ll miss it. He’ll still eat big bowls of ice cream and burn the calories off quickly, but he might not be quite so willing to serve as dance platform for his younger sister. Between his exasperated exhalations of “Mommm!” throughout the day yesterday and the way he’s resisted cutting his hair this summer, he definitely seems on his way to tweendom; he’ll turn twelve before fall officially begins. New and interesting phases lie ahead if all goes according to plan, I know. But every now and then I pause to get sentimental. Boys are so much fun at this age, and all I can do is try to hold on to the image of Tim racing Holly into the water as long as possible.

My son had a sleepover - and I got a good night's sleep

I’m starting the work week well-rested and cheerful. The house is neat, the bathrooms are clean, the refrigerator is stocked, my patience is untried.

This is notable only because my 11-year-old son invited three friends to a sleepover this weekend. It was an event I approached somewhat grudgingly, knowing that two months after his birthday we owed him some kind of celebration but still not genuinely enthusiastic about the plan to fill up his room with fifth grade boys for the night.

I worried that they’d be loud and messy and rude – not because any of these particular boys has ever shown any of these qualities to me, but because I had an innate wariness about combining that many male tweens and being responsible for them for eighteen hours.

But I needn’t have worried. Beyond not being any trouble, it was a delight to spend time with the four of them together. They played football in the driveway. My husband took them bowling and out for pizza. They played pool in our attic, raved about the ice cream pie I served after dinner, were kind (or at least exhibited an absence of unkindness) to Holly, played Wii into the wee hours, went to bed at the agreed-upon time (11, so not a huge sacrifice, but still), slept until 7, woke cheerful, raved about the pancakes and bacon I made for breakfast, trooped out to the barnyard to help me feed the cows and let out the sheep, worked on making a poster together, and packed their stuff up when it was time to leave.

They are great boys, and my son is so lucky to have such kind friends. Holly has wonderful friends too, and I feel fortunate on both of their behalves. So much rides upon the question of who your child makes friends with – and there’s so little a parent can do about it. Worst-case scenarios can have unthinkably awful consequences, but even middling scenarios can keep a parent awake at night, stressing out over a child’s dangerous liaisons. My children have both been lucky enough to find peers who are thoughtful, self-disciplined and generous.

That’s not to say we won’t face any friendship problems going forward. Tim already seems to be quite effective at deciding whom he wants to hang out with and whom he wants to stay away from, but Holly is immersed in more of a typical girlhood, and no doubt there will be drama along the way. In fact, I fully admit it’s likely she’ll be the one causing the drama sometimes. I try to teach her to be a good friend, but as Rosalind Wiseman writes about in Queen Bees and Wannabes, girls find their way into a quagmire of social issues despite our best intentions.

Be that as it may, right now I’m still ensconced in a cheerful glow from our wonderful weekend with Tim’s friends. They played outside; they left the bathroom neat; they didn’t keep anyone else awake at night. They complimented my cooking. (Ice cream pie and pancakes: you could argue that those are two can’t-misses, but still. They could have eaten and kept silent rather than complimenting.) Almost every day I feel grateful for my own kids. Today I feel additionally grateful for the terrific kids with whom my children surround themselves.