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From my book, THE 7 STAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
It’s also crucial at this stage to let your preteen fall on her face once in a while, to muscle through a problem without a guaranteed bailout from Mom or Dad. Natural consequences are rarely easy to enforce, but they can work wonders during this critical time in your child’s life and foster a sense of mastery and responsibility. Even as I write this, I’m well aware of how abysmally I failed in this regard, how often I leapt to the rescue when Maddie or Nick was teetering on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes the cry for help was fairly minimal (“Mom! I left my math homework on my desk. Could you please, please drop it off at school?”), but on other occasions my rescue effort led to late-night “helping” with an English paper and the midnight thanks followed swiftly by “I suck at writing. I could never have done this without you.”
The problem, of course, is that when we help too much, we deprive them of a sense of mastery, of truly owning what they produce or create. On the flip side of the overinvolvement coin is a reluctance to let go, a deep ambivalence about everything from physical separation (“Can I walk to school by myself?”) to emotional independence (“That’s private, Mom!”). One could argue that every stage of motherhood is characterized by the conflicting desire to push and to coddle, to give our kids wings but clip them ever so slightly. But during their preteen years, our awareness of childhood’s end is always present. It’s like the fortieth-birthday card I received that read, “Turning 40 isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”
Yearning to Be Home More
The result of this consciousness, for several mothers of preteens, is a fierce yearning to be home more, to splurge on that European trip now—not when the kids are grown and out of the house—to dramatically change the way they live their lives.
I experienced similar feelings of sadness, nostalgia, anxiety, even mild dread as Maddie’s sixth-grade year came to an end. Knowing that seventh grade was typically the nadir in terms of social angst, I began to consider other alternatives. I wanted to write this book, badly, but I certainly didn’t want to compromise my already limited free time. As I launched this project, it launched me through a door I had only cracked open in years past.
The week I told my boss and staff my plan to take a few years off to write this book was marked by meetings that started on a professionally even keel and inevitably dissolved into weepy hugs. More than once I phoned Steve to whisper, “Are you sure this is a good idea? Do you think anyone would ever hire me again?” More than once I felt a sense of panic—never more than when my wonderful art director put her arm around my shoulders and said, “You know, you’ll never have this again. This is really special.” She was right. It’s very hard to find a team of coworkers as amazing as the women I worked with at that time—not to mention a job that was so compatible with my role as a mom. But I was still convinced that if I didn’t take this opportunity to be home more, to strengthen my relationship with my kids, I would never have that again, either.
Of course, it’s often a fantasy that your chances of connecting with your preteen increase in direct proportion to the hours you spend warming up the hearth at home. Don’t forget, it’s your child’s job to push you away at this age, to guard secrets, forge new friendships, figure out who the hell he is, often in direct opposition to you.
The Don’t-Touch-Me Phase
There’s no question that as your child hits ten or eleven, his need to appear more James Dean-cum-lone wolf increases in direct proportion to how many of his friends may be hanging around. Try to give him a hug or even tousle his hair at the bus stop or in the mall, and he’s likely to flinch as though you’ve zapped him with a cattle prod.
Hand in hand with the “don’t touch me” message is the “you’re so embarrassing” complaint, leveled several times a day. Suddenly you’re dumb and dumber. Maddie remembers all too vividly an unfortunate faux pas I committed the afternoon I managed to carry on a lengthy conversation with a dark-haired girl I repeatedly called Claire, even though, according to my mortified daughter, Rachel (her actual name) bore absolutely no resemblance to Claire. “She has way lighter hair,” Maddie hissed as she dragged me away, insisting in her next breath that I henceforth pick her up around the corner.
My friend Kate’s daughter presented her with a list of phrases never to be uttered in front of her school friends. They included any reference to mother-daughter conversations; for example, “Halley tells me” or “Halley and I were talking about . . . .” or “I understand from Halley.”
Happily for me, Nick’s headlong plunge into adolescence hasn’t included a dramatic Mom the Leper stage. Still, I’ve made good use of advice given to me by William Pollack, renowned expert on the psychology of boys, about ways to get even the most recalcitrant preteen to talk. “The vast majority of boys are not taught to open up, to say, ‘I feel this way, Mom,’ or ‘There’s something bothering me I’d like to talk about.’” He explained, “They’re much more likely to express their feelings while they’re doing something with you. If a boy has something else to focus on as he talks—shooting hoops, playing a game—then he successfully protects himself from the possibility of experiencing shame—which is paramount during the preteen years.”
Of course, there were many times when my kids retreated to their rooms or created a high-tech barricade that was tough to scale. How does one engage a ten-year-old when he’s playing Mortal Kombat (a game you loathe), pausing only to type an instant message on his laptop or to adjust the gigantic “I can’t possibly hear you” headphones cupping his ears? According to Ron Taffel, another gentle giant in the adolescent-psychology field, you create “comfort time” by pushing through those barriers and joining your kids in whatever activities they seem to enjoy.
Lines and Limits
At the same time, your goal is not to be your child’s best friend. As her parent, you’re expected to be flexible yet firm – a mandate that’s practically impossible to pull off consistently. Claire, a divorced mother of two, told me: “I feel like I’m living in this gray zone, and I hate it. It’s not a good place to be as a parent. Especially when you have a kid like Sam, who has always needed stability, predictability in his life. Just when he needs me to be in control, to know what I’m doing, I feel like I’m constantly struggling to figure out what the right answer is to the myriad questions and requests I am confronted with on a daily basis. This is brand-new territory, and I can’t go on my instincts, so I get really stuck.”
What Claire sensed—and what every parent of a preteen will confirm—is that showing indecision or weakness is like sticking your head in a shark’s mouth. A tenacious, self-righteous eleven-year-old can smell equivocation from a mile away and, like a hungry predator, will move in for the kill: “You don’t know anything!” “Why are you doing this to me?” “But everybody else is!” “What’s your problem?” and “I hate you!” are just a few of the choice bites you’re likely to feel.
Even if you know in your heart that your preteen loves you, it’s never easy to be sprayed with venom and not feel paralyzed by indecision or, worse, convinced that it would be a lot less painful to just lie down and admit defeat. Behind every preteen who claims to have a mother who is “a bitch,” “so incredibly annoying,” “clueless,” or worse is a kid scrambling for a toehold on a very slippery slope. Even if the hand they grab onto grips a bit too tightly, it’s nonetheless warm and sure. But the only way to maintain your own footing is to give yourself time to take that cleansing breath before responding. Only rarely will it be possible to do exactly the right thing, to stand firm and not doubt yourself a minute later. The ten-year-old who wants to get her ears pierced might have a long list of perfectly reasonable arguments to support her request. Your response may be as simple as “I want you to wait” or “I don’t like pierced ears.” But if you trust your gut, avoid the “Am I being overprotective and neurotic about this?” bug in your ear, chances are your child will back down. Will she thank you later for taking a sure and loving stance? Not a chance.
Class Cruellas and Cliques
More than anything, tweens want to belong, to be part of the in crowd or, better yet, a member of the most popular clique. There is a rich body of literature on clique dynamics; sociologists have parsed everything from “out-group subjugation” to violent bullying. But most of us don’t need a sociology lesson to remember how painfully formative the fickleness of friends can be. Ask any mom to close her eyes and say the first thing she associates with “seventh grade,” and she’s likely to mention friends or cliques or fall back on a simple “Ugh!”
I can recall choking back waves of anger and frustration when Maddie would recount some insanely complicated lunchroom dance that had left her outside the circle of “friends” on whom her fragile self-esteem depended. “They didn’t even talk to me, Mom,” she would whisper, the pain traceable from her hairline to her small, clenched fists. “No one likes me. I’m such a loser!” I knew better than to argue, to shower her with compliments or list her many wonderful qualities. With her emotional earplugs in place, Maddie was definitely not open to gratuitous advice; the best I could do was zip my mouth, shake my head sympathetically, and perhaps share some tragic story from my own sixth-grade memory bank.
It was equally important for me to admit that Maddie could be critical, competitive, jealous (all I had to do was ask Nick), because assuming she was the innocent victim got me nowhere. I had heard her talking about other kids, complaining about teachers, joking about a celebrity’s hideous outfit or latest romance. And of course, she had heard me talking about my friends, complaining about my boss, joking about a celebrity’s hideous outfit or latest romance. When it came to gossip I was hardly a Liz Smith, but I’m sure both kids heard their share of stories around our dinner table or witnessed my siblings and me teasing one another—usually, but not always, “all in good fun.”
By the time Nick entered middle school, I so hated the kids’ gossip that I instituted a fine for every nasty comment I happened to catch. Although this tactic primarily served to redirect the nasty comments my way, I made my point. Of course, there were several occasions when a phone conversation with one of my friends was interrupted by a shrill voice from the couch shouting, “I heard that, Mom! Fifty cents!”
What did I learn from the preteen years? First and foremost, that my children are not me. They won’t do their homework, practice piano, sketch a still life, make a friend, or write a letter the same way I would. And they certainly won’t do any of those things just because I say to. When you’ve asked your eleven-year-old to do something fifty times and he’s still not doing it, maybe he’s not the slow learner!
I also heard the rattle of childhood ghosts, witnessed the spillover from my own life onto the kids, and learned that when the going gets tough, the tough stop going. They pause, breathe, exit. Choosing to step out of an unproductive or, worse, destructive dance with your preteen is an extremely powerful strategy during this phase of motherhood. So is flexibility. I found that a willingness to bend a bit, even to surprise my kids by demonstrating that I actually had been listening and could be convinced to change my mind, defused many potential conflicts.
Living in the gray zone meant recognizing that what worked on Monday might prove totally useless on Wednesday or that the child who seemed unfit for more responsibility one day could act with stunning maturity the next. Similarly, even if a minor missile launched at the end of a day from hell caused my heart to bleed, I could still be counted on to pull the troops through on days when I was calm, rested, and undistracted. Or when I had had the time to talk to Steve, the benefit of a friend’s advice, a chance to meet with one of the kids’ teachers, or perhaps a consultation with a therapist. Any of these lifelines might alert me to hot spots, help me stop and reflect on how to better negotiate the daily challenges and relish the fun of living with a preteen.
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