Dear Teenager ~ I really do love you!

Sheer and utter honesty, its not often that I feel this way. Parenting a teen, a girl, and one that I want to keep from making all the same mistakes I did is hands down in the top 5 toughest experiences of my life. She's amazing, gorgeous if I do say so myself, has more talent in her baby finger then all of me combined, but she's a teenager. That maddening, coming of age, find my independence freedom and discover who you are (check back with me at 35 - cuz I'm still working on that part)and push back just because I can part of growing up that is maddening (yes I said it again) to pretty much every parent of a teen I encounter. Somedays, the sleep all day part of teenage life doesn't really bother me that much its a reprieve from whatever challenge of the day may come. And I again let me remind you she's a great kid the parenting part is just the biggest challenge in a parenting parade of age gaps with our three kids. Until this week. Our son is the middle child in elementary school and the age gaps are such in our house that he seems to be exempt from middle child syndrome, plus he is the only boy so attitude adjustments can be relatively simple things like, lets go play catch for 10 minutes and my sweet boy is back to he relatively laid back smiley self. Then we have the preschool daughter who is sweet and cuddly and worships at the feet of the ground that Mommy walks on, this week she has decided to have even worse sleeping patterns then her normal horrible sleeping patterns ( fear of storms, dark clouds and rain and it has been a cold rainy stormy summer) and cry about the feel size shape color temperature of her clothing, food, hair, toys, books etc. She has even cried about crying because she was so tired but then cried because she was going to bed. Those moments this week made me step back and really enjoy the conversations about life, love and hard work in the few quiet moments with my teenage daughter this week, because they were real life rational conversations that didn't require me to magically make the macaroni and cheese the perfect magical temperature that is neither to hot or to cold. I may even believe that While discussing song lyrics in the car I think she actually realized that I'm human and not just a mother robot! ha! So to all the mamas out there struggling with the teenage girl that was once a cuddly preschooler worshiping at your feet, just remember that they had challenging days then too, and it wasn't all cuddly sweet and rainbows (maybe mostly, but if we stop for just a moment the teenager may have those days too). ~ B