EPISODE 16 EPISODE 16“You think you got it bad now,” other moms cautioned me one afternoon when Hayden, Anna, and Lilly were small, “just wait till they’re teenagers.”
Like the weird sisters of Macbeth, they gave each other knowing glances and chuckled as they watched me nearly amputate a foot trying get my screaming toddler’s stroller onto the escalator at the mall.
I walked away thinking those moms were just old and bitter. I summarily dismissed their annoying prophecies. I firmly believed whatever stage of parenting I was experiencing was the worst one, and no one was going to convince me otherwise.
Then when Hayden turned seventeen, it occurred to me that only one year of his childhood remained. I wasn’t sure if I should celebrate or burst into tears.
The first time I held my son in my arms, I felt an awesome sense of love and purpose. In an instant, my own needs shifted from my top priority to a distant second, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. Like any mama bear, squirrel, or flamingo, focus on my own survival automatically switched to the endurance of my offspring.
Although it is initially a joy to put our children’s needs ahead of our own, over time the task of parenting gets bothersome, frustrating, and frankly, downright terrifying. Nowhere would this fact of life become clearer than when Hayden became a teenager.
I hated to admit it, but those cackling witches at the mall were right as rain.
When Hayden turned thirteen, his head didn’t spin, his eyes didn’t roll, and foul expletives didn’t burst forth from his mouth. No, he was the same kid he’d always been. When he turned fourteen we saw subtle changes—his first shave, a deepening voice, reluctance to accept affection.
How cute, we thought.
We drifted contentedly into our son’s teen years, comfortably secure that our teenager would never be a problem, because we were good parents and had raised him right.
But soon after the candles on our son’s Rubik’s Cube-shaped fifteenth birthday cake were extinguished, a new period of parenting ensued, which might best be described as “Armageddon.”
Suddenly, the bathroom door was permanently locked. Hayden stopped making eye contact. A foul smell hung like a green fog in his bedroom. He snickered secretly into the phone behind his barricaded bedroom door. When we managed to catch sight of him in the flesh, he was always asleep.
In what seemed like an instant, the sweet boy we had known all those years turned into a smelly, undisciplined stranger who, apparently, hated our guts.
At night we lay in bed, our minds racing with anger, frustration, guilt, and panicked thoughts of our son’s future. Desperate, we listened to other parents of teens, and found out the hell we were experiencing was actually quite common.
Apparently, just as new hairs sprout from a teen’s body, a budding new attitude develops in the teen brain. The once dependent, reverent child suddenly thinks:
There’s nothing I don’t already know. I will now run my own life. I find you, my parents, totally embarrassing and reserve the right to roll my eyes in pure disgust whenever I see fit. I will, however, continue to associate with you so you can buy me a car, electronics, clothing of my choice, pizza for me and my friends, and a place to sleep until two in the afternoon. Oh, and don’t forget to save upwards of one hundred thousand dollars to send me off to college so I can reenact Animal House at your expense.
When I realized there was only one year left before Hayden would be off to college, you’d think I would have chilled champagne and made plans to fumigate his room. But ironically, I was melancholy and knew I was at risk of becoming one of the witches, warning young moms to appreciate the days when their biggest problem was getting the stroller onto the escalator at the mall.