Category: Teens

Posted in Teens

Don’t tell, but I’m enjoying parenting my teen…

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

I’ve been afraid to admit this because it might:  jinx me,  come back to haunt me, mock me (you name the expression), but the truth is that I’m enjoying parenting my teen and I have been… for months.  (Shhh…)

It was last year after I read Anne Lamott’s description of her own teen that I began to tremble in fear.  I shared the article with my son who was a turbulent 13 at the time, and he asked, “Mom, if 13 is ‘training-wheels-adolescence (Anne’s coinage), then how are we going to make it through ‘hard core biker adolescence (Anne’s descriptor of 14)’?”

But we must be a “biker family” without knowing it, because (so far) 14 has been pretty sweet.

I think it helps that my son now towers over me so that he is compelled to use my body as a leaning post.  This pseudo form of affection is warmly welcomed (even if it puts my back out of whack) after the long absence of any bodily contact between us that began at 12.

It’s not that my teen is a Stepford child or anything.  He is still moody, prone to obnoxious outbursts, outstanding demonstrations of selfishness and the occasional multiple personalities.

But he always comes back around.

I have to give credit to our family “practice” of Non-Violent Communication.  It’s given my son the tools he needs to understand and express his burning teen desires and it’s lent a voice that I can hear through my middle-aged ears.  And although he is the first to mock any pride we might take in our family, I’d like to think that he feels heard–and because of that, he’s willing to hear us.  His small, but heroic teen efforts of compassion go a long way toward family harmony.

But here’s my secret.  What I am enjoying most is exploring the frightening topic of his emerging sexuality.

Months ago, I reached out to other mothers of boys to ask, What do I need to teach my son about sex? Only to discover that I hadn’t lived what I most wanted to offer. So now we are learning, side by side (although he doesn’t know that.)

(stay tuned for next week’s post on moms, teens & sex)

Posted in Teens

Mandatory Yoga

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

Kelly Salasin

Each Wednesday I drag my 14 year old to a yoga class with me.  It’s a compromise that was foisted onto him– the details of which I’ll leave to your imagination.

Unfortunately, he’s inherited  astonishingly tight muscles from both his parents which makes the experience even more unpleasant for him.

Then there’s his sense of balance, which he can blame entirely on his father.  It takes all of my breath to remain centered  while he dramatically crashes into walls beside me.

“It’s so great that you come together,” others say, ignoring his scowls.

Despite this great show of resistance, I find him settling into the practice–grabbing all his props, unfolding his mat, getting comfortable with a cushion.

Last week, he did an upside down tree– on his first try– and he was proud of it almost as much as he would be for  a play on second or a rebound and a basket.

The most telling moment of his growing relationship with yoga, however, is when he whispered to me that he was thirsty.

“There’s  a pitcher of water at the front of the class,” I told him.  “Go get some.”

“Not now,” he answered, “I don’t want to miss relaxation.”

Posted in Milestone Moments, Teens

The Little House & Me

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

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Do you know the story of The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton?  It’s a book published in the forties with a sweet little house on the cover and a big contented sun on the back. It’s been a lifetime favorite of mine.  (What more could a long-ago child want?)

The story begins like this:

Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country.  She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built.

Her-story continues as the Little House watches the seasons pass from her hill in the country and is soon surrounded by a village, and then a town, and finally—by a city–where she is so crowded in by buildings that she can no longer see the sun or the moon.

The Little House becomes shabby and misses the apple trees and daisies that once grew around her.  No one wants her anymore.

I pulled this thin paperback off my child’s crowded shelves with the others that he had grown too old to enjoy.  But rather than pack The Little House with the rest, I placed her on my writing table, sensing that her story and mine were somehow aligned.

Once upon a time, I was a little girl, pretty and strong, living in the country—of childhood.  There were daisies and apple trees and plenty of spaces to grow and imagine and thrive.  But as the seasons passed, thoughts moved in and troubles and worries crowded out the moon and the sun –and soon, I grew shabby too.

So shabby perhaps that my own father decides to travel during the week that I have planned to visit my family at their seaside home.

I sit on the porch of my own Little House in the mountains and sob, wondering how I have become so unworthy.  It’s true, that at 45, I am an old daughter, with chipped paint and crooked shutters, but so is my father, older and shabbier still.

My son finds me on the porch, and sits beside me in my grief, placing his hand on my shoulder.

After I finish sobbing, I tell him that he might be ready to have a girlfriend after all. (Just the day before, I read from a book on teens that young men aren’t comfortable enough with the intimacy required to be in a relationship.  In less than 24 hours, he’s proven that wrong.)

At 14, this same son, leans over my bent neck at the dinner table and kisses me before heading to the sink with dishes.  It’s an act of tenderness that ripples through my heart and sorrow. He hasn’t kissed me of his own accord in years—and never on the neck like a man might do.  I am both touched and shakened by his sweet and mature response to grief.  I begin to feel less shabby.

It is the great-great-grand daughter of the man who built the pretty Little House who comes to retrieve her from the crowded city.  She puts the Little House on wheels and takes her over the big roads and the little roads until they are back in the country.

So must I find my worth–not among my father’s crowded life–but in the wide open expanse of love that surrounds me when I move away from troubled thoughts.

As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily. The stars twinkled above her…A new moon was coming up… Once again she was lived in and taken care of.