Shouldn't I do a course or something? Is there a book? What about boarding school? Would they still have me?
What is it like, being mother to a horde of testosterone-oozing adolescent boys? What should I do about DAMP SHEETS! AAK! Will they suddenly start sleeping till two p.m. and glowering and grunting? Will I have to learn to speak Teenglish?
What about cellphones? Do I keep tabs on their conversations, once they have their own phone and are keeping it in their room? Will they still tell me everything? EVERYTHING? Do I really want to know?
What about Internet Porn and Violence? What about STDs? Drugs? Alcohol? Weird peircings? Tasteless music?
My first instinct is to hand responsibility over to their Dad. He was, after all, an adolescent boy, and teen, once. And the guy who was clueless with babies has become a man who has remarkable patience and instinct with his big boys.
So. Does this mean I am obsolete? Surely not! But where is my place, outside of cooking and doing laundry: two jobs that the boys can already do themselves anyway, if I drop dead tomorrow?
Will we continue to enjoy one anothers' company? Will we have holidays together, play cards and laugh together? Nothing can ruin a holiday like a morose teen, but is leaving them at Grandma's an option then?
There is so much advice online about raising kids. But adolescents? Not much. Is it that there isn't much we can do as parents once they reach that stage? I remember being dreadful: a textbook Horrible Teenaged Girl. But I don't believe that my parents could have done anything to help me; I would have met any efforts with the scorn only to be achieved by a teen. I would have ignored all instruction and done what I wanted to, but with even more sullen contempt than before.
If my boys are going to be anything like me, I will have to lay my groundwork now while I am still a person of some importance to them. But how? Am I in trouble?
Help me, Obi-Wan!
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