My oldest son will turn 10 just four days after Christmas. I can’t believe he’s going to be that old. It’s like he’s entering a new phase of life that I’m not quite prepared for. When my mother called and
My oldest son will turn 10 just four days after Christmas. I can’t believe he’s going to be that old. It’s like he’s entering a new phase of life that I’m not quite prepared for.
When my mother called and asked what “little toys” she could get my boys for Christmas, I had to tell her, sadly, “Mom, they are past that stage.”
Little toys to 8- and almost 10-year-old boys are not superhero figures or Matchbox cars. And by little, I knew she didn’t mean a $50 Wii game.
But I can’t say – other than it means I’m getting older too – that I’m sad about my oldest child hitting double digits. He’s been slowly growing into this new stage in positive ways. He doesn’t write on the walls anymore. He doesn’t throw his mashed potatoes across the dinner table anymore. He doesn’t pour cupfuls of water out of the bathtub anymore.
These days, the worst from my oldest involves him being mean to his younger brother by starting over the Xbox game because he was losing, or getting a C on his math test.
But I’m bracing myself, because if there is anything I’ve learned in the past 10 years of parenting it is this: just when you think you’ve got it figured out, children will find new ways to test you.
When they are newborns, you think you’ve finally found the key to getting them to sleep through the night. Then one night it doesn’t work anymore – or ever again.
As chubby little infants, they cry the first few times you tell them “NO” in a firm voice. You trick yourself into believing that discipline and keeping them safe will be a breeze. Then they start ignoring your warnings.
When my children were toddlers, I was under the misguided impression that telling them to hold onto the railing while walking down the stairs, not to climb onto the kitchen table, not to touch permanent markers and to share their toys, meant they would listen. I would learn in this exhaustive stage that even bribes of toys or threats of time-outs didn’t really work so well.
Over the past five or six years my sons have put me to the test in ways I’d never dreamed of. What is the proper way to address them farting on each other, or singing about underwear in a restaurant, or calling to order a pizza for delivery at 6:30 a.m.?
How do you force an ultrashy first child to say hello to an elderly woman at church, or prevent a curious middle child from going through all the drawers in a relative’s bedroom?
What this new stage, these preteen years, will mean for my oldest, I’m not sure yet. I imagine it will involve arguments over appropriate and inappropriate video games, at what age he can have a cell phone and Facebook page and probably — although I dread it — girl stuff.
Although, the other day he told me he was never going to get married.
“I’m going to have a video game store and live in an apartment right next to it,” he said. “I’m not going to get a wife.”
I smile, but I keep in mind that just a few years ago he wanted to grow up and be Spider-Man.
• Read more: http://journaltimes.com/lifestyles/columnist/mommytalk/mommy-talk-graduating-from-spider-man-to-super-mario/article_fc18d07c-2932-11e1-8d86-0019bb2963f4.html
