College Board Drops the Green Flag

Posted on 11/28/12 by Grown and Flown

Mary Dell writes: For our two families, Thanksgiving weekend offered a chance to Lisa and me to say helloandgoodbye to our older sons who swooped in for home cooked meals and nights out with friends before heading back to college. Though our youngest, both 11th graders, also resumed classes, they returned to a new phase in their lives, thanks to the College Board.

Like a Daytona 500 starter dropping the green flag, the College Board will soon mail PSAT scores to high schools, signalling the beginning of the race known as college application season.

The PSAT is big – 3.5 million kids big – and it is the one pre-college test that all juniors take with all of their classmates on a single day in October. It is a rite of passage going back to 1971 (hey, we took it too!) and, for generations of kids, the PSAT has started the ball rolling.

This next lap will feel very long for high school juniors…and their parents, too. While our kids compete for college acceptance, we act as pit crews, praying there will be no crashes. Lisa and I endured this with our older children and we can tell you that as they sit for SATs, SAT IIs, APs, ACTs (on top of the tests they take for their regular old school work) it is exhausting just to watch! No wonder “junior year” is a synonym for “stressed out.”

It is not only College Board’s calendar that forces our children to shift into a higher gear. Already, they have begun to leave behind a more innocent age on their own. I saw it clearly at my daughter’s recent soccer team dinner. At the end of the night, eight juniors read a poem, honoring the eight seniors. While each 11th grade girl entered the dining room as an underling, each departed as a senior member of the team.

Likewise, our daughter turned 17 in mid-November, cleared by NY State to drive wherever, whomever and whenever she wants. She celebrated her birthday with friends at a Chinese restaurant. We were not on the guest list, did not drive a single girl, just waited up to hear about it. This was a first for us.

By virtue of birth order, she is and will remain our baby. On the day she was born, when my husband brought our five-year old to see his sister in the hospital room, I was shocked at how changed my son looked to me. He seemed much older than just the day before, as he stood on tiptoes to kiss our new tiny child. Now it is time for me to see her in a different light, perhaps for the very first time.

It’s junior year and the College Board may hold the green flag, but if I look closely, I see that my child, our youngest, is already well down the track.

Is this how your child’s junior year felt to you? Let us hear from you at Grown and Flown!

Golden Birthday

Posted on 10/25/12 by Grown and Flown

Mary Dell writes: “Golden Birthday” was an unfamiliar term until our daughter recently clued me in, “Mom, that’s the birthday when your age is the same as the date on the calendar. So, when I turn 17 on November 17th, it will be my golden birthday.” Not sure where I will get my information after she goes to college, leaving me in my empty nest!

In anticipation of her upcoming GBD, I began thinking about birthdays past. When my sister and I were little, our parents hosted traditional, circa early-1960s, parties at home with our school friends and neighborhood kids, cake and ice cream. During my teenage years, my girlfriends all held slumber parties to celebrate our big days. Though it meant we could be served alcohol legally, I don’t recall any special drink-fest marking our 18th birthdays. Neither do I think 21 was any different from 20 or 22.

But as my 25th year drew to a close, I was in school far from my Texas family, feeling homesick and stressed-out from classwork. On October 26th, my GBD, a gorgeous bouquet of 26 yellow roses arrived at my dorm room. Neither my dad nor I knew it was a “golden” day for me; he simply wanted to me to know he was thinking of his daughter and sending love, long-distance. This was a birthday I never forgot.

By 30, I had graduated and moved into Manhattan. A group of friends threw a party, making me feel like I had dropped onto a Woody Allen movie set, in a good way. Five years later I married and moved to the suburbs. So long, Woody!

At 39, I was pregnant with our second child and began to plan my 40th birthday “bash,” dinner out with my husband and our five-year old son. I remember what I was wearing – a pink maternity dress – and recall how the three of us celebrated. My husband had a glass (or two) of red wine and our son and I, ice cream.

Our daughter was born three weeks later and remains my very favorite birthday gift. The yellow roses come in second.

So, in three weeks, our now nearly grown and flown daughter will receive roses from her father. While I’m not sure what color he will pick, we all know how many he will send.

Teaching You to Drive is Driving Me Crazy

Posted on 10/16/12 by Grown and Flown

As we write this we are teaching our youngest children to drive. This is a path we have been down before, but as our impulse for self-preservation is undiminished, we still find it a bit frightening this last time. Learning to drive may be one of the great adolescent milestones but, for parents, it represents a major push back from our kids as they claim their independence from us. Truthfully, the whole process is driving us crazy.

Mary Dell is teaching a daughter and Lisa is teaching a son, so in effect we are living on different planets. The one thing we share is the deep scary realization that we are placing a lethal weapon in the hands of children we love, but who we know to be only part way on their journey to maturity.

Continue reading →

Surviving High School, It Begins in Sixth Grade

Posted on 10/1/12 by Grown and Flown

Lisa writes: Ahhhh…the beauty, the certainty of 20/20 hindsight. As my youngest nears the end of high school, I have reflected upon what qualities allow kids to perform at their best and enjoy their four years to the fullest. What were the most important things I could have done for my kids, starting in perhaps sixth grade, that would have impacted their chance of surviving high school and beyond? Not surprisingly, they were not the things uppermost on my mind as my kids turned 12. If I had it to do again…

I would make sure that my child, if possible, was above average at a sport, music, art or another activity. Not get-recruited-at-a-D1-school good, but get-picked-for-the-JV-team good. Part of high school is finding your place and that is much easier to do if you are selected for the field hockey team or given a role in the school play. I know educators often advocate the benefits of being well-rounded, but competence and accomplishment breed self-esteem and social well-being.

Continue reading →

Nothing to Fear

Posted on 9/17/12 by Grown and Flown

Lisa writes: I recently read a great post on Mom 101 on how sometimes giving a kid a lollipop is just giving them a lollipop, not an exercise in regulating sugar or expressing our family’s values. She mentioned that “no” was sometimes her reflex response and that really struck a chord with me. Sometimes we have nothing to fear. It took a while before I realized that my kids were people, not a medium for expressing my worldview.

I was a mom who said no–it was my default position for all the junk my kids wanted to buy, eat and see. I came into motherhood with the view that we owned too much, our culture was slightly toxic and most of the things my kids were going to consume visually and intestinally were poisonous. Continue reading →

In Training for the Empty Nest

Posted on 8/7/12 by Grown and Flown

Sitting on the sidelines, I have long been jealous of my husband. He coached our son in baseball and football, sports into which they both poured their high school energies. Our 16-year-old daughter is now in training for preseason soccer and I am finally sharing a sport – running – with my child. Since she will be off to college in two years, and we will have an empty nest, I am savoring these mother-daughter moments.

Several times a week we drive to our high school track. After a little jogging and stretching, we sip from water bottles, our warm up now complete. I fumble with the earphones on my iPod while she races off, motivated by twin goals of a sub-seven minute mile and a spot on the varsity team. Waddling down the track, I admire my daughter’s athleticism and discipline. I can’t imagine what superhero capabilities Continue reading →

Why are Mommy Bloggers so Young, Clever and Inexperienced?

Posted on 8/1/12 by Grown and Flown

Why are mommy bloggers so young, clever and inexperienced? And, we wonder, is taking parenting advice from a young mommy blogger a bit like getting directions to a far off, and difficult to reach locale, by someone who traveled part of the way there, once.

ABCnews.com recently published an article about disciplining kids and how to avoid spoiling them. The author, a mother with a very young child, interviewed a number of parents whose children were all under 10. Each gave her considered advice on how her style of punishment had worked. If you are still parenting on the easy side of adolescence, how do you know your method of discipline has worked? Isn’t the test of parenting what happens as our children escape our grip?

Continue reading →