Having a son as a woman who has only really ever been around women can be a humbling, strange experience. I sometimes tell my husband that raising our 3.5-year-old boy feels like someone dropped me off on another planet where I don't know the language and have no map.
He makes me laugh like no other, but his whims and desires and interests sometimes do feel as foreign to me as another galaxy. Still, he has taught me a lot.
Yesterday, for instance, my son was wandering around the house in his underwear and his fire boots screaming about how he couldn't find the RED firetruck -- because the other 15 are apparently the wrong shade -- and I got it. I helped him look, solved the problem, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that this little man has taught me so much about the bigger man in my life (my husband) and even more about men in general. So here are 11 things my son has taught me about men:
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This blog post has gone through multiple transitions. Initially, I set out to write about how I noticed that my relationship with Teen Child has subtly changed. Just last year, I was ready to kick that girl's butt up one side of heaven and down the hot beds of hell. Her report cards were terrible and I was talking to her teachers so often, we just started texting to save time.
Until today, I never would have been able to tell you what kind of parent I am. Sadly, I now know. I am a permissive parent. And my children are pretty much in deep trouble because of it.
When our kids are little, we take every story from the teachers and the playdate host mom about how well-behaved our kids are out in public, and we eat that ish up. It's how we survive the at-home tantrums that make us feel like we're total failures at this parenting thing. And then come the teen years.
Here's the thing about parenting. Some of the things we do because we love our kids so darn much is the very stuff that makes the ungrateful little twerps hate us. And this is where two groups of parents diverge in the wood, so to speak. Most of us just grin and bear the teenagers' angsty attitudes. And there's Tommy Jordan, dad of 15-year-old Hannah, who took the road less traveled.
The one thing that has always given me pause about raising my kid in the country is the complete and total lack of ethnic diversity. Everywhere you turn, there are white folks as far as the eye can see. And the brouhaha over racist slurs used to by white kids to taunt players at Pittsburgh basketball game is not doing much to make me feel better about my current choices.
From one extreme in school birth control policy to another: Here in the U.S.,
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When I first heard Jamie Lynn Spears explain
Kids are clearly running out of legal substances to abuse. Whip-its and K2 Spice may be making headlines (thanks to the decidedly adult Demi Moore), but apparently cinnamon is the latest craze with real teens. Yup, that's right: Cinnamon. CINNAMON.