Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Truly, the secret to happiness must be the ability to take a negative and form it into a positive. Resilience in life is inarguably one of the most important personality traits we can own.

I think as a parent of preteens it isn’t just an important life tool, it is crucial to surviving the mercurial years of adolescence. Life throws us a lot of lemons, and if we’re to get through the labyrinth of parenthood with ourselves and our children intact, we need to know how to make a mean lemonade.

Today I thwarted a truckload of citrus with my usual weapon: laughter. Granted, my older children rarely appreciate my humor, especially when used as a coping tool, and it flies over the heads of my younger offspring. But for me? It saves my life.

This weekend we had family in town, and my girls had convinced their Nana to take them to the mall for an afternoon of shopping. I agreed, but told them they needed to eat lunch before heading out. When you are a young parent with only one or maybe two children to cook for, it is easy to morph into the short-order cook who caters to the various culinary whims of each family member. When you have four children, a spouse and houseguests, people eat what’s set in front of them or they go hungry. And when they’re my kids, they eat what’s set in front of them, period. I had set out plates of turkey sandwiches, grapes and chips for lunch, and when I placed lunch in front of my oldest, she sneered and pushed her plate away.

“Mom. I only eat turkey at Thanksgiving now. I don’t eat it in October.” She then rolled her eyes heavenward in a way reminiscent of grand mal seizure victims and other teens across the globe.

I pushed the plate back toward her. “Well, start counting your blessings and eat your sandwich.” I bit my tongue. Would it be too much to mention the starving children in Darfur and other ravaged locations? Nah. Better hold off on the starving children ammo until later.

Even though we had her Nana and Papa present, she surprised me with a bold counter move and pushed her plate away a second time. “I am not. eating. this.”

It was a standoff. Standoffs aren’t real pretty in my house, because the house always wins, although the fallout is brutal. “Okay. You will eat your sandwich in five minutes or there will be no trip to the mall. If you choose not to eat your sandwich at all, there will not only be no mall, there will be nothing as you can count yourself grounded. And I will need an apology for your rudeness.”

She managed to eat her lunch in time for the mall. It was a gut-wrenching endeavor, laced with choking sobs and venom-filled stares. I got my apology, too, in a terse voice that was so clenched I wondered about her jaw health. But I got it. And when she left, I also got a headache. It is trying, these years of drama, tears, and fledgling independence. It wears me out in a way nothing else does. Even as I celebrate the blossoming of young womanhood within my daughters, I mourn the loss of control I had when they were little.

Later, after they had come back from the mall, preened over their shiny purchases like crows, I called everyone to the dinner table. I made a point of saying grace, something that typically gets said on Sundays and ignored the rest of the week.

“Dear God,” I began. “Thank you for our family, our health, and our good fortune. We are blessed to have so much, and we pray for those who don’t. Please bless all those in the world who need help, especially prisoners of war who are being tortured right this very second. Please bless those who are in pain and being forced to do the unthinkable, like eat a turkey sandwich against their will. Amen.”

by Jen

[tags]kids, children, parents, parenting, family, lunch, rudeness, behavior, acceptance, support, laughter, food issues, independence, defiance[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by multi_everything, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved