Raising teenagers "It gets worse"

I have 3 daughters, ages 9, 14 & 17.

When my oldest daughter, A, was 11 we were really having a hard time dealing with her attitude.  It was frustrating and I had no idea what I was doing.  A fellow Girl Scout leader who had older girls looked at me and said "it gets worse".  I looked at her and said "how is that possible???" and she just shrugged her shoulders and laughed.  Six years later, I can honestly tell you that I've done the same thing to my friends who have kids younger than my oldest.  "It gets worse."  Wise yet terrifying words to the parent of a future teenage girl.

When A turned 13, the DAY she turned 13, I looked at her and said "I don't know what the h*ll happened to you today but you are not the same person as yesterday."  Teenage attitude hit like a big ton of bricks.  Wow was my friend right.  It had gotten worse.  We discovered over the next two years that A had severe anxiety and OCD, which was contributing to her struggles as a teenage girl.  She was socially awkward and just generally freaked out, all on top of the teenage girl stuff.  I wasn't sure we were going to survive her teenage years.

Someone told me that ages 11 to 14 are the worse.  When they get to age 16 they start to become somewhat normal again and it continues to get better.  A is now 17 and we still have our days but she's much easier to talk to and she's much more respectful.  We still don't agree on many things but when I put my foot down, she knows that's it and we move on.  She's also learning to drive and will graduate high school in a year.

Now we have our 2nd daughter, C, who is 14.  She's generally been a much easier teenager than her sister, mostly because she doesn't have the severe anxiety and OCD.  But we are still drowning in teenage girl attitude.  Last night she blasted me for paying too much attention to her social media accounts, of being too "stalkerish".  I called her a snotty brat and walked out of the room because you know what, YOU are a child and you live in my house and I'll parent you as long as those two things are true.

That memory of "It gets worse" haunted me this morning as I was getting ready.  Crap.  I really hate this stage.  I've long said that 3 was the worse age for my kids because they were all so sassy and temperamental.  But now I have to change my tune.  Ages 13 & 14 are worse than age 3.  Far worse.  When they're 3 you can pick them up, you could give them a popsicle, turn on the tv and generally whatever 3 year old problem was instantly gone.  When they're 13 or 14 and bigger than you, you can't pick them up and they're so mean to you that you want to go find a popsicle and watch tv with a 3 year old to remember when parenting was easier.

I wish I had sage advice for my fellow parents dealing with their teenagers.  But those of you who haven't entered the world of teenage parenting, I tell you this:  No matter how snarky and sassy you think your pre-teen child is now, trust me when I say "It Gets Worse."

Girl Scout Award Ideas

I am compiling ideas to help girls brainstorm what they want to do for future Bronze, Silver & Gold Award projects.

T-shirt wreaths for Habitat houses
http://hotgluegunhelpers.blogspot.com/2010/11/hot-glue-it-t-shirt-wreath-for-holidays.html

Cookbooks with recipes for commonly donated foods for local food banks

Buddy Benches - Colleen is doing this one for Aiken El and possibly some other schools

New year, New school

2014 is going to be an adventure for the Miller family.

My youngest is 9 years old and is in 3rd grade.  Since the age of 3 we've known she was a little different.  She learned to read on her own when she was 3 and she's been excelling ever since.  For the last 3 years, she would say that she was bored in school but that it was okay because her teachers made it fun.  That changed this year.  Third grade is when school becomes more serious, they start getting grades in all classes, instead of just Language Arts & Math.  Now school was just boring, no longer fun.

I contacted the school soon after school started because I was concerned about how bored she was.  She said she was reading almost all day every day.  It took a month to get the administration to actually respond to my requests for a meeting and after several meetings, tears, and lots of promises that turned out to be lies, I was still frustrated.  She wound up with a new teacher, who was better than what she had but after 2 weeks with her new teacher she was still frustrated & bored.

So starting next week, we begin virtual school.  It's been really interesting to see how people react to it.  The biggest questions we've gotten are "what about the social aspect of school?" and "how will that work?"

Both valid questions but after you get asked the same question 900 million times, it gets a little old.  Socially, she's in competitive dance and she's at the studio at least 4 days a week and she's in Girl Scouts and goes to church.  I'm not worried about her social life.  We've worked out how it will work for now.  As she gets older, she can spend time at home alone but we aren't quite there yet so for now she'll spend time with friends of mine in the mornings while Dad is in class.

I really hope this is the answer she's looking for.  It's a little scary to a mom to think of her kid trying to get through school faster because it means she will be leaving us that much sooner but I have tried very hard to let my kids find their own path in life, to let them make their own choices.

Wish us luck!!

Mommy, will you homeschool me?

I never would have thought that one of my kids would have asked me that.  All my kids really seemed to love school up until this year.  My youngest is in 3rd grade this year and is, well, smart.  She tests above the 99th percentile for Math & Reading on the tests they gave her at the beginning of the year.  A couple of weeks into school she looked at me and said "Mama, I'm so bored at school." I looked at her and said "Why honey?" and she said "because I know all this stuff already and I'm tired of them talking about the same stuff over and over again."

Wow.  This kid is my Mom.  My Mom is extremely intelligent.  I always felt dumb growing up because I never understood what my parents were talking about.  Turns out I'm not dumb (thankfully) but my parents were just wicked smart.  They taught Physics & Economics at the college level so it's really not a surprise that I was totally clueless at the dinner table.  Thank heavens for spaghetti and the china cabinet.  Anyway, my youngest is just gifted.  She taught herself to read at 3 and not by memorizing words.  She was reading wonderful, beautiful, generous and mischievous at 3.  It was like a light bulb turned on in her head and she never looked back.

The first 3 years of school she always said she knew the material but it was okay because it was still fun.  Apparently the fun factor has dried up.  She's tired of knowing everything.  I asked her yesterday how many times she has to read something to remember it and she said "usually once, at most twice."  I asked her if she understood that this was not how most people learn and she said "yeah, but is it a bad thing that I learn that way?"  OMG, parent failure.  "No sweetie, you're just special is all."  That's when she looked at me and said "Mommy, will you homeschool me?  I want to learn at a faster pace than what my teachers can do."

OK, well, I work full time and so does my husband so homeschooling is a challenge.  I'm trying to get her to explore virtual public school or possibly skipping a grade.  Homeschooling is a BIG task.  I would have to start cutting back on my responsibilities in other areas of my life for certain.  I don't know if I'm up to the task and I honestly have no idea where to start.

This kid blows me away.

Sammi-isms

Sammi is my youngest child and she's a pretty smart kid.  Smarter than me, I think.  She tests through the roof on every standardized test she takes.  She drives her sisters crazy with her knowledge.  She loves non-fiction books and I have to bribe her to get her to read fiction.

Anyway, once in awhile she'll ask me bizarre questions (who's kidding, it happens EVERYDAY).  So maybe I'll start blogging about them because I usually don't know the answer and she usually does so I learn stuff.

Sammi-ism #1
"Mom, did you know that the Yukon River is much smaller than it used to be?"

Um, no.  How exactly would I know this?  I never studied ALASKAN history.   I studied South Carolina history.  We spent half the year talking about the Civil War & Reconstruction in 8th grade.  (No joke).  "No, honey, I didn't know that.  Why is that?"

Sammi: "Well, when the land bridge was still between Siberia and Alaska, the river was a lot longer than it is now.  But it's still one of the longest rivers in North America.  And now it empties into the ocean instead of the sea that used to be north of the Beringia"

Me: "Beringia? What's that?"

Sammi: "The land bridge.  That's what it's called."

Me: "Oh, cool."  (This is how many of our conversations end)

Did I mention that this kid is in 3rd grade?  Good grief.

Chicago experiences (Non-ALA related)

A whirlwind weekend in Chicago.  Each day my mind was spinning from all the new information that had been crammed into it from session after session.  I'm still trying to process it all.  For now, here's what I learned about Chicago the city.  I'll write about ALA later:

• Blackhawks fans are nuts.  I've never attended a championship parade before because I've always lived in places too small for a pro team.  It was an interesting experience and I really enjoyed it but I'm not eager to repeat it.  It was hard to move around and it was damn near impossible to cross the street.  We had to walk through 4 blocks of crammed sidewalks to cross and we felt like we were swimming upstream.  It was completely ridiculous.
• The Book of Mormon is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen.  I haven't laughed that hard or that much in a long time.  I thoroughly enjoyed every minute and hope to see it again when it's on tour.  Yes, it's so good I would see it again.
• The Field Museum is HUGE.  Jeez!  I only got through 4 exhibits and would get about halfway through each and my brain would just shut down.  Too much information, too much to process.  I couldn't possibly take it all in, even when I was fascinated by the topic.  I love Ancient American culture - Mississippian, Maya, Wari, Aztec, Inca...it's all totally fascinating.  I studied these cultures while doing my undergrad in Anthropology and couldn't get enough.  Turns out, I still can't. But I got to the pottery room and my mind just shut down.  Too. Much. Pottery.  The building itself fascinated me because it's the only building left from the World's Fair and it's so ornate and just beautifully done.  And apparently there are 7 floors under ground FULL OF STUFF that they don't have room for in the exhibits.  HOLY MOLY!  Anyway, it's a very cool museum and I wish I had more time to spend wandering around but I was trying to cram in museum visits at the end of each day.  
• The Shedd Aquarium.  OK, I am a member of the Georgia Aquarium because I have a kid who is obsessed with beluga whales & sea turtles & basically all animals.  So I'm spoiled because the Georgia Aquarium is the largest aquarium in the world.  Shedd isn't even in the top 10.  It's a nice aquarium but it's no Georgia Aquarium.  I usually hate comparing things because I try to enjoy things for what they are but dang it, I couldn't help it.  And my kid was MAD that I went to an aquarium without her.  Haha.
• Adler Planetarium is so cool!  I really enjoyed this place.  I spent twice as much time in the planetarium as the aquarium, that's how cool it was.  I'm married to an astronomy guy but have never been big on it myself so for it to capture my interest as much as it did, means it a very cool place.  Very much worth the visit.  Lots of interesting exhibits and the Atwood Planetarium is interesting.  I would totally go there again if given the opportunity.
• Segways are way harder than they look.  We did a nighttime Segway tour and it was great fun and I enjoyed seeing the skyline at night but my feet hurt really bad by the time we were done.  I was really surprised by how much they cramped up.  Who knew?
• Chicago style pizza is my new favorite food.  Too bad I can't get it in the south.  Not real Chicago style anyway.  I could have eaten it everyday while I was there.  Really.  Ask Vivian (my travel buddy).

OK, that's it from the non-work part of the trip.  I still need to write about the work part AND I have a couple of book reviews to write up.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

This book was not at all what I expected.  I had a vague idea of what it would be about.  I knew it was about someone with a split personality - one good and one evil.  I admit that I didn't even know that Dr. Jekyll was the good side of the Jekyll/Hyde split.  (Yeah I know, sad.)  But I did not expect the whole story to be told from the point of view of Dr. Jekyll's lawyer.  I thought it would be a more direct storytelling, not a third person story trying to figure out what was happening.  I also expected the book to be longer than 92 pages.

This is part of why I'm doing this project.  To get to the origins of the stories I think I know and this is a perfect example of other tellings of the story messing up the image of what I think a story is about.

It's quite an interesting story!  Katie's rating: 4.5 stars!

1.      The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes           Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2.      The Alchemist     Paulo Coelho     

3.      Alice in Wonderland         Lewis Carroll      

4.      All the King's Men             Robert Penn Warren       

5.      All the Pretty Horses        Cormac McCarthy           

6.      The Ambassadors             Henry James      

7.      And Then There Were None          Agatha Christie

8.      Around the World in 80 Days        Jules Verne

9.      Atlas Shrugged   Ayn Rand

10.   Beloved               Toni Morrison   

11.   Brideshead Revisited       Evelyn Waugh   

12.   The Bridge of San Luis Rey            Thornton Wilder

13.   Bridget Jones’s Diary       Helen Fielding    

14.   The Call of the Wild         Jack London

15.   Cannery Row      John Steinbeck  

16.   Catch-22              Joseph Heller     

17.   A Clockwork Orange        Anthony Burgess

18.   Cloud Atlas          David Mitchel    

19.  A Confederacy of Dunces              John Kennedy Toole        

20.   Count of Monte Cristo    Alexandre Dumas            

21.   Crime and Punishment    Fyodor Dostoyevsky       

22.   Darkness at Noon             Arthur Koestler
23.  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde         Robert Louis Stevenson

24.   Dracula                Bram Stoker       

25.   Dune      Frank Herbert    

26.   The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test     Tom Wolfe

27.   Emma    Jane Austen       

28.   A Fine Balance    Rohinton Mistry               

29.   Frankenstein       Mary Shelley

30.   Go Tell It on the Mountain            James Baldwin  

31.   The Golden Notebook     Doris Lessing     

32.   The Good Soldier              Ford Madox Ford             

33.   The Grapes of Wrath       John Steinbeck  

34.   Gravity's Rainbow            Thomas Pynchon             

35.   Gulliver's Travels               Jonathan Swift  

36.   The Handmaid’s Tale       Margaret Atwood           

37.   The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter        Carson McCullers            

38.   Heart of Darkness            Joseph Conrad  

39.   The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy         Douglas Adams

40.   Howard's End     E.M. Forster       

41.   The Hunt for Red October             Tom Clancy

42.    Invisible Man      Ralph Ellison 

43.  Jane Eyre             Charlotte Brontë   

44.    King Leopold's Ghost       

45.   The Kite Runner                Khaled Hosseini

46.   Les Miserables   Victor Hugo       

47.   Life of Pi              Yann Martel       

48.   The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe     C.S. Lewis           

49.   The Little Prince                Antoine De Saint-Exupery             

50.   Little Women     Louisa M Alcott

51.   Lolita     Vladimir Nabokov            

52.   War of the Worlds      H.G. Wells               

53.   The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring                J.R.R. Tolkien     

54.   Madame Bovary               Gustave Flaubert             

55.   Main Street         Sinclair Lewis     

56.   The Maltese Falcon          Dashiell Hammett            

57.   Memoirs of a Geisha       Arthur Golden    

58.   Middlemarch      George Eliot      

59.   Midnight’s Children          Salman Rushdie

60.   Moby Dick           Herman Melville              

61.   Naked Lunch       William S. Burroughs      

62.   Native Son          Richard Wright  

63.   Northern Lights (The Golden Compass)     Philip Pullman    

64.   The Old Man and the Sea               Ernest Hemingway          

65.   On The Road       Jack Kerouac     

66.   One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest              Ken Kesey

67.   One Hundred Years of Solitude    Gabriel Garcia Marquez

68.   A Passage to India            E.M. Forster       

69.   The Phantom Tollbooth  Norton Juster

70.   Pippi Longstocking           Astrid Lindgren

71.   A Prayer for Owen Meaney           John Irving         

72.   Pride and Prejudice          Jane Austen

73.   The Prince           Niccolò Machiavelli        

74.   The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro  

75.   The Scarlet Letter             Nathaniel Hawthorne     

76.   The Secret Garden            Frances Hodgson Burnett             

77.   The Secret History            Donna Tartt       

78.   The Shadow of the Wind               Carlos Ruiz Zafon             

79.   Sister Carrie        Theodore Dreiser            

80.   Slaughterhouse-Five        Kurt Vonnegut   

81.   Sons and Lovers                D.H. Lawrence  

82.   The Sound and the Fury   William Faulkner              

83.   Stranger in a Strange Land            Robert Heinlein

84.   Swallows and Amazons   Arthur Ransom  

85.   Swiss Family Robinson     Johann David Wyss

86.   A Tale of Two Cities         Charles Dickens

87.   Their Eyes Were Watching God    Zora Neale Hurston

88.   Things Fall Apart               Chinua Achebe

89.   To the Lighthouse            Virginia Woolf   

90.   A Town Like Alice             Nevil Shute         

91.   Tropic of Cancer               Henry Miller       

92.   Under the Volcano           Malcolm Lowry               

93.   Watership Down               Richard Adams  

94.   The Way of All Flesh        Samuel Butler    

95.   The Wind in the Willows                Kenneth Grahame           

96.   The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel        Haruki Murakami

97.   Winnie the Pooh               A.A. Milne

98.   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz        L. Frank Baum   

99.   The World According to Garp       John Irving

100.                    Wuthering Heights           Emily Bronte
101. Of Mice and Men
102.  The Time Machine      H.G. Wells

Things I read before this list that were on the original list plus 4 that I know I can't tackle:

1.      1984              George Orwell   

2.      Adventures of Huckleberry Finn           Mark Twain        

3.      Anne of Green Gables             L.M. Montgomery           

4.      Brave New World     Aldous Huxley    

5.      The Canterbury Tales              Geoffrey Chaucer            

6.      The Catcher in the Rye            J.D. Salinger       

7.      Charlie and the Chocolate Factory      Roald Dahl         

8.      Charlotte’s Web        E.B. White          

9.      The Color Purple       Alice Walker      

10.   Don Quixote                              Miguel De Cervantes

11.   Fahrenheit 451          Ray Bradbury     

12.   Gone With The Wind               Margaret Mitchell           

13.   Great Expectations   Charles Dickens

14.   The Great Gatsby      F. Scott Fitzgerald            

15.   Hamlet         William Shakespeare      

16.   Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone               J.K. Rowling
17. Lord of the Flies       William Golding

18.   A Separate Peace      John Knowles    

19.   The Time Traveler’s Wife       Audrey Niffenegger        

20.   To Kill a Mockingbird               Harper Lee         

21.   War and Peace          Leo Tolstoy
22. In Search of Lost Time