Yesterday was my oldest child’s birthday. She turned 14, and we spent the day at Disneyland together as a family. Truth be told, it wasn’t just about celebrating her birthday – but it was a good excuse! It was a really nice day, both in weather and in spirit. While we were roaming the park, I thought about what I was like at 14. My daughter is much more mature than I was at that age, both in looks and in her overall demeanor. She’s honestly not very interested in the drama and the nonsense that goes on with girls her own age, and as a result she’s seen as a bit of an outcast with the other girls in her grade at school. They sense that she’s not going to put up with them, and they also see that she’s not interested in “falling in line” after the few girls that seem to be the ringleaders, so they make it their business to make life rough for her at times. It’s a tough age, but overall she’s doing well. She already recognizes that the older kids (her school goes from 7th to 12th grade – basically from 12 and 13 year olds all the way up to 18 year olds) don’t care as much about what labels they wear or the insipid drama, and she longs for those years to come, and come quickly. I keep telling her not to wish her youth away, but…she’s much different than I was at that age. My room was covered in Duran Duran posters, and I don’t think I looked much into what my future would hold beyond the next break from school, to be honest. On the other hand, my daughter has never even bothered putting posters up in her room! Maybe that’s the norm for kids her age nowadays though?? She loves music, as far as I can tell by the constant iTunes receipts that flow into my inbox on an almost daily basis – but she’s very eclectic in her taste. On any given day she’ll go from playing Florence and the Machine to Usher, Katy Perry and even Michael Jackson. She doesn’t tend to start loving a band or an artist just because everyone else does, as is evidenced by her despise for Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus (thank goodness) and The Jonas Brothers. In fact, that sort of thing completely annoys her. I strongly suspect that had she been another girl at my school when I was her age, she would NOT have been a Duran Duran fan, and while that pains me…I guess I’m not surprised. Perhaps she would have gone for them though because they were just a bit off from center, not quite mainstream, and because there were plenty of people out there that didn’t love them, she’d think they were different enough for her attention. Hard to say. As she was growing up and getting closer to her “tween” years, I kept waiting for her to tell me all about the band she had fallen completely in love with, and I was pretty disappointed when that never happened! I guess I just figured that all girls find that special bond with something, but the closest we ever got was a quick and fleeting love for Twilight that ended very quickly once she realized it was no longer “special” to love the books. There was never a rush to the grocery store magazine aisle to buy the teen mags with pinups, or requests to go to a music store (or I suppose Target or Walmart), or any begging to buy concert tickets, go to record signings, or even to wait at hotels at insane hours of the night to catch a glimpse of a band member. What good are the tween or teen years without that sort of thing??
When I first started thinking about having a baby, I can honestly say I thought about what these years would bring. I remembered all too well what the drama of being a teenager was like, and I had wondered how I would handle it all. Then when we found out we were having a girl (see, even back then I had no patience, I wanted to know the baby’s sex in advance!) I was so excited, and not because of all of the cute “girl” things – but because I knew that I would be a great mom for a teenager. I was going to be the mom to take my kid to a concert, to indulge her in a little bit of the excitement that I wasn’t able to have due to my parents strictness. Naturally, I never thought to consider that my daughter would be nothing like I was as a teen. That of course, is the karma of being a parent. 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, I love my oldest dearly. She is a gorgeous human being, inside and out. I aspire to be the type of caring person that she is. She also has a sharp sense of humor, is extremely smart and talented…and I could go on and on. We are almost nothing alike in some ways, and exactly alike in others, but what I’m finding more and more is that I truly admire her….even though I still think she’s completely missing the boat musically. 😀
Perhaps what I was really waiting for with these teen years was the confirmation that I was not nearly as crazy as my parents made me out to be with my obsession for Duran Duran. Oddly, that has yet to come….but she’s only 14, there’s still time!
-R
