Twelve

Tomorrow is Zoe’s twelfth birthday. TWELVE. Twelve is one of those weird ages. It’s the in-between…part teenager, part child. Zoe is definitely a little of both, not equally in either camp, which is just fine with me. This has been a good year for all of us, and Zoe has really begun to show who she is going to be when she’s older. She is kind, and thoughtful, and respectful and accepting of every human she spends time with. More people could stand to have the same qualities, and I could not be more proud of her if I tried.

Zoe has chosen friends who are, for lack of a better term, the misfits. She is much like her mama in this regard, and I love that she doesn’t care one bit what people think of her social choices. This year was a little sad at school when a friend that she’s known since preschool moved to another school. I don’t think even I knew how much it upset her until recently I saw an email between the two girls. “I miss you SOOOO much!” “You’ll always be my best friend even if we don’t see each other every day!” Zoe has a lovely sense of loyalty to her people, which is a wonderful way to be.

Zoe still loves to cook and often helps in the kitchen at home, but this year has been the year of anime and cosplay. She has read all of the anime comics she can get her hands on, and she’s OBSESSED with My Hero Academia. Sometimes we have conversations about this show and about halfway through, I realize I have absolutely ZERO clue what we’ve been talking about. For her birthday this year, Zoe is going to the Planet Comic Con with her dad and Lucy. She’s invited a friend who has never attended such a spectacle, and she’s spent lots of time talking with her friend about what to expect so she’s not overwhelmed. What a sweet friend Zoe is.

The part of Zoe that is still a child loves to snuggle and when I say I love her, she always says, “I love you more” and then my response is always “I know!” which cracks both of us up. The almost-teenager part of Zoe stays in her room a lot. She slams doors when she’s frustrated. She tells me that I don’t understand her. I see a lot of myself in her, for sure. But she’s also full of her own weird and wonderful personality, and a stubbornness that will one day serve her well.  Maybe it already does. This much I know: Zoe knows who she is and what she likes. She is unapologetic about it, and I am so excited to see what her twelfth year brings to her.

Doing the Work.

Last night in my best friend’s kitchen, our eighth grade girls were talking to us about a party that happened last weekend. Their mom and I had heard about the party, and were asking the girls what they knew. It got us talking about how naïve we both were when it came to things 14 year olds were doing.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not stupid. I was a teenager once who tried plenty of things. I just don’t have one of those teenagers, at least not yet, anyway. What came up in this conversation over and over, and again later when Lucy wanted to talk more about it, were girls who were sending photos to boys. Either on their own accord, or sometimes when they were “being blackmailed” as the girls’ put it. It led to conversation about consent. It led to talk about how what you put out on the internet could ALWAYS come back to haunt you.  But mostly it led to a conversation about self-respect. People who respect you will not “blackmail” you for a photo of your body. People who have your best interest in mind will not ask you to do ANYTHING you don’t want to do. And if you have respect for yourself? You’ll tell those kids to fuck off when they ask for things you KNOW are wrong. Lucy suggested that maybe these girls weren’t getting attention other ways. We talked at length about people’s needs, and the need some girls feel to be seen. Especially in these days of instant gratification and social media.

Mostly, when Lucy went to bed last night I sat and thought about how the girls sending these kinds of photos AND THE BOYS RECEIVING THEM were likely not having these kinds of conversations with their parents. It made me think about the college admissions scandal and about the things we parents value in this country.  Recently, I took a personality quiz and one of the questions was something along the lines of “would you rather your child be kind or incredibly successful”? Kind. Duh. I’ve known a lot of people in my life. I’ve traveled many places and I’ve worked in jobs from retail, to the service industry, to arts to education, and I’ve learned that all the success in the world means nothing if you’re an asshole. Just look at your president. Sadly, though, this isn’t how the world works most of the time. People would rather have success and fame (or being “seen”) over being kind and doing the right thing.

We’d rather pay millions of dollars to get kids into college than to expect that they might actually work hard for it, or even maybe admit that they shouldn’t go to college if that’s not what they’re cut out to do. We’d rather post photos of our smiling kids on social media and tell all our friends about how amazing they are, but then never check their phones, know who their friends are, or have conversations with them about how sexting at 14 is NOT OK. EVER. Most people don’t want to do the hard work of parenting, because it’s just that: hard. We don’t want to have conversations that make us uncomfortable because that’s hard, too. Guess what else is uncomfortable and hard? Hearing that teenage girls you’ve known their whole lives are sending photos of their bodies to young boys. Mothers and fathers: do yourselves a favor and ask the hard questions. Get to know your kids. And by all means, get to know their friends.

No one ever really had these conversations with me, at least not in the ways that I’m having them with the girls. And I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t outwardly told to be assertive or strong, or if it’s just who I was as a teenager, but I did a lot of things for the sake of being seen. Stupid and shitty things. I hung out with the wrong people because I thought it would make me popular, or worse, I didn’t want to say “no” or stand up for myself and look stupid. I listened to offensive jokes without stopping them. I allowed people to take advantage of my low self-esteem. Most days I wish I could go back and punch that Kate in the face. But other times, like now, I like to recall those days and remember why it’s important to me to talk with the girls about this kind of stuff. Times have changed, but people really haven’t.