I’m Like James Bond. With Estrogen.

I am discovering, faster and sooner than I ever cared to, just how many new skills I am going need to adequately parent a teenager.  Thank goodness for the tween years, which are like the teen years with training wheels, allowing me to build my endurance and amass my parenting arsenal.   Here are a just a few of the items it’s clear I’m going to need:

Super Sensory Perception:  Gone are the days when my boy looked at me and said things like “I didn’t take the cookie, and I ‘specially didn’t take bites and then put it in my blocks nexta my blue train”.   To be fair, the Monkey is not a deceptive person.  However, his gang has discovered the subtle art of omission, playing on the “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her theory”.   Oh to know the things I don’t know.

Time/Space Teleporter:  The number of events and activities that kids are involved in grows exponentially with their body mass. Oddly enough, many of these events seem to happen simultaneously, or at least in quick succession, so we have become constant chauffeurs to lessons, parties and practices.  Except without the cool hat and tip at the end.  (Note to self – add “cool hat” to arsenal list.)

Stench Shield:  This will help me in the battle against my greatest foe: Super Smell, a villainous evil that infects our house.  Individually, pre-teen boys are managable.  However, whenever they congregate in groups of two or more—which is most of the time—their combined forces create a smell similar to wet socks.  It’s not in any one particular place, it just settles like a mist around the house.  It seems impervious to sprays, soaps or cleansers, so the best I can do is defend myself with some kind of protective device which I believe will include a mask and an oxygen source.  Perhaps even an espresso machine.

Teenage to English Language Converter:  This one is particularly tricky because although it SEEMS like they’re speaking English, teens have actually mastered the skill of encoding secret messages into seemingly ordinary words. Any word can be either the highest praise or the worst insult, simply depending on the tone in which it is said. It doesn’t EVEN HAVE TO MAKE ANY SENSE!  (Ex  “You idiot – you’re such a chair!”  OR “That’s excellent – really tomato!”)  It’s all in the inflection.  

So begins my stockpile for the oncoming teen years – please feel free to send advice, weaponry or even pharmaceuticals.  All will be welcome.