Boy Wonder

Please don't get me wrong.  I love my son. I love my son so much it hurts.  I would mama bear anyone or anything that hurt him.  I would go to the ends of the earth and to the moon and back for this kid.  I love his gappy smile and the way his hair looks like a mad scientist in the morning and the fact that he is probably the happiest kid I know.  I love that when he laughs it makes me laugh too. I love this kid.  

All this love aside, let me just say that my son has recently lost his mind due to early onset hormones and he is making me CRAZY!  If the hormones in our milk supply have our girls physically changing at an early age, they have our boys mentally changing at an early age too.  Age ten seems to be the start of full on testosterone, stink and attitude.  I can deal with the stink; it is the testosterone and attitude I don't know what to do with.  My sweet son has an flippancy about him I can't stand.  A general "Pshaw" to me as I say anything. I thought it was the dads that boys were supposed to turn against, not the moms.  I can handle this, it is all part of growing up and distancing themselves, I get it.  But does he have to lose his mind and all sense of doing the right thing as well?

Case in point: said boy loses his video games for an undetermined amount of time.  He takes iPad upstairs to "listen to a podcast".  When Mom tucks him in, he is holding the iPad and looks vaguely pinched in the face.  IPad is burning hot. Hot enough to fry an egg on.  Boy repeats numerous times to the Mom's face "I wasn't playing video games, I wasn't playing video games."  He was playing video games.  In a stroke of parenting genius, Dad removes door from boy's room.  Parents congratulate themselves on being good parents and think lesson has been taught and learned.  Parents aren't always right.  Said boy is in trouble again two days later.

It is one set of trouble after the next. Another bad choice, another impulse unchecked.  I am scrambling trying to figure out what punishment might strike home with him while wondering if he no longer cares and if he is on his way to being a career criminal.  I feel like one of those blow up things car dealers use to get your attention when it comes to parenting my son.  My arms are flailing, I am bent over, I am upright, I am here, I am there, I am trying this tactic and that and this and I don't think any of them are working.

This is me.  This is me parenting my son.

I look at my daughter and think what did we do with her that we aren't doing with him?   Did we just get lucky that time?  I have started dreading picking him up and hearing what trouble he got into today.  I vaguely remembered my brother getting in a lot of trouble when he was about this age and a quick phone call to him verified my memory.  We laughed as he remembered that at age ten he and a friend rode their bike ten miles to the mall without permission.  Bill says he doesn't remember being like this until he was twelve.  People at work have said that raising boys doesn't get any easier.  People just love to kick you when you are down. I am going to go find a sleepless mother with a newborn and tell her my daughter didn't sleep in her own room through the night until she was ten.

I can't believe it won't ever get better.  I can't believe that I am always going to be waiting for the bad phone call home or the sign here and acknowledge your son did a bad thing here please letter in the backpack each night.  I know he is good at heart. I know he can be kind and sensitive and caring.  I have to believe that when the tsunami of testosterone subsides, he will still be the boy who laughs with his heart and loves with all of his might. I just really hope it is before he is forty.