The Power of the Ring Ding

I am one of the annoying moms who grates organic carrots into the carob brownies and shreds winter squash into the corn bread. The above shot could be found in my kitchen.

That explains why my kids worship McDonald's and horde Smarties in their sock draw. I bake all the time, only I use fruit as a sweetner and smushed bananas instead of oil. They fell for it until they were about in the fifth grade and started going on unsupervised play dates where the mothers introduced them to the world of processed baked goods, refined flour, white bread, and the teachings of Stalin. Well, maybe not Stalin, but that's sort of how I felt.

Around that time, when my oldest was 10 and my youngest was around 4, we had a graduation breakfast at her pre-school. It was a rural Christian preschool which meant there were lots of doughnuts (in NYC, we were much more diverse and offered bagels and bialies). Emma and I contributed a fruit tray and whole wheat cranberry muffins. Upon being offered one of those sugary white doughnuts, Emma's eyes got very big and she said in an unusually loud voice, "No, thank you. Mom says doughnuts are toxic."

I turned away. I was hoping they wouldn't connect me with that kid, but since there were maybe eight kids in that preschool, the chances were slim.

So the other day while shopping in one of those giant warehouse stores, I told Emma and Philip to each pick out a treat so I could focus for five minutes on what I was buying. Emma picked out meltable chocolate and strawberries; Philip picked out Swiss rolls. The deal was I had to let them buy whatever they chose.

Then Philip's current and first girlfriend came over that afternoon. They have been "dating" (they go on myspace together while I put laundry away in his room; we occasionally all go out to walk the dog) for five months and are planning a small, but elegant, wedding. This is, remember, middle school.

This time they were playing around with the names of their future children, and discussing the likelihood of eye and hair color. Then I got this text while putting together a snack for them:

Mom, whatever you do, don't offer her the Swiss rolls. They r way 2 good 2 give away. Don't even say we have them.

I texted back: But u r going to share yr lives. Y not a Swiss roll?

Please Mom. Please. I'll read or do a chore if u just bring up the popcorn.

The amazing thing about the early teenage years is they are beginning to see irony -
in me, in their teachers, in each other, but not in themselves. Not yet.

I think that weird balance is one of the hardest nuances to capture in YA writing.

Community Service Meets the Teen

Report cards came Friday afternoon. So after spending most of Friday evening "discussing" the importance of doing school work and not spending so much time with video/myspace involvement with my two boys, we decided (meaning I came up with the idea and they silently disagreed) they needed to do more community service. Christopher is still trying to come up with what he wants to do; Philip opted to be a volunteer waiter at a veterans' pre holiday luncheon. He thought it would be a quick and easy way to salvage his weekend plans.

Of course first I had to explain to him the importance of veterans, how his grandfathers and uncles and cousins had all served in various wars. He gave me the "OMG, will she ever stop look," then went off to what he thought, I think, would be a pizza party.

I should say here that Philip is a really sensory kid: he has trouble looking at the "subnormal" folk who frequent certain Walmarts, and any shows involving childbirth or poxes or deformity cause him to lurch from the television. He was the kind of baby who couldn't stand seams in his socks or the touch of wool. Very little has changed in that department over the years.

Ten minutes into the holiday luncheon, I get this text:

MOM SAY I'M SICK COME PICK ME UP FROM HERE

I had his brother calmly text back:

MOM SAYS U HAVE 2 STICK IT OUT

The next SOS came:

I HAVE A BAD HEADAKE

I didn't anwer; I figured I'd tell him the veterans had to stick it out once, too.

When I picked him up, he was flushed and exhausted.

"They're like old pirates," he said, "Oh my God. You have no idea. No idea."

"What happened?" I asked.

"First of all, most of them were missing something. Like an arm or something."

"Right. They were in a war."

Sigh. "And every time I asked them what they wanted to drink, they said, 'how 'bout a Scotch and soda?' Like every one of them and they laughed each time. And they only had soda or water or coffee."

"Okay."

"Then this guy says to me, 'Son, straighten that flag."

"What did you do?"

"I straightened the flag. Then he says, 'Now set me up with those sausages just like you would your best girlfriend.' So I go, What does THAT mean?"

"I think he wanted something extra, right?"

"He winked at me. God. And he had this scooter thing."

"Your sister loves her scooter. What's wrong with that?"

"No, Mom, he had this scooter thing INSTEAD OF LEGS."

He didn't say much after that. I pretty much left him alone and let him spend a few hours cruising myspace.

I think serving that lunch allowed him to learn a whole lot more a whole lot faster than anything he does in school.

The Justice Mom

My son, pictured above in a moment of Halloween happiness, (and the only kid who doesn't care if his picture is here), nicknamed me the Justice Mom about three years ago when he was 11.

"It's like as soon as I tell you something happened in school, you have to fix it and tell people about it. All the other moms just let it go." He grumbled this, but he still told me stuff. (Okay, maybe there was a little prying).

But I knew what he meant. I did call the principal about busy work built into curricula and teachers who read newspapers during instructional time; I talked to bus drivers about fighting and asked a group of cafeteria aides why they sat chatting at a table while a boy was clearly being bullied. I did all those things. And I wasn't nice and relaxed and happy when I did them.

So, with all three of my kids, we had conversations like this more than once:

Child: Ok, Mom, I'm going to tell you something but only if you promise not to be the Justice Mom after you hear it.

Me: I can't promise that. But why don't you tell me anyway?

Child: Well, if you're the Justice Mom about this, I'll get into big trouble...

Me: Go ahead and try me. Look, am I holding the phone? Do I have keys to go anywhere?

Child: I better not. You'll go up to the school tomorrow when I'm not home.

Me: I have pizza rolls. Why don't you sit and talk to me while you have pizza rolls?

Child: All right, I'll have some pizza rolls. But I'm only telling you the beginning...


The Justice Mom has been quiet for quite some time. But on Halloween night, she rode again, with her kids (well, two of them) watching. She couldn't help it.

A man came down the street wearing a sheet. He looked over at a two or three year old Cinderella and ran toward her. She screamed.

Now, I don't get what's funny about that at all, but he was being egged on by a bunch of beer-fueled adults who thought it was really, really funny that the little girl was running down the street, clearly terrified.

But the "ghost" wouldn't stop chasing the little girl - who was by now sobbing.

So I walked over to the "ghost" and said, "Look, why don't you just stop now? She's scared enough."

The adults made fake booing noises at me.

"And why don't you folks go back inside and let the kids have the fun tonight?"

They did; my daughter kept trick-or-treating with her friend, and a little later we caught up with Philip.

"As soon as I saw that guy do that to that kid," he said to his sister, "I figured Mom would say something. God, he was a jerk!"

Emma laughed. "I know,right, Philip? I was thinking how it's taking Mom a long time to be the Justice Mom tonight."

Then they talked about some great costumes they had seen and the rumor that there was a house on the next street where they gave out full size candy bars.

I don't know if they've accepted the Justice Mom as a Mom characteristic they can't change, or if they've internalized something about how the world should work. I like to think the later, but I guess I have to wait a few more years.

Revisiting the Zone of Non Presence

Every once in a while, when the phone, the texting, the computer and the non stop hectic pace of our lives gets to me, I have to leave for a few days and not be found. Sort of.

It's pretty difficult not to be found in 2008, but a friend of mine has a house in a mountainy spot of Pennsylvania and she is generous enough to invite us for weekends. There's no cell phone reception there, a couple of religious stations on the tv (the kind that ask for a prayer and a check), a lot of fog, deer, and silence. There is usually general protest on the way there about not being able to contact their friends or get any of the good tv shows, and as they complain, I just keep driving. I think it's good for them to be forced to spend time with only their parents, or maybe it's just good for me, but either way, it's gonna happen.

We found a festival they could stand since it had some old trains (steam powered that still ran)a haunted jail with a dungeon, and this church with architecture that made them stop for a few seconds:




Thinking (hoping) it might be haunted, two out of three of my kids stepped inside and actually went into the chapel and sat down voluntarily. I had to take their picture:




What was the point of all that time in the car and all that quiet? I was able to figure out how I need to change my last manuscript so it's a bit less wobbly, and the kids spent the way home talking to each other and to me and their Dad. They did text, but only a few times, and mostly they talked about kid stuff like ghosts and Halloween and how much they still really, really like candy - all three of them, even my 16 year old. I like just talking to them.

They are so wired all the time to their electronics it's almost as if we exist in parallel universes. I know my two boys are learning independence while spending all that time with friends. And that's really important, but so is learning about their little sister's trouble with a boy on the playground or how their parents once dressed up as his and her mummies.

It sounds so weird to say I take my kids on trips to remote places because I miss them, and I live with them every day, but it's true.

Cutting Revisited

Blogs remind me of snapsnots, of short little conversations that I might hear on an elevator or in a waiting room. A lot of them are funny. I tend not to take blog reading or writing too seriously. But there are exceptions. My exception is the blog I wrote on cutting. It generated a few anonymous comments, and a lot of email from kids who cut and from kids who were trying not to cut.

Over the weekend, a teen told me there was to be a cutting party at a friend's house. One of my sons had been invited (he couldn't go because I did not know the parents and no one seemed to know if they would be home). She went on to say this wasn't the first cutting party she knew about.

Apparently, at a cutting party, you make a choice whether or not you want to participate. As I stood in the kitchen making snacks for the kids, I had to will myself to listen with an open mind. Here I was with multi grain organic chips and soda from the health food store trying not to notice the irony of my desire to keep them healthy and safe, and their desire to "experiment" -- I also know that not listening to teens, no matter how upsetting the story, only makes matters worse.

So you don't have to cut at a party like this. She said there's no pressure like that. The upsetting part is how accepted a behavior it is becoming: have something to eat, talk, cut, listen to music. I asked her if I had it right. She said I did. She also told me how a lot of girls had watched a BBC production of Princess Diana admitting to cutting her arms and legs. (But this behavior is also common in boys) I don't know whether that BBC taping normalized the behavior or not, but it's now making the myspace rounds.

I learned a lot from the teens who wrote to me about their experiences with cutting:
cutting is real, and cutting is spreading. And the behavior, even if it begins as an experiment, can quickly become a compulsion. The scariest aspect? The average age to begin cutting is currently between 9 and 10.

Cutting

Yesterday, my son went to a girl's birthday party and somehow, like always, they ended up back in our house. I'll call the birthday girl Casey. I had noticed marks on her arms and legs, strangely symmetrical lines that never seemed to heal. And as usual, when I asked my son about those marks later, he told me he was busy. (He was making a frozen pizza and texting the kids who had just left our house - when I pointed out to him that didn't qualify him as busy, he got the desperate look of a trapped animal).

So yes, he said, she's a cutter, only she's a real cutter and not a fake emo cutter.
Ahh, I said, that's...what on earth?

I know teenagers cut themselves. There's at least one YA book on it and it's being mentioned more and more in YA lit. I've heard the teenagers in my living room say sentences such as, "Oh, Josh, the kid who cuts?" Followed by, "Nah, he only cut when he was going out with so and so...he doesn't anymore." Cutting is mentioned in a lot of metal song lyrics. It's a strangely accepted habit.

Kids who cut say they do it because it makes them feel better, and this is true. Doctors say cutting releases endorphins which actually DOES make the kids feel better. It's a form of release.

But the problem I see, aside from the bizarreness of self mutilation, is that there are "fake" cutters (emo cutting for attention) and the more Goth type of cutting which the kids view as authentic and a little brave. How does anyone tell when the attention-getting cutting crosses the line? And why do parents not know more about this?

When I casually mentioned this once before, in front of Casey's step mom, she thought I was referring to cutting class. She said she had never heard of it and changed the subject.

That exchange explained a lot about Casey and probably about most teens who engage in this habit.

Just a note: If you want to leave a comment, it won't be seen unless you go to http://teenswhocut.blogspot.com/ This blog is dedicated to teen issues now since a few of these posts elicited such a strong response : )

Selective Communication

Last month, my son sent over 15,000 text messages. He's in the eighth grade, and when I saw his usage, I knew, instantly, what had to be done: a psych consult. What had I done wrong that my son would send 500 text messages a day?
That's nothing, his friends assured me. Then I heard tales of over 30,000 messages, they reminded me that you have to count messages received, and all the while they were talking, they were texting, and receiving texts. In my day, it was the phone - a constant war waged between me and my parents about my extensive phone usage. They kept asking me why I had to speak to kids I had just left at the bus stop, and they reminded me, over and over, that a phone call is meant to last no longer than 3 minutes. Probably, I would be a 2008 textaholic as well. All teens want to do is talk to each other. So, he 's communicative, I told myself last Friday,a communicative male. Not so bad. What I forgot is they communicate WITH EACH OTHER and not, necessarily, with adults.
Here's the conversation between Philip and I on Friday evening:
Me: I'm taking your sister to her dance recital rehearsal. I'll be back around nine.
Philip: I'm going out. To church.
Me: Tell the truth.
Philip: Youth group meeting.
Me: Stunned silence. Brief image of my long haired son celebrating the Eucharist in ten years.
Philip: Texting.
Me: You are doing this voluntarily?
Philip: This girl asked me.
Me: Silent. ('Cause I get it).
I know and like the folks who run the church youth group, and when he assures me he has a ride there and back (with the girl), I am secretly delighted that he is involved with a group known for their diligent community service.

Fast forward. Ten at night. After going to our church at 9:00, I am told there was no youth group meeting. I go on AIM, send a myspace bulletin, text his friends, drive by our church again, peer at every group of adolescents I see. Philip is not answering his phone or texts I am sending him. I am frantic. If he's not answering his texts, it only means one thing...
The kids get back to me, and give me the phone number (imagine starting a conversation with "the girl who asked him" as the only identifying factor - then imagine the kids knowing who this was).
Turns out, he had gone to the youth group meeting. The youth group went to see a concert in a rented bus and they were not allowed to use their cell phones during the bus ride or the concert.
"Jeez, Mom, why are you so upset?"
"You have to TALK to me more. You went to a Baptist youth group, and we're not Baptists. That was an important piece of information."
"Man," he says, opening his phone to read his new text, "I'm sorry, Mom, but it's like you want to know every single thing about me."

Moments Before the Sullen Years

During the East's recent heat spell, I decided to take the kids to the beach. I haven't done this since my middle guy, Philip, became a full blown teenager. My nine year old eagerly helped pack the car, organized the towels, and was twitchy with excitement. My 16 year old looked at me when I announced we were going to the beach. "With you?" he asked.

I wasn't sure if Philip's response would prove eager or sullen.

"I can't leave right now," he told me.

"You're busy?" (he had spent the morning in only two pursuits: heating and eating frozen

pretzels and tormenting the cats with a laser pointer)

"No, I just found the best website of my life."

Thinking the parental controls hadn't filtered what a teenage boy might seek, I sprinted to his room. He was, as usual, on the phone. He and a friend were clicking through a website that depicted adult twins attached at the head, folks with tumors hanging off them like giant squids, women with full, dark beards, people born with a "vanishing twin" that hadn't quite vanished and now draped limbs (and only limbs) from the twin host's chest.

"I have to see this, Mom. It's amazing. Then we'll leave, okay?"

I endured two minutes of medical nightmare, and then, almost smiling, he looked at me. "Wasn't that awesome?"

I nodded and handed him his bathing suit. He was, I reasoned, still a kid. Philip took the suit, and looked at me, his face suddenly clouding.

"Wait. Are you going to wear a bathing suit?"

"Nope." He smiled, this time a full smile of relief.

"This time, I'm going all natural at the beach."

It's hard to find words for the sound that emerged from Philip at that moment; his sister described it as "a big animal roaring inside a tornado."

Sexting in Middle School

I think, all in all, I am a pretty liberal parent. My kids talk to me (okay, we shout, and cursing is allowed during these times), but generally, they know what I expect from them,

and I try to

meet their expectations. But a few days ago, while some friends were over, a group of girls began sexting the boys -- my boys and their friends.

I had heard of sexting, in the same way I had heard of bombs and assassinations and plagues. They were terrible events, but blessedly distant. I didn't worry too much about any of it. But then, over the weekend, during a sleepover, these girls decided to shoot pictures of areas that are covered on American beaches and send them to boys' cell phones. The girls are 13.

My response? I wanted to call the girls' parents.

The boys quietly deleted the images. They sat me down and explained this had been happening for quite some time, but since they knew I would become "justice mom" they didn't want to tell me.

"So, do you think there's something wrong with them?" I asked.

My high school boy told me if they took a picture of someone else and sent it, then, yes, that was wrong. But girls did it all the time. It was, he reasoned, their body and their choice.

My middle schooler agreed. He explained girls sometimes did this as a way of flirting.

"They're in the eighth grade," I protested, "they are children. Can't these pictures be downloaded to the Internet?"

The boys looked at me. After a few seconds of glaring, they explained the pictures (and sometimes acts) made them uncomfortable, but they came unbidden as text messages. The end result? They wished I had never found out.

But I did. And what I have learned is that there are potentially criminal charges for the sexters.

It is a form of telecommunications harrassment and depending on the age of the sexter, sending pictures like these can be construed as pandering obscene material. But that wasn't as bad as the next fact I discovered: kids as young as ten are engaging in this behavior (modeled by older siblings) and the behavior is not only increasing: it is exploding in popularity.

Living A YA Theme

If asked, and I haven't been, but if asked what a major YA theme is, the one that comes to my mind first is the learning and earning of trust.

After we moved to a new state, I knew it would take time for my boys to meet new friends. They had mingled with the same kids since pre -

school. I took for granted the convenience of knowing all the parents. In a new state, none of us had any idea as to a kid's background. I had never realized how much I had navigated my sons' choices in friends: steering them away from homes where lawns grew cars, and the insides of houses smelled like cabbage boiled in beer.

Here, in our new home, my teens experienced a battlefield promotion: I had to trust them to go

to school and come home with friends. All that lip service about me trusting them to make the right choices would now be tested. For all of us. I was terrified. But I knew (because I watch Dr. Phil) that I had to let them make their own choices. Here is one choice I met this morning:

6:46 a.m. -- My front door opens after a rapid knock. In my foyer stands an obese teenager in big boy shorts that reveal a good deal of his skull and crossbone boxers. My nine year old daughter, still in her nightgown, opens her eyes very wide and takes her cereal bowl into another room. "Phil home?" the teenager asks. I say I'll get him.

6:47 a.m. -- Philip explains that Josh is "amazing" because he can eat an entire pizza. "And they give that award through the Kennedy Center, right?" I ask. "No, Mom, you don't understand." I know I have to be quiet. I nod and go back down to tell Josh that Philip will be right down. I know I should be quiet, accepting, all that Zen mother stuff, but I can't help it. "So," I say casually, "how did you meet Philip?" Josh explains that they met while taking the late bus home. "Oh," I say happily, "you're in band, too?" "Nah, I was in detention."

6:49 a.m. -- We both look up as Philip opens his bedroom door. "Hey, Josh, show my Mom that

thing you have on your tongue." He obliges and I mumble something polite about his piercing. "He's going to get his tongue split when he turns 14, " Philip says enthusiastically. "Split?"

"Yeah," Josh says, "it's kind of an inside joke. See," Josh says, grinning, "me and Satan," and he

crosses his middle finger over his index finger, "we're like this."

"Wait, Mom," Philip says, "it's kind of a song he's writing. I'll explain it to you later." Philip and Josh turn to the door. Josh goes a little ahead. "Mom, listen," Philip whispers, "we can talk about it when I get home, ok? That thing about Satan...it's just a joke with him. It's what he does."

"Right," I whisper, "because that's the only problem."

Philip starts laughing and turns to look at me one last time before running to catch up with his new friend. I watch them until the bus disappears around the corner, remembering that like all YA themes, there is a quieter adult parallel.

Teen Spaces

Over the weekend, I was in the library looking at new YA titles. The part of the library was called Teen Zone, a space separate from the rest of the library. An older woman walked by and asked me why this fiction was separated from the rest of the fiction. "I think the topics are different," I shrugged. She clearly disapproved of the expansive area given over to teenage themed fiction. "There's a children's section over there," she pointed out. I nodded, not wanting to get into an argument since I already live with teens and argue too much. I didn't think of the woman again until this morning at breakfast.
My nine year old enthusiatically confided details of her imminent plans: planting a strawberry patch, scattering seeds on a barren patch by our house to create a wildflower garden, a trip she wants to plan to the zoo, and because she is still a kid, she informed me that she may (or may not) pen a novel. Lovely. Then, because I was in a good mood, I went in to talk to my sixteen year old. He is not a kid so I try to be in a good mood when I talk to him. I figure that way I won't grit my teeth quite so visibly. Of course, his door is locked, the music is blaring, and he doesn't answer my knock. "Christopher!" I holler. The cats run for cover. The dog raises her head. I pound on the door. "Did you die in there?" When he finally opens the door, he stands silently and glares."Why didn't you answer?" I ask. He yawns. "'Cause I knew it was you."

I mention how getting him to open the door is like goading the troll under the bridge, only it's more like a troll glued to the Internet.

"Huh." He half closes the door.

"I'm wondering what you have planned since you have three days off." He shuts the door. I hear the distinct click of a lock.
Teen Space. Different from kid space. Completely. And not just in the library.

Contraband - Part II

So what happened to the student who filmed the teacher speaking inappropriately to the class?
He DID post the video to youtube, sent the link to the emails of several building administrators, and got suspended.
The teacher? Just began an "early retirement" --

Where Does YA Fail? Interview with a Reluctant Teen Reader

When my boys were small, we attended three weekly story times at libraries, read at least five picture books each day, and produced endless pages of dialog with our sock puppets. I had not read the research on creating literate kids; I had memorized it. They were the only kids in our neighborhood who did not spend rainy afternoons in front of the tv.
Fast forward ten years: with one teenager, and one on the brink of becoming a teen, my boys have evolved into reluctant readers. I am hoping this is one of those stages kids go through and grow out of. Knowing they are tired of me talking about reading (all right, nagging), I sat down with one of their friends, and for the small price of a pizza, he agreed to talk to me about why he no longer reads for pleasure.

Ben (not his real name) is sixteen, a B+ student who likes video games, skateboarding, and swimming. Ben hopes to become a video animator. He used to read on a regular basis, but stopped around age 13.

Me: So, Ben, what kind of books did you read?

Ben: Mostly adventure and history books. Historical fiction and biography were my favorites. I liked non fiction because it's automatically realistic.

Me: How often did you read? And when did you stop?

Ben: Every day. At least for a couple of hours. Then in eighth grade, I just didn't like reading any more. Books seemed too slow. It just takes too long to see what happens. I like video games.
You can change what happens in video games, but you can't in books.

Me: Do you know what YA books are?

Ben: Yup. Our English teacher had us do a report on one last year in ninth grade.

Me: In general, what do you think of books that are written with teens in mind?

Ben: (laughs) Most authors aren't in high school. They write too much about relationships, and that's really boring. A lot of the plots are like a Disney movie - like the bad kid gets in trouble, the good kid gets rewarded. It doesn't work that way in school. Not usually. And they don't get what the real problems are.

Me: What do you think they are?

Ben: Drugs are still a really big problem, and they don't let you read those kind of books in our school. There's always one clique in school that everyone, even the teachers, look at and know they do drugs. But there are a lot of other kids in school that are into drugs that no one suspects because they're not in that one clique. There are drug parties every weekend in houses. At least I hear there are. And a lot of the kids take their parents prescription drugs, so it's not like how the authors show it. It's not like you have to go out to some strange neighborhood and buy drugs. But that's definitely a big problem.

Me: Do you think the authors get down how teens live?

Ben: I'm not all teens, but I can say here at least, a lot of kids talk a lot through texting or on myspace.

Me: (eagerly) So if a YA author were to write a book that's a realistic portrayal of high school, you would want to read it?

Ben: Uh. Probably not. I only read what I'm assigned.

Me: Ok, last question. If you could talk to an audience of YA authors, what advice would you give them so that you might, maybe, possibly would pick up their book and read it?

Ben: I guess you need to have a good conflict. Like something that makes you want to see what happens. And I like when I have to think about the words a little. I don't like when they describe something to death, or use way too many words to say a simple thing. Last year we read The Pearl, and it was like that. A big, long book that should have been a short story. Probably the most important thing is that stuff keeps happening and you can't tell what will happen. That would be a good book.