FateWineRoses’s blog

My daughter is a tween.  She has, in the past six months, begun to slowly but surely exhibit those dreaded tell tale signs of the onset of puberty.  You know.  Radical mood swings, extreme disgust with usually-considered-funny parental habits, and decidely stubborn closemouthed tendencies. 

These days, it's not so unusual for us to get into major blowouts over the stupidest stuff.  Or for no visible reason whatsoever.  It just seems to be the way things go nowadays.  So, when I came home after a draining day at work, I wasn't all that suprised when it took about 15 minutes for us to get into a screaming match. 

What did suprise me though, was the conversation we had only a half hour later after our quick dinner on the way to a mandatory school meeting about an upcoming field trip.  It seems that my daughter had an even more eventful day than I had.

I've always tried to instill into my daughter a sense of right and wrong; and to help foster this sense, or understanding, I've always tried to make sure she knows about the rules.  Whether it's the rules of my home, the rules at school, or the laws that govern us as a nation.  I've always wanted her to not only understand what the rules are, but why those rules are there.  I think I've done a good job to help her understand that the rules are not arbitrary.  That usually they are there to protect someone.

Of course, that always puts a crimp in my "because I said so" line that my mother taught me.  But, I digress.

I wasn't fazed at her first dramatic remark mentioning that she and another girlfriend now have no friends at school.  This is a weekly theme in her life.  One friend or another is usually doing something stupid enough to piss the Brat off enough to declare her the villianess of the day.  Or was it hour?  Whatever.

I carefully asked a couple of questions, probing the validity of her statement while pointing out flaws in her reasoning.  Her usual disgusted frustration with me came on fast, as she explained the events that led to her later being blackballed by her classmates.  It seems that she and a friend came upon several friends who were using sharpies to write on post its and then stuffing it up their noses to get high.  Urban terminology for this sort of thing is "sniffing," or "huffing."  In the medical and education communities it's called "inhalent abuse."

Maybe I was just fooling myself, but I guess I thought I didn't need to worry about this sort of stuff until at least middle school.  Isn't that when all of those sorts of things become a threat?  Isn't that when you have to start checking their bedrooms and searching the house for contraband?  Not according to the statistics I read.  Inhalant.org tells me that "huffing" or "sniffing" abuse usually starts at 10 or 11.  My daughter is 11 now.

They also say that 1 out of 5 school age children have tried using inhalants to get high.  And if those facts didn't scare me straight, the details of what happens to your body when you use inhalants to get high would have me balancing on the high beam. 

You can die from one use of an inhalant.  The fatty tissue in your brain dissolves.  You can lose the ability to walk, talk, or hear.  You can die.

I have to say that when my daughter first witnessed these students stuffing post its covered with marker up their noses she didn't know all of the above facts.  At the same time, she knew in some way that what they were doing was wrong; and that they could be hurt.  She just wasn't sure how.

Regardless, she went with her friend to the Vice Principal to tell her what happened.  Luckily, the Vice Principal was a lot more informed about these sort of activities that I was, because she immediately understood the seriousness of the described behavior and asked my daughter to put in writing what she saw happen.

And amazingly, she was saavy enough to realize that, while she wanted to make sure that the kids who were doing this stopped and their parents were informed, my daughter would be penalized for doing the right thing if she was seen with her just before the students were called into the office.

Unfortunately, the rate at which gossip travels though a school is not surprising to me anymore.  It didn't take long for my daughter's classmates to connect her to the day's events.  The ostracism was immediate and brutal.  She found her friends whispering nasty things at her, calling her names, and shooting dirty looks across the room.  She soon couldn't take it all and practically collapsed into tears.  Her agony so raw that her teacher ended up taking her from the room so she could try and pull herself together, as well as give the other students a chance to settle down.

The room was a hive of obnoxious whispers and nasty name-calling.  After a while the teacher ended up yelling at the class, eventually taking some of the more noxious offenders outside for a personal talking to.  My daughter laying on the concrete outside, still sobbing, this teacher told the offenders exactly what he thought of them and in the end brought them to tears.

All of these events my daughter told me with a seemingly uneffected deameanor.  I never could have imagined something like this happening just looking at her.  She is so much stronger than I am.  I would have never pulled myself together so quickly.  Never been able to talk about the events without revisiting my tears.

There are some days when I teasingly tell strangers that they should never have children.  A little joke I have with my daughter.  I say it, she beats my arm, and the stranger gets a laugh. 

There are some days when I wonder briefly where my life would be without her.  This never last for long though.  Usually she bursts into the room, demanding that I do something for her.

And there are some days when, despite the fact that I know I can't drop her off a bridge, I wish I could.

But today she proved herself more than I ever could have hoped for in a daughter.  She exceeded every wishful fantasy I had as a child hoping to one day have a child of my own.

Brat, I never tell you this enough.  You are a better person than I am and I am so proud of you.

I don't know what the consequences for my daughter will be at school with her friends because of her actions.  I do know that five students were suspended because of it.  I can only hope that the furor dies down in the classroom, and that the parents involved get a wake up just like I did.  

There are days that I feel alone in this.  I blog along . . maybe not day to day, but more like couple of days to couple of days, and after posting something I tend to go searching for things of interest out there in the blogosphere. 

I can always find a blog ranting or raving about political mayhem.  There are lots of blogs out there that speak to those technopiles.  Tons of photo blogs.  And massive amounts of people blogging about their babies.

Now, I find nothing wrong with new parents blogging about their parenting woes.  Having a new baby is hard.  I get that.  What I want to know is:

WHERE ARE ALL THE TWEEN PARENTS?

Am I the only one out here?  Am I the only one with a tween that blogs?  Oh sure.  I've found a couple of random blogs here and there that mention their tween once in a while;  but for some reason even those parents seem to concentrate their blogging on the teens or babies of the household.

And what about the selection of internet articles out there about tween parenting?  Or even tweens in general?

If it's not about selling something to my tween, it's about buying them just the right gift, or ways to put my tween on a leash.

Yeah, right.

Where are all the REAL parenting articles?  Where is all the advice on how to handle this stage of the parenting process.  Honey, I've been through colic and teething and diapers and finickey eaters.  Where's what I really need?  Where's that group of parents who are experiencing tweenhood for the first time as a parent?  Where are those blogging parents who want to just blog a screenful of question marks cause they just don't know what to say?  Where are all of the screaming parents having tantrums because their beautiful child turned into Attitude with a capital 'A?'

WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!?!

In moments like this, when I'm not quite sure where to start; and I'm definitely not sure what to say that I tend to sit and ponder.  Either that or roll my eyes and decide to just not write anything, 'cause surely there's nothing worth writing right now.  Well, that I could do justice anyway.