By: Revanche

My kids and notes: Year 9.8

November 13, 2024

Life with JB

We were talking with our friends about their overachiever parent friends whose kids have grueling schedules at the age of 13-14. Kids who are getting up at 3-4 am to train for 3 hours before a full day of school, for example. They wondered how unhealthy that might be especially if it’s really the parents pushing an agenda. Even though those parents protest “they love it!” my friend wondered – do they love it or do they not know that there’s any other way? It’s hard to know you can do things differently from the way you’re living, as a child, if you never have time and space to even see those other options existing.

Their own preteen kid has found his stride at school and in sports (they plays their sport regularly and chooses to compete every so often on their own), and their balance of academics and an active lifestyle sounds really good to me.

I’m not always a supportive parent. I try to be but definitely notice the deficiencies in my support. Some things, like tournaments, are probably good for them and so I gently encourage them to consider it but after they chose to do the first one (and did well), they’ve never chosen to do another. It’s too stressful for me anyway to prep them when I have no time or energy and then worry myself sick the week of because I get even worse nerves when it’s my kid competing than when i did. Hilariously, they were mad at me one day for observing their belt progress was impacted by their choice not to compete. It’s not required, but it has a marked effect on performance and how their coaches judge them. They yelled at me: you just want me to compete! Like hell I do. I don’t want six weeks of MORE heartburn! I didn’t try to argue by saying the tournaments are incredibly stressful for me, I just pointed out that that’s not at all what I said – the coaches want you to compete. They’re quite clear about that.

JB recently said they wanted to do the school talent show and internally I cringed so hard. I hate talent shows. I especially hated them at JB’s age.

Life with Smol Acrobat

They are a cautious late adopter sort of personality, suspicious of new things and/or change, which is very familiar now that I write that. They’re a little less so when they get to pick for themselves, which is rare when it comes to clothes because we still circulate hand me downs.

When I showed them new shoes last year, they rejected them out of hand. When we first started cutting their hair, they hated it. But with repetition they get better about it. I’m learning though! I offered them one bite of my cream cheese and lox bagel: I don’t WIKE dat. The next day: may I twy one bite?

I let JB use their electric toothbrush long before I bought Smol Acrobat’s. They could be heard hanging around JB brushing: may I try dat?

Pupdate

I love it when I catch the neighborhood dogs on their walks. Especially the ones who know me, they refuse to keep walking until I’ve given them sufficient pets.

Precious Moments

SmolAc: What are you going to be for Halloween?
Me: Mommy.
SmolAc: You can be a mommy wif wots of bandages! You can be a mummy! 🤣

That’s their first pun! They were so tickled. JB hasn’t yet cracked the code on puns.

SmolAc, holding up the plastic popsicle wrapper with their melted popsicle: What’s dis? Bwood? (Blood).
Me: My god I hope not.

SmolAc: I want to go to the moon some day. I’m going to live on the moon!
Us: Oh man, are you going to come back?
SmolAc: Yeah I will.
Us: Oh good. We’d miss you.

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