Are you a paranoid parent? I try really hard not to be. I want the kids to have fun and just be kids. But things are different and the world is not a happy go lucky place like we all wish it would be. It’s scary, and big and full of nasty people. Where are the lines drawn in what you know and don’t know, how far do you push to find out the information you want to hear?

These are all things that are weighing on my mind this spring. My oldest two boys have spring birthdays - Dylan just turned 11 on the 6th of this month, and Lucas will be 10 in just a few short weeks on May 18th. Dylan “hangs out” with his friends. Lucas gets notes from girls on an almost daily basis. GIRLS!!! Someone please just put me out of misery here!

Someone asked me if I was worried about the boys behavior when they weren’t within my eyes/ears. I responded no that I’m confident that Dylan and Lucas are both responsible, mature for their age, polite young men. Despite having to frequently remind Dylan to brush his teeth, and ask Lucas if he washed his hair *with shampoo* every day and every night LOL For the most part they are smart kids and they know how to behave like little gentlemen. So says every waitress that’s ever waited on us in a restaurant…. oh, wait, at a restaurant they’re within my eyes/ears so that doesn’t count.

I’m sure they are completely different kids when we’re not around. Heck, they change completely when you split them up. Ethan with his brothers - a wild little man! Ethan without his brothers - a sweet little chatterbox that bats his eyelashes at you. They adjust to the situation, as any person would do. So ,what happens when I’m not around? Do I even want to know!?! I’m not sure.

So we go further into the conversation…. “Well, Loretta, what were YOU doing when you were 11 years old?” Um… do I have to answer that? Crap. Okay. Honestly. I was babysitting my mom’s friends two little girls they were 2 and 7 at the time. I started smoking when I was 11. I didn’t quit smoking until I was 27. I was talking on the phone with boys. I wasn’t really interested in dating though. I was still having fun with sleepovers and prank phone calls on weekends that I didn’t have to babysit. I was coming into womanhood, yes that means I got my period when I was 11…. and a bra, and all kinds of girl stuff. I was worrying that I wasn’t skinny enough. I was listening to Guns N Roses and Metallica (hey I still do, so no laughing.) I was worried that my shoes were not cool. I was learning how to do that poofy thing with a curling iron and can of hairspray on my bangs. That’s not SO bad right? I wasn’t a trouble maker, scouts honor.

But, the world is a different place than we grew up in. And I’m not even 30 years old yet. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager. I can still remember junior high, I can still remember the way peer pressure felt when you didn’t want to do something that your friends were doing. Short of attaching a spy camera to my kid’s backpacks and skateboards I’m not sure there’s much I can really do though other than just trust them with their own decisions. That’s part of growing up, right? Learn from your own mistakes and whatnot.

I think what scares me as a parent more is the mistakes of other kids. You know, the kids that decide it’s okay to carry a gun to school. And that happens at the age of 11…. when I was 11 I would have never worried about that kind of thing happening at my school. My kids have that worry. When I was 11 I would have never worried about a plane crashing into a building. My kids have that worry. It may not be a dominant worry, but it’s there in the back of their minds. Especially Dylan, 9-11 was very difficult for him and it implanted a little seed of anger in him at a young age. And now I’m ranting….. *smack*