A Boy's Adolescence

Among Adored Wife's other challenges, she deals with anxiety and panic attacks.

She's going to have a very difficult time with Graphics Magician's adolescence.

There's a several-year gap between the daughters and the son, and we always joke that ten years of experience as the parents of girls wasn't the slightest preparation for having a son.

That's becoming more and more true as he's moving into his teenaged years.

It's not that we didn't have trying times with Basement Artist and Social Hurricane when they were younger.  But they tended more toward the drama and the angst and the interpersonal troubles and the romantic issues.  Emotionally difficult, but physically pretty safe.

But GM wants to go exploring with his friends, and blaze new trails, and flirt with girls and be left unsupervised to go and see what the world has to offer.  Actually pretty normal boy things.  He's already been shot with a BB gun, bitten by a dog, gotten lost a couple of times, picked up numerous lacerations and bruises, and nearly gotten caught when he accidentally set off some poor fellow's car alarm (it had a "for sale" on it and the guys were leaning on the windows trying to see what the interior looked like.)  Innocent, well-intentioned, dumb stuff.  You know, boys.  Although I'm pretty sure he and his friends have on occasion made themselves a little obnoxious to various strangers.

And it's not that I haven't had a few chats with him about expectations and behavior, taking care to point out that what he and his friends consider "cute" the rest of the world might consider "rude" or "trouble."  I don't intend to let him run wild.  But I do intend to let him be a boy.

But AW is probably going to be a nervous wreck the next couple of years if she can't get the anxiety under control.  If he's not right in her eyesight or under the supervision of some adult she knows and trusts, she's inclined to panic about what trouble he might be in.  And she knows that she can't keep him in bubble wrap in the living room, and she's working on it.

But it's going to be a tough time for an anxiety-prone woman, being the mother of an adolescent boy.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.