If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know by now that I have two teenage daughters, nineteen and fifteen, and that aside from being an author (My first book was published this past March) I stay at home with them. Many people have asked me why I don't go back to work now that they're older, and aside from some basics -- I don't really have the necessary skills to acquire a job since I left the work force in 1997, and I have a chronic illness that makes it difficult for me to know whether, on a given day, I will have the strength or health to work -- I am convinced that parenting teens requires a twenty four hour a day/seven day a week mentality that we mostly attribute to parenting babies.
Yes, in those long gone days I was up round the clock nursing and changing and soothing. Yes, my kids had to be with me all the time to be looked after, and I wanted that bond with them. Yes, as teenagers, they are out of the house for a good part of the day. (My older daughter is away at college nine months out of the year, and is currently working at a sleep away camp for the summer.) But when they are home, when they are in my presence, they need me on a moment's notice. They need to be able to talk about what's on their minds, what crisis or problem or issues they're dealing with and these could be as simple as clothes they need or as complicated as topics like drug use or sex.
If I weren't home with my fifteen year old daughter this summer, she would not be able to participate in a CIT program at her drama camp. It's a good twenty minute drive each way. Instead of telling her no, she couldn't do it, I drive her back and forth, and we talk in the car. Or, if we're not talking, she's talking to her friends in the carpool, and I'm learning lots of interesting things about their lives as I silently weave through traffic. Meanwhile, she's building the volunteer hours she needs for high school and college.
My nineteen year old came home for a day and night off from college Sunday into Monday. If I were working, I wouldn't have been able to spend Monday with her cuddled up next to me, telling me about the stresses she's finding as a camp counselor, talking about her campers and her supervisors and what she wants to do next summer, talking about her fall classes and upcoming new job and financial aid. I'd have been at work, and she would have been sitting on the couch, by herself, unable to process all of the thoughts going on in her head.
So yes, I'm alone a lot while they're off working and volunteering and playing. But when they need me, unequivocally, I am there. And who knows what time of day or night that could be.
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