Adolescence and Ice Cream
As the kids get older, the travel gets easier but the “togetherness” gets…more challenging. There are more opinions and more bickering.
At home, they have more space, more options of people to play with, more TVs!
When traveling, we live closer together. Need a playmate? Yep, it’s your sibling. There is one TV.
Nate and I are realizing there’s a lot that can be masked when we are at home in our own routines.
I also have two entering adolescence, and as I talked with my counselor this week, she said something that has really stuck with me. I mentioned that one of the kids was a pill when we went to get ice cream and I was so frustrated by the situation. She mentioned that kids in this phase can also hate how they are acting and not understand why; their hormones are changing; it’s their own weird version of PMS they have to learn to manage. Also, ice cream might not be the magic for them that it once was. They might go and think, “Why doesn’t this make me happy like it used to?” And that is hard.
Hard for me, because ice cream used to solve everything, and hard for them…because ice cream used to solve everything.
It’s something I am thinking about a lot. How I as their parent get to help them move through a world that is far from perfect, to be part of a family that is far from perfect. But I also get to help them know a God who meets them and loves them deeply when they are having trouble loving themselves. While I am not responding well every time, it’s given me a better understanding for this new phase. When life reveals its hard edges, I am praying I could remain a soft place for them to land.
