Lydia Seabol Avant More Content Now Jan 19, 2021 at 9:22 AM Columns share an author’s personal perspective. ***** I’m not sure when I first noticed it. It could be when my 11-year-old daughter hung Christmas lights and flashing LED around her room, making her room look part holiday, part seizure-inducing disco. It may have been when I started finding empty chip bags or cookie containers thrown carelessly under her bed - she knows she’s not allowed snacks in her room. It may have been when my daughter carefully hung a Bob Ross poster over her bed, a poster that says “No mistakes. Only happy accidents.” Or it could have been the pile of dirty laundry stuffed in the corner of her room, or the fact that she sneaked my makeup, piece by piece, into her own bathroom drawer. But last week, as I went to find my oldest child in her room, it hit me like a gut punch, as I saw she had made a label with her dad’s label maker and stuck it on her door. “KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING.” Ouch. It was then I realized - I am the mother of a middle-schooler. My once giddy, curly-haired little girl has somehow morphed in the last year into a lanky, still giddy, but also sometimes moody pre-teen. Bows and monogrammed dresses of her younger years have evolved into hoodie sweatshirts and skinny jeans. Her social world, especially during the pandemic, has turned to messaging with friends from school on an app or playing on a virtual reality headset. Our daughter, the one who used to sneak in my room at dawn on the weekends, put her round face up to mine while I was sleeping and say “Mommy … Mommy … I’m awake, Mommy …” is now the last person in the house to wake up, often not before 10 a.m. when she doesn’t have school. Suddenly, I find myself lost as what is next. I know how to parent babies, pre-schoolers and elementary-age kids. We’ve gone through those stages before. But this, the land of messy rooms and walls covered with posters, of an almost-teenage girl who dresses how she wants and has her own views, her own passions, her own dreams that are inching closer into grasp - I feel lost as to how to raise a teenager. I’ll admit, my own teenage years are a bit fuzzy. I was a “goody two shoe,” someone who was terrified to get in trouble or do anything wrong, and for the most part stayed to myself. In sixth grade, I loved to draw and paint. I spent my spare time writing stories. It was at that age that I first decided I wanted to be a writer. I loved to ride bikes and spent the summer swimming with friends at our neighborhood pool. I was shy, introverted, and seemingly somewhere in the no-man’s-land between childhood and the teenage years. But when I see my daughter now, I don’t see the awkward, painfully quiet girl that I was at that age. I see a determined, headstrong girl who knows what she wants, what she likes, and doesn’t listen to much else. In a way, the teenage years terrify me. But at the same time, I’m quietly rejoicing, because I’m catching a glimmer of the strong woman that she will become. I also get glimpses of the little girl, too. Last week, as rioters stormed the Capitol in Washington D.C., I sat on the couch, stunned. As I stayed glued to the TV, fearful for our country and our future, my daughter sat next to me, childlike, curled up next to one of our dogs. I could tell she was as worried as I was. But I reached out for her hand, and she reached out for mine, and squeezed. No, I don’t know how to mother a teenager, but I have a feeling we’ll figure it out, my daughter and I, together. Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Reach her at [email protected].

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