Top ten signs you have a ten-ager

My daughter can be a sweet, helpful soul full of empathy.  She can also be a full-fledged ten-ager.  Even before her official birthday came last month, the “tens” had already gone to her curly head.  We started out the school year with the occasional tense mother-daughter moments and we have just added to it on a daily basis.  If you think you have a ten-ager on your hands, read on...

Ten is THE number to be!

1. Everything is lame.  Or nul in French.  We go to an outdoor museum.  It’s nul.  We are watching a travel documentary.  It’s nul.  I tried banning this word for a while.  In vain.
2. Eyes can roll so high.  Full disclosure, I am an eye-roller too.  Only I feel I am more justified.  My little tween rolls her eyes when I ask her to set the table or unload the dishwasher or any other household task, which brings us to… 
3. “It’s not fair!”  No, nothing in life is, sweetie, I tell her.  But this life lesson is lost on her for now because most days she feels chores are my tool to torture her.
4. “Yeah, right!” accompanied by eye rolling.  If I say, you can have your tablet time when we get home from your grandparents, she will reply with this.  As in, I don’t believe you and “it’s not fair!” 
5. It’s all about the shoes/jean jacket/bandana/insert your trendy item here.  And she needs it yesterday.  Ten-agers have recently awoken to all that is fashionable and all that is not.  Those little footsie socks, in.  Regular socks, out.  Baggy jeans, out.  Leggings with the cuffs rolled up, in.  
6. Negotiating with her is harder than with North Korea.  We once spent a better part of her bedtime ritual trying to agree that if she stopped with the snark, I would stop with the lectures and raised voice.  I had to explain to her that I only raised my voice BECAUSE of the snark. 
7. Musically is THE app to have.  If you don’t know what this is, it’s probably because you are over 30.  Since I let her download this (private account, of course), I have been introduced to the music video making snippets that all the tweens are doing.  I am also now totally allergic to the Elie Goulding/Calvin Harris song that she kept playing while making her video.  Don’t even start humming that thing!
8. Don’t mess with the hair.  She is not yet totally obsessed about it and will still ask for the occasional braid.  But the time spent coiffing herself has increased exponentially this year. 
9. Middle school is on the brain.  One more year to stay “little” in elementary school, then the next step is approaching.  She is romanticizing it like so many of her classmates do, wishing she was already in it.  I tell her to be patient; it will be here soon enough.
10. Mother knows best… only ¼ of the time.  Mom (and dad to some extent) just don’t know that much.  Until we prove her wrong and she dares to admit it.  Maybe.

But that’s ok.  I know there will be tough times and much eye-rolling and sighing in my future.  But I also know some of what I say is sinking in.  I also know I went through much the same thing as a kid and put my mom through some tense moments, too (sorry again, mom!).  But I grew up and out of it.  She will too and will become a well-adjusted, kind older teen and adult.  

So excuse me for the next few years as my street cred dwindles to zero and my fashion sense is questioned.  A ten-ager has been born!

Brand New World

My almost ten-year old caught a feathery dandelion seed head and asked if it meant anything.  Perhaps it brings luck, I said.  She got quiet for a while then said she had made a wish.  “I hope it comes true but I bet it won’t,” she said with a hint of melancholy.  As she anchors herself into tweendom, I am getting used to these melancholy bents. 

But my mom-dar is still too strong for her.  “You wished you could have Nikes, didn’t you?” I asked.  Her sheepish smile confirmed my suspicions. 

These days it seems name-brand shoes are all this girl has on the brain.  For a while she couldn’t stop talking about Adidas, then Nikes (which the French pronounce to rhyme with “bike”) and the occasional All-Star reference, peppered with a bit of Puma and New Balance.

It’s not that I am totally anti-brands. I love my ballerina style Skechers my mom sent me a few years ago.  But I wanted them for the appearance and comfort.  The fact that they were Skechers just assured me of their quality.  With my daughter this brand envy has come out of nowhere and seems to be directly related to what she sees in the school yard.

“Will you get me Adidas for my birthday?” is a common refrain around here.  Followed by “I bet you won’t.” 

She cut out her own symbol

“Wow, how lucky that girl is, look at her Nikes!”  she’ll exclaim as we see a teen in the parking lot with pale pink on pink Nikes.  She can spot brand name shoes on people on tv, too. 

I have literally had to limit her to one shoe reference per day!  But before that I tried a few other strategies which proved to be pretty fruitless.  Let’s recap anyway:

Shaming

Taking a page from my own mom’s book, I told her about kids who had no shoes or shoes in pitiful condition.  I even took to finding her videos on youtube by typing (what else!) “kids with no shoes”.  Just my luck, one of the videos I pulled up showed poor Mexican children, one of whom was wearing a Nike shirt, which my girl was quick to point out.  Anyway, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on her.  Though now if she goes on about shoes and I ask her if she wants to watch a video, it tends to calm her down a bit.

Non-conformity talk

Of course I tried the old “why do you have to do what everyone else is doing?” talk.  Just because other kids wear something doesn’t mean it’s the best quality or even attractive, I tried to reason with her.  For this point I showed her the saggy jeans fashion that exposes men’s underwear.  She had a laugh at those pics and agreed that particular fashion was stupid, but the shoe talk continued!

Mom stories

I read recently that kids get a lot out of their parents’ personal stories.  Or maybe not.  I told her how I was into Esprit clothes when I was in middle school but how I generally only got a shirt from the bargain bin, because that’s all we could afford.  I can still remember a shirt full of bright geometric shapes that screamed 80s.  I mostly bought it for that little red rectangle proclaiming Esprit.  Frankly it was loud and ugly, when I look back.  I told her in the end I realized I was following the crowd and that having your own style is important. 

Ignoring

When your kid asks you over and over for Adidas in a five-minute period, using a tactic she got from a ten-year old on tv, you just try to think of something else and soldier on.  It messes with your mind, but this is good preparation for adolescence whining. When she says she’s so unlucky for not having Nikes, I tell her she will survive.

Hard work

I always told myself once my kid started asking for brands that I would give him or her a limited budget for school clothes shopping and tell them, that’s it, make it work.  But we’re not quite there yet.  In the meantime I try to remind her of the value of her money by getting her to buy trinkets she wants at the store from her own piggy bank money.  She recently got herself off-brand aqua All-star low tops at the discount store and has been taking super care of them. My husband and I tell her she could get a job later on as a teen or earn money for chores and use this to buy what she wants. 

You might be asking me why I just don’t buy her the shoes she wants.  One little pair, what’s the big deal? We just don’t want her turning into a pretentious, name-dropper already.  Or thinking that she gets whatever she asks for immediately.  She’s barely out of fourth grade!  We hope she will value what she has. 

So in the end, my strategy is a modified “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” one.  She may get what she wants but not right away- a little delayed gratification.  Don’t tell her this, but she will very likely get some shoes for her birthday… but we’ll buy large so they can last a while and she’ll hopefully take good care of them. 

Are your kids into brands?  What strategies do you use?

Things six-year olds do and say

Making funny faces: a six-year old thing!

Ever since Juliette was born, it has been hard for me to imagine the next step, the next age.  It seems like the next year's age is a different species.  And from 0 to 6 it surely is an amazing range of phases and personalities.  When she was one and we had a picnic with a four-year old, the "big" girl seemed giant!  Her parents made the opposite comment as they noticed Juliette, reminiscing about the cute aspects of that age.  And even now when I see kids who are a few years older than Juliette, I am always amazed that they are still small, still young at heart. It's like in my mind I think they turn into adults at age nine or something.

But no!  Six (and a half, to be precise) is still a child.  Still very childish at times.  It's not because she's learning to read and write and do 'rithmetic that she's all of a sudden wildly mature.  We can reason with her on some things, and others, not even close.

Take bath time.  She knows she has to take a bath or sponge bath or shower every day.  This doesn't stop her from protesting nine times out of ten.  The other night she was truly sobbing with me trying to explain that at the beginning of the bath she doesn't like it, and at the end she doesn't want to get out.  The trials and tribulations of grade school children are really just awful.

So here is a list of things that my six-year old does and says that seem to be hallmarks of this age.  Let's get it down for historical purposes.  As in, I can torture her when she has her own funny first-grader at home. 

Things we fight about
It is getting better.  But there are still things that provoke mini-fits.  Here's a quick list:

• that we didn't have enough time to play that day
• that she doesn't have a unicorn toy
• that I won't sleep all night in her bed ("I'm all alone in my room and you have papa!")
• when and how many episodes of Arthur we can watch on youtube.  We discovered this PBS cartoon by chance one day and now she's addicted.  It's good for her English and the stories always have a good message.
• going to her kids' Zumba class. She always likes it once she's there, but sometimes she gives me trouble about it beforehand.
• any toy that she wants and that I'm not buying her.  Her new favorite mantra is "It's the last thing I'll ask you for."

Things she plays
This girl loves being an animal.  She has both cheetah and lion costumes, plus a faux fur vest that we call the wolf vest.  Imaginary games where she is a captured animal and I am her owner are the big thing now.  Besides that there are the classics like Lego, Playmobil, her dolls, and toy cars.

It's a jungle out there.

Just 1/100th of all her toys.

Things she collects
It's amazing how once she started first grade she came home with little bits and baubles in her pockets.  First it was marbles, apparently a hot game at recess.  Within a week she knew how to play and was bringing new marbles home every day.  Then there is the elastic bracelet craze, all those Kinder surprise toys, pictures of Disney princesses, or beads she found on the floor.  I think we need a huge printer's box to store all these mini-things.


Things she's whining about
More than toddler tantrums, the six-year old knows that her greatest weapon is the "whine".  Parents will do just about anything to stop that noise.  Her major triggers are varied but all equally important to her.  This list includes but is not limited to:

• I don't have a loose tooth.
• Your birthday is before mine.
• I'm not seven!
• I didn't see the cuckoo come out of the clock.
• Papa ate some of my Valentine's chocolate.

Things she says
I honestly have to write these down more often, because there are some zingers.  This is just a sampling.

• When I'm combing her hair (at her request), "Super cool.  So relaxin'!".
• "I have to keep my hands out of the blanket to read my book.  It's not cozy!"
• "Don't sleep with papa, he has microbes." 
• When I explain that my last name used to be different and now I have papa's, "What's your next last name going to be?"
• "I love MamieLin (her grandma and my mom) because she has pretty hair and she draws so well, especially rats." "You mean mice?" "Yeah, mice."
• I say I love you in the car just because.  "I love you, too," she replies. Then after a beat, she asks "Why did you say that?"
• I tell her she's acting like a teenager.  "I'm not a teenager," she says right away.  Then later, "What's a teenager?"

But what I love about this age is that she is becoming so much more aware of the world.  We can have real conversations about life and even death and she can amaze us with her wisdom.  And mostly, I'm still glad my little girl is still little.  She still loves hugs and bedtime stories and surprises us with her sweetness.  

One day I forgot to hug her when I dropped her off at daycare during the vacation period. I felt bad about it all day.  I told her about it in the evening and she reached her arms out to hug me at the dinner table.  The next day I noticed she was standing solidly next to the sign-in table as I was about to leave to remind me to hug her.  She didn't want me to forget this time! 

And I hope I won't forget what a joy six can be, despite some little frustrations that go with the territory.  

Little Big Girl

Next Tuesday Juliette starts the equivalent of first grade.  In France it's called CP, for cours préparatoire.  I thought her first year of pre-school was going to be tough on me.  Seeing my little three-year old (at that time) go to school turned out to not be as excruciating as I had imagined (though my eyes did get moist!).  Now she's an old hat at this school thing.  But first grade is in a different school and now she'll be rubbing shoulders with much bigger kids.

Little one looking quite the star!

I'm already worrying about her attitude changing.  Lately she seems to be six going on 13 in terms of her tone.  I know it's just her age and that other kids in this age group are starting to backtalk and complain about not making decisions in their lives.  But it makes me think that the true teen years and especially the tween years are not far off.

I guess every generation says it, but kids do seem to be growing up super fast these days.  Blame it on TV, technology, our own attitudes, whatever.  Sometimes it seems childhood ends at 10 and girls face more pressure in terms of body image.  Seven-year olds worrying about their weight is not unheard of nowadays.  And I want to hold on to my little one as much, and as long, as I can.

So I cherish those hugs around my neck, though sometimes they pull my hair.  I smile to myself when she says hilarious things like, wouldn't it be cool if kids were born before the parents?  And I hope we've still got some good years of playing with her toys, if only because she's got so many of them! I'm relieved she still likes Disney shows and riding carousels. And I'll try to face every new challenge, and every inch she grows with courage and by being grateful that she's in my world.

Happy back to school time to parents, teachers, and of course, kids, all around!

Back to baking

Virtual champagne for everybody! (That is just a random stock photo, by the way.  It's not Remi spewing champagne.)  I got my degree for the biological analyses program which will re-qualify me for working in a lab. It’s what’s called a BTS in the French system. I’ve spent the last week hanging out in the school computer lab just to note my presence (we had to do it to get paid) working on CVs and cover letters (or just shooting the breeze with the other students). Starting back at the English teaching gig next week and it feels a bit weird to put myself into the teacher role again. I know I’ll slip back into it but there’s always a transition period. And though I’m getting better at transitions, but it’s still a bit tough sometimes.

 

Now that I have a bit more free time (no more studying, yeah!) I’ve been able to put my energy into more pleasant things. Like baking. Truth be told I never gave up the odd batch of muffins on a Saturday afternoon but I did cut back a bit. Last Saturday to celebrate my new-found freedom I made a recipe I’d been wanting to do for a while- petits pains au lait. They are basically just yeast rolls. The recipe was surprisingly simple and I enjoyed munching on warm bread with Juliette at snack time. It’s even better with a little butter and honey…

I got the recipe from a French blog site but I’ll translate it into English. Though this recipe already had imperial measures, let me pass on Diana’s Desserts website (http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/tools.measures/Measures.cfm) which has a wonderful measures converter.

500g (4 and 3 cups) all-purpose flour

1 and 1/5 cups (30 cl) of milk

30g (2 heaping tablespoons or 1 oz.) of butter or margarine

30 g (1/4 cup) sugar

1/3 oz. of dry yeast...not so sure how to measure that in US, any ideas?!: (1 packet of levure de boulanger (5 g) for those living in France)

A pinch of salt

Heat the milk (not to boiling) and the butter in separate saucepans. I heated my butter up in the microwave.  

Add the yeast to the warmed milk and mix and let sit 15 minutes.  

 

Add the milk/yeast mixture to the flour, sugar and salt. Then add the butter and stir with a wooden spoon (why wooden, I don’t know).  

Knead by hand. Add a bit of flour if the dough is too sticky.

Form into a ball and let the dough sit for an hour or an hour and a half in a warm place. Cover with a clean dishcloth. The dough should approximately double in size.

 

Form the dough into small rolls, elongated or round. You can also add things like chocolate chips or fruits. Or form the balls and then arrange them into a clover or flower shape (with the rolls touching) on your non-stick baking sheet. Let rest a few minutes. With a knife cut a few lines on the top of each roll.  

Place into pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for 20 minutes.

And enjoy!