My munchkins are growing. In some ways way faster than I was expecting. I mean 10 is just too young to have a boyfriend. It is too young to be coming home and telling me she wants to break up with the boyfriend because he is getting 'eerr', he gets aggressive when I speak to other boys and stuff. It is way too young to be coming home to me and telling me he reacted bad when she split up with him, as he went to hit her. 10. Domestic violence at 10. There is no damn way you would ever have convinced me that I would be having discussions with my 10 year old about not letting a boy hit her for what ever reason, and him saying after that he's sorry and still loves her is simply no excuse, (not that he said that but the conversation had to go there).
My mother would be horrified I'm sure, except that she was rather a realist when it came to certain things.
Sure dating for these kids is more a concept and more about who you hang with at lunchtime but for them it has value, it has weight. I just wish it was more childlike than her experience has been.
In some ways she is still so very childish, and I find myself telling her that she has to stop doing things because she is getting older and kids her age don't do that. I'm sure if left to her own devices she'd have still believed in the Easter bunny and Santa.
For all the edge to her, for all her grown up moments there is still something so innocent about her. Yet she is thinking about things I'm sure I never did when I was her age. I mean I came home the other night and she told me she wanted two tattoos (a rose with thorns because life is sometimes hard and hurts, and a tiger because it is fierce and beautiful and she is fierce and beautiful, that is more thought than a lot of adults put into their tattoos), and her tongue pierced. She then went out and had her hair chopped off because she was sick of being treated as the girly girl.
At 10 I was more interested in my books than finding my identity, I suppose that was my identity. I was picked on in school for being smart, she is picked on for being pretty and having hearing aids. Me I retreated into myself, she sets out to make herself into the image of who she wants to be.
Growing up sucks for both parents and kids.
