An Easter Tip for Next Year

 Appeared in the Idaho State Journal on April 11, 2021

I’m late to the game for an Easter column, but for parents and care-givers of teens or tweens this one might just stick with you for the next 11.5 months. I hope so. 

As I have found myself in the category “Parent of Teen/Tween”, my capacity for seeking and accepting parenting tips has increased at a rate directly proportional to the young’uns’ hormones.  If you’ve got something that worked magic with your spawn or your partner’s spawn, I’m all ears.  

My own experience as a child naturally models how I parent, including what I work to replicate and what I work to avoid. Compared to my own mother, however, there are three main differences in my parenting situation today.

First, I am an only child. I do not understand sibling dynamics. Even after years of knowing our kids, it’s a mystery when I’ve seen one of them haul off and hit another and then minutes later be huddled up together on the couch giggling at You Tube videos. What is that? Will I always view this sling-shotting of animosity and forgiveness with complete wonder? I’m positive that my lack of familiarity with the nuances of sibling relationships has led me to mis-parent a number of circumstances.

Secondly, my mom was a single parent.  I saw my dad on weekends here or there until I was 13 when he died, but he never really “parented.”  The two sides of that sword were that Mom didn’t have someone else to deal with – or count on. I’ve got a solid tag-team situation where there are other parents I can count on and get invaluable perspectives from. We don’t always agree in our assessments or next steps, but we have a solid foundation on which those conversations can take place. When challenges or disagreements among adults surface, I’ve come to look it as a workout to make me a stronger, better person. I have no doubt that skills honed in co-parenting could solve all of the world’s problems.

The third element in my parenting role that differs from what I grew up with is that I do not share genetic material with these kids. Through my mom’s social work experience, there was a lot of discussion in my house about adoption and foster families and the joys and challenges of raising kids that didn’t “come from you,” but frankly I was naïve not to take a closer look at how being a step-parent or “bonus mom” might really play out in our family. As I have gotten to spend more time with the kids’ mom and dad, I see so much of them in each child. Really getting to know what brings their parents happiness or worry, what motivates them, and simply how their thought processes work have all helped me be a better parent to our kids.  

I thought the above introspection finally equipped me to parent in an effective and meaningful way and then BAM! We’ve got a teen and a tween at the same time. Holidays have become especially tricky as we figure out what to drag them through and what to let them opt out of; what to keep and what to let go.

This past Easter we kept dyeing eggs but let go of baskets. I told them we could raid the clearance Easter candy for disco
unts, and they were amenable to this change, right up until a bickerfest began as I got the eggs out of the fridge.  Siblings.

Thinking the boys were too old for cutesy critters and not wanting to mess with whatever the “tie dye” box had to offer, I grabbed a “Solar System” kit that had planet caricature wrap-arounds and a poster with planet trivia. Their tensions that seem to mimic planetary forces were assuaged as soon as we got into the kit and started to guess which wrap was which planet. Learning that Uranus spins on its side made that one easy. We figured the frowny face was Pluto because it had lost its planet status, and the eyelashes and bright red lipstick were a shoe-in for Venus. 

Pluto and Venus

The kids were in no hurry to find the hidden “planets” the next morning, but they were still talking about which are named after Roman gods and what their various wind speeds are. The solar system kit allowed us to keep our old tradition but with a new age-appropriate and engaging twist. I wrote the PAAS company an email to encourage them to continue making kits like this and to add to their product offering. I hope they heed my tip for next year because with a tween and a teen and a step parent who’s an only child trying to keep her axis steady, it was eggactly what our family needed this Easter.