My son, who will soon be 12, let me know yesterday afternoon that he had just stopped by a girl’s apartment on the way home from school—and that her mom gave them cookies. What a charming tale of tween innocence, right? But of course, I hear girl, apartment, and cookies, and I think: “Ummm, what afterschool stories am I not hearing about? Or will not be privy to in the near future?”
Adam started middle school this year (grade 6), and I feel like I’m just starting to more fully comprehend the scope of the transition—the giant steps in independence and responsibility—that he’s been navigating.
In the course of making some prominent and painful stumbles, he’s learning to be responsible for getting his homework done on his own and, usually, my wife and I are out of the loop until he has to get our initials on something.
After school, he’s now getting home, or getting where he needs to go, with a lot of improvisation that I usually don’t know about. Walking with friends; going to the school yard; stopping for a snack somewhere—I don’t find out about this stuff, if at all, until the end of the day when we check in with each other.
And speaking with girls? As in, conversing? About what? The conversations between him and his boy friends are usually such a steady stream of nonsense that I have a tough time imagining what a girl would want to hear from him. But, yes, it’s happening—on social media and beyond.
I asked: “I know you go over your friends’ apartments, but do you regularly stop by girls’ apartments too?”
“No,” he responded, but then he dropped this bomb: “But sometimes they come over here. I mean, I don’t let them in, the place is a mess, but they like to see Lucy [our dog] so I bring Lucy out in the hallway.”
What, what, what, what, what?
I wasn’t prepared for another charming twist of tween innocence.
I saw an immediate need to clarify the rules about having kids over to our house when there are no adults around. But then I realized: We don’t have any rules! Didn’t know we needed them until yesterday.
It’s a transition year for all of us.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com
