Материнство в период перименопаузы: как мамы подростков находят поддержку в общении с коллегами по несчастью

This house is being overrun with hormones. Parenting multiple teens while in Perimenopause sometimes feels like a joke. Half the time I expect to have someone walk out and reveal hidden cameras, so I can laugh nervously and say, “OK. It all makes more sense now. I knew that couldn’t be real.” Thankfully, I’m on my last young teen now of the four daughters I had. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. She’ll be 15 in January. By my calculations, she will start evening out within a year or so. (Don’t burst my bubble) I’m at least close to the end zone. I thought the two middle ones would be the hardest, born close enough to one another, and everyone always thought they were twins. Their school used to feature their faces on the “Twins” page of the yearbook, even though they kept saying they weren’t, until eventually they gave up and let people believe it. I thought them feeding off one another in the young teen years was the worst I’d have to deal with. How could the moods get worse? They would tag-team me and try pitting me against the other, but, friends, I was wrong. Father, forgive me. I was unprepared for this last one. This one turned 13, and immediately the game was ON. It was honestly almost instantaneous. The mood swings, the storming off, the “WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?!” All of it. What’s scariest about this one is that she probably IS smarter than me. Straight A’s, very involved in sports. She can name every flag of almost every single country within seconds. When she was high on anesthesia after having her wisdom teeth removed, she even asked me to quiz her on them. And the smart ones are the scary ones because you can’t argue with them. She tries to challenge me, and because I’m in perimenopause, I feel like every answer to her lately is “I don’t know.” And I don’t know. Not anymore. Not answers to questions, or what day of the week it is. Not what to do with the scraggly witch hair I have all of a sudden. Not if I have an appointment, or what I came into a room for. The timing feels cruel for me to be at the phase of feeling like I could drool on my own shirt at any minute, while, at the same time, having my main abuser be my own 14-year-old. I made her with my own body, apparently strictly to buy her drinks and let her be in charge of the Aux cable in my car. Lately she’s been irritable about everything, and there is a vitamin manufacturer that is making a lot of money off it. I saw an ad that said they could help fix irritability, and I was like, “Take all my money.” I literally signed up within seconds for a monthly subscription to them. I know we will both survive it. I know the way it goes. You just have to plan for the fact that between the ages of 12 and 16, you might be tempted sometimes to Hansel and Gretel them. It passes. One day, the sun is shining again, birds are chirping, and they re-normalize. One day they re-emerge. The old them appears, and they stop asking for boba. The best thing to do is just ride it out. Run bubble baths and give head rubs. Tell them you love them and you’re proud of them out of the blue. Surprise them sometimes and show up with their top favorite snack. Right now is just the phase when we *might* need a pair of tongs to deal with her. There are nights when the whole family does “1-2-3 NOT IT!” The other afternoon, she had fallen asleep, but needed to be awakened for soccer practice, so my husband called my 19-year-old in to do it. “Hey, do me a favor and go wake Paige up. She needs to eat something, then get ready for practice.” The 19-year-old responded with a quiet, “But I’m scared.” I told her to view it like the Sphinx Gate in The NeverEnding Story. There were two outcome options. Either she would return fine because she was pure of heart, or she would be incinerated, and – good news – she probably wouldn’t feel it. And the thing is, I actually really love the teenage years, even though they’re a challenge. They’re also some of the most fun years. When this youngest one is not a bridge troll demanding we goats bring her a sacrifice, She’s actually delightful, brilliant, confident, and extremely hilarious. I’m glad I made it through this three times before and lived to tell the tale of it. It gives me something to cling to as I’m thrown back into it all again. She’s just figuring out life and emotions like we all are. I can love her through it. I’ll just wear a helmet. The other day, I was pulling out of the driveway on a particularly rough parenting day, thinking about my own changing body, waves of emotions, and weirdly itchy ear canals, when I spotted her oldest sister, who lives next door, loading my nearly 3-year-old granddaughter, Mavis, into the car seat of her car. Suddenly, she looked across the driveway at me and held up the hand signal people use for domestic abuse in the air. Like Katniss, but for moms. She’s just now starting to experience the joys of a feisty 3-year-old. Poor thing. She’s so mild-mannered. My granddaughter, Mavis, is about to have her asking for a shock blanket, I fear. But, she looked at me with that hand signal in the air, and I smiled. We’ve got this! Both of us are at opposite ends of the timeline: Me, ending. Her, just begun. I’ve always said 3 and 12-16 are the phases, man, and we are IN IT. Solidarity, Sis. Just riding the wave of hormones in our adjoining homes.. If you know the mother of a 3-year-old or a young teen daughter, hug her this week. Maybe just text to check in. Make sure she’s eaten and is caffeinated. We are battered and bruised, but still believing we will make it. It’ll all turn out alright. One day, that hand signal will go from one signaling abuse to victorious.