The Trouble with Thirteen

Brrrr….it was c-c-cold here this weekend.  Everyone in our little town was excited about getting snow.  But we live a few miles outside of town and we only got hail and sleet.  The kids were bummed.  Slush isn’t nearly as much fun as snow, even if it doesn’t stick to the ground.

Saturday was Noah’s 13th birthday.  This, my friends, is upsetting to this momma who refers to him as “one of the little boys.”  The last 4 of my kids are boys so they are the “little boys”.  And now the first of them is an official teenager.  This is the one kid that I have been dreading his teen years.  Not because of the typical teen attitude, but because he doesn’t think before he acts and this leads to trouble.

At least once a day I can be heard saying, “Noah, why did you _____?  Did it occur to you that you should have asked me before you did that?”  “No ma’am,” he’ll reply, “I just thought that’s what I was supposed to do.”  It could be anything from unscrewing the screws that hold the deck together to turning the knobs on the stove….this kid will be the one that burns the house down.

The poor guy does really try, but his mind just doesn’t finish a thought.  It’s something we are working on and hopefully, by the time he’s 30, he’ll be ready to go out on his own.

He spent the day Saturday playing Wii.  Since the “little boys” are only allowed to play once a week for 2 hours, he was dying to just be able to play for a longer period of time.  Throughout the day the rest of us would wander in and out of the living room and play for a while.  I just watched because the only Wii game I like to play is “Cook or Be Cooked” and no 13 year old boy wants to spend his birthday pretending to chop onions and pour oil into a pan with his mom.

And no mom wants to spend her Saturday playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

And now that I’m down to 3 “little boys” I’m going to spend the week squeezing hugs out of Adam, Elijah and Levi until they promise never to turn 13 or mess with any of the knobs in the kitchen.

Have a great week!

15 Comments

  1. Lisa,
    We are living parallel lives. I HAVE ONE OF THESE BOYS!! I know EXACTLY what you mean. Exactly! I am heard so very often saying the exact words to him. Amazing. I think we must be twins separated at birth. Enjoy all those hugs! 🙂

  2. My baby is 5 today (Valentine’s Day- because it’s probably still the 13th where you are)
    It’s just not fair that no matter what you do they just keep on growing up!

  3. My 18yr old still hugs his mum, but my 8yr old boy did promise me when he was almost 4… He said, ‘Mum, I’ve got to be four, but once I’m four I promise I’ll stay there’. Hmmph… he lied to me :'( He’s now almost NINE… just not allowed, cos he’s ma baby…

  4. Oh, yes…I, too, had one of those sons! I could never think ahead of him. I just couldn’t imagine what he would think to do. I mean, why would a mother say, “Don’t dig up half of the backyard looking for a long-buried raccoon so that you can see what the bones look like now”? Or “When you dig a ‘foxhole’ and jump into it, be sure that it is wide enough that your legs don’t get bent behind you so that your father will have to dig you out”? Or “Don’t use the family van to see what it feels like to slide in snow, because you might knock the side mirror off in the process”? Mothers just don’t think like that!

    The good news? As an adult, this son is a loving family man and a valuable, successful employee. (And now he has a son. Wonder if he’ll think to tell him these things…)

  5. Happy birthday to Noah! My 4-year-old is like that. At around 20 months, he removed half the screws from his crib (while he was still in it). Recently, he took scissors and cut the electrical cord to his dad’s electric toothbrush (while it was still plugged in). This evening, we watched part of “August Rush” in French until I could figure out what he’d done to the remote. On the upside, he already changes his own batteries in his toys without asking.
    I’m sure this should tell me something important about his learning style, but I have no idea what to do with it.

  6. My son has some of those same characteristics! He turned 9 a month ago. He doesn’t try to break stuff or bang or scratch or knock over. But, if it’s going to happen, it WILL happen to him. And, oh my word, he is so into Lego Start Wars. I have no idea where that infatuation came from. His dad would have never been into Star Wars and I certainly never liked the look of all the Star War stuff when my kids were little. Then my son got older and started checking Star War books out of the library and even got his sister interested in them. *throws hands up in the air!

    Happy 13th Birthday to your son! I hope his year is the best year ever!

  7. Sounds like you have a “Calvin” just like I did…
    I loved the Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin was banging nails into the coffee table and when his mom asked what he was doing, he asked if that was a trick question?? That just seemed to so-often summarize life with Rob!
    Hang in there Mama—my Rob is now in his 20s, has a good job leading to a career position, and just got engaged to a wonderful young woman. If you raise Noah to adulthood still in (basically) one piece—you’ve done good!

  8. Ahhahahaha!! I think you just described my 12 1/2 yr old. 😉 He likes to be “helpful”. Most recently, he attached my house key to my van key chain. How am I supposed to keep the van going while all the kids are loading and still lock the door?? LOL I also “lose” things often because he’s been “helpful” and put them away… And taking things apart? Don’t get me started. Enjoy your “little” boy (he’s still little until he’s 30, right?). 😉

  9. I am a new follower 🙂 I saw your comment on “Sawdust and Paper Scraps” about my playhouse and had time to sit and check out your website. You made me laugh when you said that you weren’t afraid to start cutting holes in the walls either 🙂 Hope you are having a great Sunday 🙂

    Bj

  10. Haha there’s hope! My husband officially moved out of his parents home when he was 26. But that’s because he was saving to buy an achreage! Good thing I met him after he moved, I might have been harder to win over! I kid that I was waiting for him to grow up(he’s 5 years older than me)! But there is hope. He may grow into a great inventer/problem solver. Because of all his investigation.

  11. Haha there’s hope! My husband officially moved out of his parents home when he was 26. But that’s because he was saving to buy an achreage! Good thing I met him after he moved, I might have been harder to win over! I kid that I was waiting for him to grow up(he’s 5 years older than me)! But there is hope. He may grow into a great inventer/problem solver. Because of all his investigation.

    My husband was said to just hold toys but eventually he was dismantling them and recreating them! He’s now a fantastic problem solver and creatively designs things for home and work!

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