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Friday, January 9, 2009

Navigating the preteen minefield

faOkay, I admit it. I am absolutely clueless about parenting teens. I am totally making it up as I go. I just keep trying random stuff hoping somehow the kids turn out all right and I survive as well.

Tonight I had the brilliant idea to take Grace out alone. This was genius. I've done it before, but it's been probably a couple of years since we did anything big together, alone. We ate at Chick-fil-a. (Her choice) I got caught up on school, her friends, some deeper issues, etc.

Then we went to see Twilight. She's now reading the books for the third time. Huge fan. I was interested to see how she would rate the movie since she is the target audience for the film. I was a little nervous since this is one of her first exposures to a pretty intense love story (Shawn calls it girl porn) :) I didn't want her to just get swept away by the romance of it all. She definitely liked the movie, but evaluated it well, too. I was really impressed with her take on the movie. She discussed the acting and directing and details that showed that she watched the movie critically and carefully evaluated what she was taking in.

I know that we have some tough days ahead as we figure out preteen hood together. I'm just having to learn as I go. But for tonight, I think I probably scored an A. Just listening, loving, and hanging out without judging or nagging or fussing. She came away feeling special, and I came away understanding her just a little bit better.

Looking forward to the rest of a busy weekend....dress shopping with a buddy in the morning for the Anna chamber of commerce banquet; band practice in the afternoon, then best of all, church on Sunday! Love weekends!

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