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Mom Blogging When You Have Teenage Children

This is what a good mother says about her teenage children in a public forum

Teenage Children Blogging

You can’t even paint a pretty picture of your teenage kids. I mean you can, but it’s kind of an asshole move. What are you going to talk about? How gracefully they navigated puberty? Their grades? Their friends and that one mother who you think is going to make things difficult for all of them? Do you talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and cliques and sex?

No.

You don’t blog about teenagers because it’s hard enough to be 13 or 17 without your Mom dissecting everything in a public forum. You can’t even take a selfie with a teenager because they don’t want it and you have to respect their boundaries.

no selfies.

Oh…. errr…. ummmm

Well you’re supposed to respect their boundaries anyhow.

Mothers of teenagers have just run out of universal stories to tell. It’s easy when they’re two or even eight. There are milestones that every parent hits right along with their kids: feeling like you’re going to die from sleeplessness followed by the first night of six consecutive hours of sleep, diapers, potty training, babbling, first words, first foods, first teeth, first days of school, first sleepovers, first friends and first time on an airplane. There are too many milestones to name for kids under 10 and they’re easy to share because none of them are particularly novel, embarrassing or likely to be unearthed by a frenemy.

None of that holds true as kids enter middle school. It’s no one’s business if your kid is struggling academically and conversely if you’re constantly talking about your gifted Straight A little royal they (and you) might not be liked much. We do not talk about puberty in public places unless it’s our own – and no one wants to hear about a 45 year old’s experience with puberty. It’s enough to know that you’ve come out the other end. Not every kid plays sports or an instrument so blogging about that can turn niche quickly.

Should mom bloggers talk about teenage parties? I’m going to go with a no on that one. Concerts? Obviously not. I mean the fact that half of LA private school kids will miss school the days before and after Coachella is because they all caught the same nasty cold.

Oops again.

I guess you can talk about learning to drive, taking standardized test and maybe college admissions (with permission of course). But really? For parents of teenagers we’re probably looking at a good ten years of shutting up. Assuming we’re doing it right. Which I am not.