Miss Independence

Every morning, I roll out of bed like a good little trained mommy and head to the kitchen to make breakfast for my daughters before they rush off to school. Making sure they start the day with a nutritious meal (well, sometimes I make pancakes) is important to me, always has been, ever since they were young enough to nipple-feed.

I usually make their school lunches, too, right after the milk is poured, unless they’re buying that day.

Yep, preparing meals for our children is what good mothers do. But on the way to school today, my teenager shocked me. “Mom,” she announced, “I want to start making my own breakfast. And lunch, too.”

What’s going on here? Lately, she has really been thinking seriously about her future. And I like that. She’s only a junior, but she talks about college all the time and how she can’t wait to be on her own. Out of nowhere, she started getting A+’s. Not just A’s, but grades in the 100+ percentiles. Now, if you knew this text-messaging, iTunes-obsessed, MTV-watching girl like I do, you’d swear that she must be channeling someone else’s spirit. Someone who died at Harvard. Or Princeton.

In the car this morning, she told me that she wants to start doing more things for herself, like making her own breakfast, because she wants to feel more independent. She said she’s going to be leaving soon for college, and she needs to know how to take care of herself.

Isn’t this the moment every parent dreams of, the one that was first hatched somewhere between all the diaper changes and butt-wiping? “Gosh, I can’t wait until this child can take care of herself one day!”

That moment has arrived, folks -- all too soon, I might add. As I turn in for the night, I will happily change the settings on my alarm clock. Since I won't have to get up up bright and early to make breakfast anymore, I'll get to sleep in an extra half hour tomorrow. It will feel like an early Christmas.

But for my teenager, tomorrow will be more like Independence Day.

Photo by Photographer Chuck Felix

Freak . . . Out!

If you have a teenager, surely you’ve heard of Freak Dancing. I first heard of it when my now-teen was in 8th grade, but I did a little research and found out that kids have been dancing like this at school dances for about 10 years.

So, what is it? It is a VERY sexually suggestive kind of dancing where partners will grind each other and simulate sex on the dance floor. As one parent described it, “If the teens didn’t have their clothes on, you’d swear they were having sex.”

My teen claims it’s very innocent, that it’s “just the way we dance.” To watch teens “freaking,” it doesn’t look so innocent. In fact, watching it borders on voyeurism. What I am so appalled by is that boys my teen has never even met before will walk up behind her, grab her torso and start grinding her from behind . . . and that’s acceptable??!

Parents and teachers all across the country have expressed outrage and have tried, unsuccessfully, to ban Freak Dancing from school dances. I just had a dean of students at my daughter’s school tell me that they made the entire student body watch a spoof on Freak Dancing to hammer home the message that it was forbidden at dances.

Yeah, I’m sure that was real effective. It probably did nothing more than teach those teens a few more sexually-charged dance moves that they couldn’t wait to try out at the next dance.

I try to do my part and explain to my teen that life isn’t one big music video; real people in the real world don’t go around rapping and acting like gangsters; and strange men don’t come up behind me in line at the grocery store and start grinding me. (Though it could be one more reason to spend more time at the grocery store, huh, moms?)

As cool as it looks on YouTube and MTV, “freaking” with a total stranger isn’t really the best way to start a conversation with someone, in my opinion. But what do I know? I’m just an out-of-touch parent from another planet and a bygone era.

The era, I should remember, when Rock ‘N’ Roll was considered scandalous, too.