Adolescence

One of the things that some parents (who, me?) sometimes forget with an adolescent is that the kid is transitioning from being an actual kid to being an actual adult. We tend to focus on the things that the kid does which aren't as they should be (as an adult would do them). A good example of that is going on here right now, as my wife and daughter are having a discussion about how much cleanup my daughter should do in her room, my wife feeling 'quite a lot' and my daughter feeling 'good the way it is'. Phrases like 'when I was a kid' and 'when you were a kid' are being bandied. No overt hostility, but clearly a simmering disagreement.

But what I like to remember, and I mean that in two ways, is that half an hour ago, my daughter was walking around, picking up things for her overnight trip to her grandmother's house, and doing so quickly and neatly. And in the middle of it, she made a call to a friend to discuss a school project, during which I heard her quickly outline a proposal for changing the way they were doing something, based on an observation she'd made while doing it. At which time, I thought 'oh, my'.

I like to tell her that I notice such things. This time, I didn't, because it was essentially a private conversation -- but I did.