Thirteen year old boys are not  often full of  voluntary information, emotion, reasoning abilities, neatness skills,  or praise for parents.  At least this has been the case around our house.  All the things you taught them before they turned five – like brushing their teeth, saying please and thank you, picking up their toys and clothes, letting Mom know where they are, etc., etc., etc., just seem to disappear. Hugs and kisses goodnight also left the scene for sure when they became thirteen. It’s rather devastating if you’ve never lived through a teenage boy before.  You don’t realize it isn’t a permanent condition.  At any rate, its hard to connect with them at that age of life.  So it was especially thrilling when I was able to enjoy a few moments of being considered an OK Mom or maybe acceptable or something like that.

For his English class, my son was supposed to write about his birth.  When he announced that at the dinner table I thought, “Great!”  The pressure is on.  He’s not going to know anything about his birth.  That means I have to come up with the events leading up to and including the birth of this child; an event that took place thirteen years ago.  Heaven help me. If he had been an only child it might be easier, but he is one of many.  This was really my assignment and not his.

Fortunately I am a journaler and have been since I was very young. Hopefully I wrote something of substance down, otherwise I was going to have to make something up.  I went through my journals back to 1996 when this young son was born.  I hadn’t made an entry on the day he was born – not terribly surprising  but yet a little worrisome.  However,  a few days later there was an entry accompanied by feelings and descriptions of the newborn son.  The words I used to describe him left my thirteen year old amazed.  He even had information about the weather that year and other things that might be boring to just anyone.  Yet to him they were interesting and gave him not only more to write about, but I do believe it left him with the knowledge that he was a very important, wanted,  loved, happy, adorable (which he refused to put into his paper) little baby.  What a self esteem booster.  And as for me, boy was I relieved.  I was so glad I had written things down.  Best of all I had just experienced a genuine connect with my teenage son who  spent  more time than I expected reading other things about himself.

So, I’m encouraging young Moms to write. With the one-line entry option we have created in the Personal Journal it only takes a moment.  You can elaborate later, when you have time.  Just make sure you do it.  Its like putting money in the bank  and the returns are huge!