Children's Ages

As I talk about my age and how I view myself and think of myself as feeling younger than what my age says, I can see that my kids sure see themselves as older than how young they really are. My oldest daughter that will be 17 on Sunday, enough said, she's been thinking she's been old enough for everything since she was 8! But there is a silver lining for those of you out there with daugthers reaching 16 and 17...at least for us there was a silver lining. My daughter has really turned it around and has become a very pleasant person to be around!

Now comes my youngest daughter who is 9 years old...yes, you guessed it, she really, really wants to be like her older siblings. Last Saturday, I spent the majority of the day with her at her cheerleading competition. Her team placed 2nd and only one tenth of a point from first place! So as we were driving home, you think that would be the topic of conversation, no. All of a sudden she asks me, 'Would you be mad at me if I said something about the other kids in our family?' 'Um, no' (thinking to myself, what the heck happened today, this whole afternoon was all about her) As she continues to talk, she is sniffling...is she crying? What is going on? She continues to say how she really wants a cell phone, everyone else in the family has one and she's the only one that doesn't have one. She continues with letting me know that especially for cheer competitions, she had to use someone else's cell phone to find me in the audience.

Trust me, we've had these discussions before, many, many times! My youngest daughter sees her sister getting new cell phones like they are candy, partly because she has ruined them. Then along came her brother getting his cell phone. Let me preface by saying when and why my oldest daughter was given a cell phone when she entered the 6th grade. By this time, she was entering into her third year of competitive figure skating. She was skating Monday thru Friday at 5:30AM then going to school. After school, she either had ballet or strength training or more practice. Most of her training was downtown or close to so we gave her the cell phone for safety purposes.

Then our son entered into the sixth grade and therefore, he was given his own cell phone. Mind you for those of you that have both boys and girls in your household, there are differences in maturity levels and responsibility levels. Let's just say we had to work an entire year prior to him getting a real cell phone. We had him practice taking one of the 'dead' old cell phones with him everywhere he went as if it were activated. He still has to work on taking his cell phone EVERYWHERE he goes! Boys!!

So back to my 9 year old..I had to explain to her that having a cell phone was a HUGE responsibility and also a HUGE privilege. Plus, I had to point out to her that the cell phones her brother and sister have are technically mommy and daddy's because we pay for the service montly so we can take them away anytime we feel the privilege is being abused or some other incident caused this punishment. Trust me, for my oldest daughter, taking away her cell phone is like cutting her off from her entire world!

My 9 year old has problems showing us her level of responsibility so I told her she really has to work on showing us she will be ready when she enters the 6th grade, which will be in two years. I also pointed out to her that we will not let her have a cell phone any earlier because we set the age for all of our kids and if we budged for her, how fair is that and wouldn't that show the other two preferential treatment towards her? As parents we try so hard to be fair to all of our kids don't we? So hard for her to be patient when she sees her brother and sister get this or do that and she so wants to be like them...she is only 9 years old! I have to keep reminding myself of her age too at times, sometimes I expect her to act like she is as old as her siblings!

Our kids want to be older and us adults want to be younger...but really, I am very happy being my age, I wouldn't want to go back for the entire world!