I just returned from a 5-day trip to Orlando with my teenager, a trip I have been looking forward to since the moment he agreed to travel with me. It was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. We spent five blissful days communicating, hanging out, playing together, and not fighting. He talked to me, he laughed at my jokes, and he shared things with me - all activities that have been missing from our relationship since the onset of puberty.

In part, I have VisitOrlando, the Nickelodeon Suites Resort, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld to thank for this experience. They organized the trip and picked up the tab for most of our visit. They let my son and I share the magic of Harry Potter World, a real treat since we’d read the books together years ago. They provided the pool that he asked me to swim with him in, the rides we loved, and the shows we swapped opinions about.

But the real credit for this fabulous vacation goes to me and Devin - and the power of one-on-one parenting.
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I had finally hit my stride as a parent. When I heard friends with younger children talk about how worried they were about messing things up or getting things wrong, I realized just how far I’d come since those early days of constant self doubt. Although I had no illusions about getting it all right, I was finally confident enough to say I was a good mother. And then my oldest became a teenager.

Pride cometh before a fall, and confidence cometh before a teenager.

I’m only officially a few months into this new stage - although the teen attitude started several months before the 13th birthday - and I’m already completely exhausted from the experience. One of the worst parts, and perhaps the most unexpected struggle, is how alone I feel in it.
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I intended for Friday, December 14, 2012 to be all about celebrating my child becoming a teenager. Instead, it was the day that 20 first graders were killed in a small Connecticut town. In the days since, there has been a lot of talk about why this tragedy happened and how we might prevent it from happening again. This space is largely unsuited for most of those discussions. However, there has been one topic, something President Obama even mentioned during his speech in Newtown Sunday night , about which I can write: how to get help raising your kids.

We all need help.
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I have faced the last seven autumns with giddy anticipation. Back to school has always meant a return to my normal schedule , something it seems most parents appreciate more the longer a school vacation runs. But for the first time in my own parenting history, I am actually dreading the return to normal.

Perhaps it is because we have been away from normal for so long.
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I don’t like to spend a lot of time bemoaning choices I made in the past. It is, for the most part, a waste of mental energy - it’s not like my regret can propel me back in time so that I can do things differently. Furthermore, I believe that each day presents an opportunity to make new choices; it’s never too late to create the life you want, blah blah blah. However, as my kids get older (my oldest is going to be in junior high), I do find that there are some parenting choices I regret, choices that aren’t always easy to undo in the here and now.
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We tell our children that we don’t expect perfection, that it’s effort that is being measured, but are we misleading them? Are we misleading ourselves by pretending results don’t matter? I’m biting my tongue a lot in front of my kids so as not to dissuade their belief in trying, but I’m not so sure that’s best for any of us.
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Ah, the mobile lifestyle. So glamorous. So bohemian. So new agey and hip and now.

So, I spent last night sleeping on the concrete floor of a handicap bathroom. No one in my family is handicapped, but it was the largest unoccupied space in the bath house of the campground where we’re currently “living”, which allowed my entire family of four to huddle on the same floor together.

Technically, my husband and kids slept while I laid awake listening to the storm rage outside. My body has become too accustomed to memory foam to be able to sleep on a concrete floor, even with the hasty padding of a king-size comforter that was wrapped burrito style around us. The three of them were exhausted after the 1:30 am wake-up call that came from pounding rain, blinding lightning, and howling wind that actually shook the RV, exhausted enough to fall asleep once we’d relocated to the safest place I could think of when the watches turned to warnings on my iPhone’s weather app.
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One of the coolest things about a mobile lifestyle is the constant change. The scenery outside my window is different from one week to the next, giving me plenty of opportunities to explore, discover, and try new things. I never get bored.

As a mother, however, the constant change becomes a challenge to overcome.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, security is one of our most basic needs, trumped only by our physiological need for food, shelter and sleep. Maslow argues that a sense of security is even more important than the need for love (which - woah. I’ll definitely be thinking more about that.) For children, their necessary sense of security can be threatened by constant change.
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When my husband and I decided to move from Iowa to Florida a few years ago, we knew that meant giving our children a different growing up experience than we had. Instead of snow days and piles of leaves, they’d have beaches and possible hurricane evacuations. We considered it a fair trade. These days we’re asking our kids to give up even more, and I’m not always sure I’m comfortable with our decision.
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This week has been filled with painful lessons in letting go and saying goodbye. As I’ve struggled to navigate the heartache myself, I’ve also had to face helping my kids cope with change.

There’s no denying that change is hard. While choosing change is usually easier than having it thrust upon you, there are still sacrifices to be made. In our case, our family is choosing to leave people we love so that we can travel for a year. Four years ago we made a similar decision in order to move to a bigger city in a warmer state. In both instances we were excited about the adventures ahead of us, but we cried buckets over the relationships that would be significantly changed by distance.

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