My Parenting Mistake #1542 was not telling my kids about 9/11 until years after it happened.

Not telling them made sense at the time. We were a Waldorf School family. All that terrible day at my kids’ Pennsylvania school there was intense whispering in the halls — teachers and parents trying to make sense of a world suddenly falling apart. Figuring out What To Tell The Children.

In the end, school officials opted to ask us parents to tell our kids nothing. This was a burden adults should bear alone, they said. So I went home with my children and tried not to watch the horrible images on CNN. Turned off NPR. Refrained from hugging my kids too tightly. Kept adult whispering to secluded late nights and early mornings. Tried not to think of the families who had suddenly lost someone. Tried not to wonder if the world was going to end.
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All my life I hated my middle name. And then a year ago I changed my name — first, middle, last, the whole shebang — and that was that. But growing up, I NEVER told anyone my middle name. Never. (It was Sue. Bleh.)

And then I had kids, which felt like a huge gift in the naming do-over department. I could give them awesome names that rocked! If I loved the names I gave my kids, hopefully they would too. So far, the feedback is that I did okay, even in the middle name arena. In fact, I was so surprised by the middle names we parents are handing our kids. They’re so…middle-y. Which leads me to wonder whether we need them at all. Are they just a syllable filler between the first name and the last name? Are they a way to let the kid know he has REALLY transgressed (”John Michael Smith, you come here this minute and explain the peanut butter on your sister!”)?

Do we need middle names?

Top three middle names for boys and girls, according to Babble.com:
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I suspect that there is nothing that ages us parents more than having kids. Oh, I don’t mean the gray hairs that appear overnight from weeks of colicky 4am wee-of-the-night “bonding” with a newborn. Nor do I mean the heartstopping moments when your toddler’s sticky little hand slips purposefully out of your grasp followed by gleeful shrieks and a short-legged dash for the open car-studded street. Nope. I mean popular culture. Explaining it to kids. That’s when you suddenly see how impossibly OLD you are, light years away from hip in any of its incarnations. Oh ell dee old.

It all started with an IM conversation with my daughter Serena. She’s 11, that bershon age where every eye roll is a commentary on my hopeless inability to approach coolness even with a ten-foot pole. She had accidentally typed the word teh.
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The day is coming. I can deny it all I want, but it is coming and there is nothing I can do about it. My daughter is hitting puberty. And likely she is going to date. Boys. Maybe girls. Whatever. Either way she needs a mother’s advice about dating. Right?

Part of me wants to hand out phrases like “They only want one thing!” and “Keep your legs together!” but not only does that place me squarely back in 1956 (maybe 1856) but it also misses the point entirely. Want to hear what my mom’s dating advice to me was? When she found out I was, at 15, headed out for my first date, she pulled me aside, lowered her voice, looked around conspiratorily, and asked, “Do you NEED anything….?”
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My heart broke this past weekend thinking about the families who had planned for a Rapture that did not occur: the plans they made, the financial resources they gave away thinking they wouldn’t be needed, the unnecessary fears foisted upon children. As 6pm last Saturday approached, my Facebook stream filled with humorous pokes at the prophecy, and while I laughed at the foibles of humanity I also felt a growing sense of discomfort at the implication that just because we don’t agree with someone else’s beliefs, theirs are wrong. I believe that as parents we are obligated to share our beliefs with our children as a part of sharing ourselves as people, but I believe it is just as important to teach that other people have beliefs that differ from our own. It’s not a black and white world. We owe it to our children to teach them shades of gray.
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I type that headline, “Right age for a first laptop computer,” and suddenly my head is swimming with images of toddlers hurling banana-and-Cheerio-encrusted Macbook Pros off high chairs, and I cringe. But only a little. Because my baby needs a laptop.

Here’s the deal. Serena is eleven. She is already planning what her Middle School Experience will be like, which in her district is next year. Sixth grade. (omg, my baybeeeee….). And she has both me and her dad convinced that in middle school, a computer is de rigueur. Which may or may not be true. But I suspect she is right. It might rankle her older brother Nathaniel a little, who was the ripe old age of 12 when he received his first computer (a gift from me so we could stay in closer touch), but younger siblings almost always get privileges sooner than their older siblings. Right? That’s how it was for me, which must have irked my older brother considerably, but I knew exactly how to employ it to my best advantage. Ahem. Not that your kids would do that.
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My daughter Serena, 11, needs a job this summer. Or maybe next year. Her older brother Nathaniel is heading off for a year in France and she will miss him terribly, so I am conspiring now to help make her life awesome instead of lonely while he is away.

I already suggested she get a kitten. But a kitten will only go so far and won’t pay her any money. She needs something more, something Super Awesome, something that will capitalize on the sense of responsibility she is building this year as a top-of-the-elementary-school 5th grader.

Yes, my kid needs a job*. But what?
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I was intrigued by a Yahoo Shine poll today asking parents if they discuss natural disasters with their kids. More than half said yes, we want them to know. I liked that. I’m on the same page as 52% of America! Yay!

In September 2001 I was spending my days breastfeeding one child in the parent lounge of my Waldorf school while another child attended kindergarten. On the morning of September 11 a friend received a text about an airplane and the World Trade Center. Soon all the parents awaiting kindergarten pickup and even some teachers were in the halls, whispering. Something had happened. An hour later we all knew. By noon the official school word was out: parents were not to tell the children what had happened. A huge thing had happened that would change all our lives forever, and we were not to talk about it with our children.

I hated that.
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Last week, Work It, Mom colleague Lylah Alphonse from The 36-Hour Day wrote a post over at Yahoo Shine about what turned out to be a highly controversial topic — moms leaving kids. The post has more than 16,000 comments so far. That’s sixteen. THOUSAND. Ahem.

[Disclosure: Lylah's article is in part about me and she wrote with compassion and curiosity. I heart her much. A more detailed account of my story is here, but the short version is: I left my three younger children in custody of their formerly absentee-ish father, not to pursue my dreams but because I believed that by removing myself from a horrendously conflict-ridden situation, all our lives would be better. My children would have one home. My ex could step up to his potential as a father. The constant conflict would be over and everyone would be happier. And yes, there could be a space where I could pursue my dreams and be awesome.]
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[From the Blogger Formerly Known as Karen Murphy. Next week: why I changed my name!][Also: it hasn't escaped my notice that my last three posts all deal with death. What's up with that??]

Last week I received a brief emailed note from my son’s high school. A student ended his life last night. OMG. My heart ached for the student’s family, whoever they were. No names or identifying information were given. The next day I talked to my son on the phone. He’s 15.

How was your day?

Terrible. It was a really, really bad day. A terrible day.

Then I knew. They had been friends. Turns out they ran cross country and track together. The boy was one of the nicest people my son knows. Knew. They were friends. A friend of his was no longer alive. Forever gone in one moment. Just like that. Suicide. Why?

I tell myself that even if I was 3000 miles closer, there would have been nothing I could have done differently than what I did. I listened. Told him how sorry I was. Told him that he is loved. Let my tears for this tragedy and his loss show. Yes, I could have hugged him. I would have liked that. I hated that my little boy, now so much a man, has learned how to grieve.

He posted a moving tribute to his friend on his Facebook wall, a remembrance of the boy’s character and little moments they had shared. I have never felt so proud as when I read it, especially the last sentence: I love you, man. No, he’s not a boy any longer, my son. Those words were from a man.

The next day my daughter, 11, asked me what she could do to help her brother feel better. She knew he was hurting, and she felt it too. She wanted to show him that she was touched, that she cared. I heart my kids so, so hard.

The whole community was struck by this event, from what I can tell. The school seems vigilant in providing support. There was a memorial. I am grateful for that.

Kids grieve truly, I think. Openly. With their hearts. I wonder what we can learn from this. It feels wrong to teach my children to grieve the way adults do, carefully. I am a hospice volunteer and was taught a little about grief, that it’s a highly individual process. I wonder how this will unfold for my son. Surely every time he meets for track practice he will feel the loss of his friend. There will be reminders. And unanswered questions. We can sort of wrap our heads around accidents — they happen, right? — but it’s less understandable why someone would not want to be. To be here. We wonder what we could have done differently. How the story might still be unfolding, if only. If only.

I have adult friends whose lives were touched by suicide, so I know a little from that place. And when I was 14 a classmate hanged himself. I was friends with his older brother later, and he always held a bit of sadness that I imagined was the unexpected loss of his little brother. I know, I know, we all experience loss in our lives, but somehow this kind of loss seems so much more poignant to me. Things were just getting started for this boy. People loved him. And his pain was, perhaps, more than he could bear.

Words of wisdom? I’m fresh out.