Communicating with Young Adult Children

I thought the hardest time communicating with my kids would be when they were little. Maybe they didn't know all the words yet. Maybe they could understand but not speak.
Communication has been hindered even as they grow up.
This morning, Grace texted me asking if we could talk today -- "face to face."
And luckily, we could. I teach in the evenings on Thursday, so I put aside my plans for the day. My writing, my grading, and drove the half hour to her college, picking her up between classes.
She climbed in the car and gave me a big hug.
We drove to Starbucks and I pulled out a legal tablet. I made three columns and put a heading for each one -- her choices for the summer -- an internship in Scotland that would be behind the scenes theater work; a full-time job at the college as front of the house manager of the theater; or a couple of part-time jobs that would allow her to act in a few musicals this summer.
She filled out her list of pros and cons for each possibility. In the end, it didn't matter which column had more pros and fewer cons; it came down to her heart.
Sensibly, she should take the theater job with a chance to make a lot of money and have a solid management credential on her resume. But her heart is in acting. She couldn't bear to give it up.
"Look, you have one more semester at school. There's no reason you have to make a lot of money this summer. That might not be true next summer. Next summer you'll have to be more responsible. Go with what you love." I told her.

I get to see these two more often and communicate in
person with them. But talking with an 18-year-old boy
is never easy. 

Hopefully, she'll make enough to cover her living expenses this summer and her books in the fall. Come December, she'll graduate and be in the real world. This summer she can act. She's starting with The Graduate in April, then has pretty solid promises of roles in Into The Woods and Legally Blonde. It's probably not the most responsible choice, but for most of our lives we have to make the responsible choice rather than doing what we love.
I'm so thankful that Grace is close enough that when she texted and asked me to meet her, I could. That hasn't always been the case since she started at a college 10 hours away.
The distance is one thing I'm negotiating with my youngest as he decides where to go to college. He liked Mizzou (University of Missouri) which is more than an 8-hour drive from home. But he has other choices 1 1/2 hours away and 3 hours away. I have to try to convince him that being within a short driving distance has its advantages. At 18, the far away colleges seem  to be full of promise and intrigue.
On our drive home from the college visit the other night, in the dark as we both stared straight ahead at the highway, I tapped Tucker on the leg and asked him to take off his headphones. Headphones are like armor to teenage boys -- they keep everyone away.
We started talking in the dark, battling at first until finally the walls came down and we told each other how we honestly felt about the colleges, about these last few days of high school. It felt like a reprieve and I could breathe a sigh of relief for a little while.
Which brings me to my other son, age 20, and attending college in Florida. That's a 16-hour drive away. Only a couple of hours on a plane, but the cost adds up for that. He's on spring break in Miami and called yesterday to say that he dropped his cell phone in the hot tub. It's not working now.

This is the hot tub Spencer dropped
his phone into. 

This is not a new phenomenon for my children. Grace dropped her phone in the Mediterranean Sea when she visited Europe.
Luckily, we have an upgrade available, so I can send him a new phone. He was due for one this summer anyway. Without a cell phone, I truly have no way to reach him. I'm hoping for no emergencies until I can get him another phone.
For now, he's perusing the phone choices on our cell phone carrier. I'm already dreading the time when he gets the phone and I have to walk him through activating it. He's my least technically inclined. He'd much rather clear trails in a forest than navigate a computer or cell phone.
So communicating with kids doesn't get that much easier as they grow up, and we try to figure out new ways to keep in touch.
I'm not complaining though. At least we're all still trying to relate to each other.

First Paragraph Tuesday -- Going Underground

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I just started this book, Going Underground by Susan Vaught. This writer is on one of my Yahoo writers' groups and she sent a message yesterday about discussion of turning her book into a movie, which is very cool.
The story is about a 17-year-old boy who digs graves because he can't get another job or go to college after he got in trouble as a 14-year-old. What'd he do? His girlfriend sexted him a picture of herself.
When I got the book, I didn't realize that it was a young adult novel, but I'll probably keep reading for awhile to see if it catches me. Here are the opening two paragraphs:

Dead zones are places without life, without feeling, without air. I've seen them in pictures of polluted oceans and read about them in descriptions of the cold void of space. Sometimes I think parts of my body have turned silent and dark like those pictures and descriptions. Sometimes I think I've become a dead zone.
I mop sweat off my forehead with a dirty handkerchief, reposition the earbuds, and adjust the iPod in my pocket, then pick up my shovel. It's hot, and it's late afternoon, and this is a graveyard. It's a quiet place down a long country road and sort of in the middle of nowhere, like graveyards people write about in horror stories -- only this cemetery isn't creepy, at least, not to me. The graveyard is not huge, but it's big enough and full of headstones and plots. My job is to dig the graves, then close them up again, and it's time to move dirt from one spot to another to bury a body that really, truly has become a dead zone. I'm glad for the pine box that hides the sewn eyes and the blank face. Some things just don't need to see the light of day again.

What do you think?
Just found out two days later: I just found out that this book, Going Underground, is not the same book as the Going Underground on my Yahoo group list. That book Going Underground is by Suzie Tullett and sounds much more my style. "A laugh out loud, feel good novel with Brit flick flair." It's also the one that may get made into a movie. So I can throw aside this Going Underground and get the other one. As I told the author last night in an email, I was reading this gravedigging book and wondering when the Brit Flick was going to start...

Cell-Phone Parenting

I hate being a cell-phone parent.
Maybe that is what I have been since my kids started school four years ago and I gave all three of them a phone. It's convenient to keep track of them as they roam our little town. "Where are you?" I will text.
"At the turf," comes the reply a second later.
They know they must answer their phones when I call or text, or they risk losing their cell phones. "You have that phone so I can reach you!" I threaten.
Having one child go far away puts a whole new spin on cell-phone parenting.
When I went to college, my parents arranged for me to await their call each Sunday night. I would linger in the lobby waiting for the one phone in the dorm to ring. I wasn't very mature at age 17 when I went away to college. I'm sure my conversations with my parents depended on what kind of mood I was in right at that moment.
Now, Grace can contact me and I can contact her during every up and down of her life. And we do.
My friend Michelle explained that the freshman year is like a W -- it has its ups and downs. They love it one moment then hate it the next. I think Grace's first few weeks have been like WWWWWW. She made friends. She loved everyone in her dorm.But, scheduling her classes was a mess -- she hated it. Their dorm made a music video, but she missed an assignment because she didn't see the posting.
They went swimming in the river and jumped off a rope swing, but she lost her student id so she couldn't get into the dorm or go to the cafeteria.
When Grace calls or texts with these dilemmas, she doesn't really ask what she should do. She is just sharing her life. (Okay, I did help with scheduling classes:P)
When she missed the assignment in class, she had already gone to the professor to see how to make it up. When she lost her student id, she went to security. She called me as she trudged across campus in the 95-degree heat to get her driver's license. She wanted to complain. That's fine. I can take the complaining. When I check with her later, she is usually fine.
Learning about the ups and downs as they occur feels exhausting. It's like watching a far away movie that my kid is starring in. I can't affect the outcome at all.
Last night, the swim team was having a ritual. Grace was petrified. Were they going to be hazed?
She tried to ferret out details. Red wine would be involved. "Don't wear anything that you mind getting stained" was my advice. Were the older girls seriously going to force them to drink? I tried to be reassuring.
Meanwhile, she arranged for her roommate and a friend to walk over to retrieve her from the swim team ritual at 11 p.m. That way, if she had been forced to drink, she would get home safely. That seems like a smart exit strategy.
Overall, she's making mature choices.
Now I just need to get to the point that I can let go of the worries about her as she burrows her way out of the bottom of that W and heads to the next peak. I'm sure that with a three-day weekend upon us, she will be soaring along the top of the W all weekend long.

Here's Grace teaching her baby cousin, Caroline, how to text in case she ever needs some cell-phone parenting from her mom.

Baby Texts

Yesterday was Earl's niece's birthday. I don't know why I say Earl's niece since we've been married 20 years, but I feel too young to have a 32-year-old niece. She brought her 4-month-old over to spend some time with us while she ran errands. Caroline is a little hesitant to warm up to us (especially Earl). But she loves Grace.
We had another beautiful day, so 20 minutes before the end of school, I put her in the stroller and walked up to the high school to meet Grace. Caroline fell asleep shortly after Grace joined us, so we stopped at the coffee shop and continued our walk home. As soon as we got home, Grace scooped her out of the stroller. She hasn't heard the saying: "Let sleeping babies lie."
She wanted to play with Caroline. And, as you can tell from the photo, she had important things to teach her. What four-month-old doesn't know how to text? How's she going to stay in touch with all of her baby friends if she can't text yet?
Caroline is practically going cross-eyed trying to focus on that phone.

Self-Centeredness

This topic comes up, not only because I live in a houseful of teenagers, but because I live in a country where we are pretty much intent on finding joy for ourselves, even at the expense of others. It's not like we trample people lying in front of us, but we aren't overly aware of how our actions affect others.
I thought about this last night and again this morning while listening to the radio. A small town near Columbus decided to ban texting while driving. The radio spoke with a woman whose husband was killed in a car accident because the other driver was texting. The woman's voice was raw as she asked how that driver could have thought that her text message, her communication with someone by phone, was more important than someone's life. Of course, if we asked the driver, she would not have said that her text was more important than the man's life. But she was busy thinking about what she needed. She was entertaining herself, or answering someone's question about where she was, or her plans for that evening. I never thought that texting or talking on the phone was self-centered until I heard the wife's words about her husband's death.
Then this morning the radio played some clips from the UN conference where President Obama spoke on, among other things, global warming. He said, "all nations must act responsibly." That doesn't seem self-centered. Later, the president of the Maldives spoke urging nations to make a difference at a global warming conference in December that takes place in Copenhagen. Global warming means something different to President Mohammed Nasheed, leader of an island nation that barely keeps its head above sea level. The story at NPR put it this way: "Nasheed said he's often called upon to remind people in the rich countries about the fate of small island states, but he says the world continues on, business as usual."
How selfish are we that idling in the car in the drive through is more important than the fate of the people in the Maldives. Our wants are more important than their needs, than their existence.
Here are Nasheed's exact words, taken from the NPR story:

When the Maldives desperately want to believe that one day our words will have an effect. And so we continue to shout them even though deep down we know that you're not really listening.

Ouch! That hurt. That takes me right back to Horton Hears a Who. Here is a tiny island calling and waving, warning us of the danger, and we drive two blocks to the dry cleaners, or turn the air conditioning on because it is 80 degrees outside.
Maybe it is time for us to figure out, as people, as Americans, as members of the Western world, that each of our actions is having a reaction somewhere.
I'm going to work on being less self-centered. Maybe it will spread as quickly as swine flu.
Here's the complete NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113107142

Texting photo used with permission from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishardofoz/3468355123/