Becoming the mother to a tween boy was not what I expected. In case there is a question, kids between 8 and 12 are called tweens. They are in between being a little child and a teenager. Maybe it would have been different if I had a girl, but I have four wild, crazy, wonderful boys.

There are so many changes that take place, it's hard to see it when you live with them, though. That's where pictures come in handy. They remind you how much you truly need to value every second of their little lives. It really does go by so fast.

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The Day My Son Became A Tween

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My oldest son obviously reached the tween years first. I can tell you that I was not a happy person. It was like I woke up one day and got slapped in the face with a tweenager. All of a sudden, my sweet little boy thinks he can talk smack to me. What is going on here? Who is this child?

It was like talking to a wall. I clearly remember him walking out of his bedroom with his hat turned backward [for the first time], and I thought, "This is it; this is my son." As if that was going to be him for the rest of his life. I honestly didn't know what to do, and I wanted my sweet little, Thomas the Train-loving boy back.

No, This Did Not Happen In One Day

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This was a series of events that had taken place slowly but surely over a few months. I just kept telling myself it was just an off day. It hurt my feelings a little. I was always so close to him and that relationship was falling apart. He didn't need me or want to be around me as much anymore.

He was a tween, who started to care a lot about what other people thought about him. He needed to fit in with them, not mom. He didn't completely reject me, but the mood swings made him less than delightful to be around. This change in attitude and independence caused me a great deal of confusion. One, I have never been a tweenage boy. Two, he was my first tweenage boy, I had nothing to compare this to.

Time To Talk To Other Moms

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I took to social media where I was able to ask a lot of other people at one time if this was common behavior. I soon learned I was not alone. I was not the only mother whose son was approaching puberty. I was not the only mother finding less and less positive interactions with their child. I was not the only mother who found this stage of parenting difficult. I was not the only mother who felt hurt by the loosening bond between my son and I.

I will admit that I found this emotionally draining. But, with such an enormous amount of change for me to deal with, I needed to stop and think about my son. He was the one physically, emotionally, and psychologically feeling these changes. If I was struggling, he must certainly be struggling too. This was new for both of us.

Research And Read

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Whenever I don't understand something, I dive into it. I research it left, right, and sideways. So, I took to the books and online articles. I didn't read just one common belief, I read them all. I took in all the information I could, so I knew best how to handle my ever-changing son. After all, I had three more that were coming up on their tween phase of life soon too.

I was ridiculed for this. Not just by my own mother, but by everyone around me too. "Boys will be boys." I had heard that phrase so many times, and yet, I still don't know what it's supposed to mean. If my son talked back, if he broke the rules, if he wasn't listening, I was just supposed to let it go because he is a boy. No. I hardly see how that would help either of us grow into this new phase of life. I took my favorite parts of the things I read, and I used that as my plan of action with my son. Letting it go didn't make sense to me, my plan did.

What Made It Better For Me

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The first thing I did was convince myself that my son didn't hate me. He didn't mean to talk back; it was just all the hormones raging in him. It was perfectly normal for my son to turn away from me and start relying on his friends more. He was gaining independence. I did that. I raised him to believe in himself and have the confidence to let go, and be himself. This wasn't about me.

I did a lot of listening. I clued myself in on what was going on in his world by sitting through 20-minute stories that should have by all means taken two minutes to tell. I asked minimal questions, and I tried not to judge his choices too much. Of course, if they had been bad choices, that may have been a different story.

My son wanted to dye his hair every color you could think of at one point or another. I let him do it. This again was frowned upon by others. I didn't care, there were so much worse things my son could have been doing, I was thankful it was just the hair. Being more relaxed and open to these new changes helped to foster my relationship with my son again.

Going into this, I was so perplexed. I thought the end was near. I would never have a relationship with my son again, and he was going to be mean and smelly for the rest of his life. That was not the case at all. I changed as a mother, I grew into who he needed, the same as when he was a baby, a toddler, and starting school. Spoiler alert, he just started high school this year. I made it, and it will get so much better, I promise.