High School Soccer Mom: It's Make it or Break it Time

I know I grew up in another time, but the pressure on kids to perform these days is going to create a nation of self-obsessed, self-agonizaing, self destructive disasters. There's Instagram and Selfies (the constant art of photographing yourself and posting it on SnapChat or Facebook, etc., and the endless, endless texting. And that's just for starters.

We are at the beginning of soccer season and my daughter as a freshman made varsity and also a club team. She practices soccer five days a week, three hours a day, plays in high school games twice a week, and in club games and tournaments on weekends. And she's only 14.

And this is all in the first month of high school. Yes I know it takes a fiercely competitive spirit and alot of guts and time and patience and practice to be a great player. But what about just being a girl? What about parties and boys and homework and make-up and putting the darn phone down long enough to let the next text come in before responding to the last one?

My daughter puts so much pressure on herself to be great, that when she's not she gets upset. Really upset. Upset as in on the way home from the club game, which can be an hour or two in the car, if she plays badly she cannot be spoken too. She retreats into that place where she will scream at me if I say one word. So I say nothing. Of course it will all come out later so I just wait. But what a miserable car ride - and enough of the darn country music. Would a little bit of something besides the same 10 whiny twang songs hurt? Really?

And then we have the injuries. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, any other superstition you can think of we've been lucky so far. Around us girls are getting concussed (it's become a verb for goodness sake), and tearing ACLs and just falling down while everyone holds their breath waiting for that girl who got hit hard to get up. The fields don't help either. The rich town fields are gorgeous - turf or manicured lawns. The poor town fields are awful and just waiting for someone to hit that badly mowed dying grass wrong and wham. There goes the season.

I am not a pushy parent - and fortunately this year we have great parents and great girls and great coaches and nice teams with good attitudes. But we've seen plenty of the screamers and the crying and the berating and the terrible awful too. Come on people these are just kids - whatever happened to just go out there and have fun?

I suppose I should be happy that my daughter's world is soccer because those who only do it peripherally or not at all are doing things with boys about which I will not speak. Growing up female has always been hard. Now it's harder. At least competitive sports keeps some sort of a balance in their world. And all those rushing hormones have an outlet other than the boy next door.

Miley Cyrus - Don't Your Publicists Have Daughters Too?

http://news.sky.com/story/1133194/miley-cyrus-performs-in-bikini-at-mtv-awards

Every time I see another Disney princess from my daughters pre-teen years (aka this time Miley Cyrus) trying to break away from her nice girl image and transformed into someone I never want my daughter to behave like I get furious.Not just furious at Miley and the entourage around her who are charging her insane amounts of money for advice on how to take her from the teen to adult market. But mostly at her PR people. Don't you get that parents actually pay attention to this stuff too?

I have news for you folks. There's alluring, there's sexy and there's obscene. Often in an effort to spark a national conversation about your "product" oh no I mean star, you turn away the very teen girls who used to watch her. Any girl brought up with a modicum of decency doesn't want to see Miley do whatever it was she did on the MTV awards last weekend. It's gross, and it can't be good for record sales. Maybe for the short term but not the long.

Let's compare. Miranda Cosgrove, teen princess from the Drake & Josh show which every parent approved of and watched a long side their children. Moved to a show where she was more grown up but still grappling with the issues that a teen girl deals with. Amanda Bynes from The Amanda Show on which she was sweet, bubbly, funny - now transformed into the next generation Lindsay Lohan. Which would you rather have your daughters experience? 

Or are you too busy to pay attention to what your daughters are watching. Even the Kardashians aren't as bad as what some of the former teen idols are doing. At least they are unabashed, ridiculously selfish, overly plasticized versions of someone I would throw rotten tomatoes at. And they got rich doing it. If America wants to watch that crap then let it. But don't take a young girl my daughter grew up admiring and turn her into a porn star at the MTV awards, really?

I am not a prude by any means but we have swung way, way to far towards the othe side of the pendulum. There is a middle ground between a girl who is saving her virginity for marriage and one who is openly available to everyone. And the PR people who orchestrate these events should know better. 

Don't you have daughters too?

Liar, Liar - A Teenager's Life

And the second child has started high school. My children don't lie to me. It''s been a long haul getting to that point but I'm very proud of that. Teenagers lie to their parents - even about things they probably don't have to lie about. Lying is like food to them - it comes naturually.

Why you have to wonder is it like that? I lied to my parents about everything - not that they would have noticed or cared most of the time. They weren't paying attention. We didn't have rules. I have a vague memory of a curfew that may have been midnight but generally they weren't home until after that anyway. Or there was a house full of people who were imbibing in things that everyone in the 1970s embibed in and they didn't remember if or when I walked in anyway.

I remember reading an Anna Quindlan novel about waiting up until really late for her son to come home. And how angry she was when he stumbled in. She had a reason to watch her child like a hawk, she'd lost her husband and two others to a teenage killer who they had taken in because he was a lost child. The only reason one child lived was because he had gone skiing that holiday with friends and her because he left her for dead but she wasn't.

But I digress - I know my children lie to me sometimes. But as my older son went through high school we reached an uneasy truce. He told me where he was, not all of the details but most of them. One night at the end of senior year he wanted to go to a girl's lakehouse overnight. A father of one of his friend's called me and he had just found out where his son was the next morning. I knew where my son was - I'd given permission for him to go. May not have been the best decision I ever made but at least my kid asked and I told him the truth. Many of the others lied to their parents and got in trouble. I was proud of mine.

This decision not to lie took a long time coming. When my son lied he got caught. Not just in a minor way where the neighbor tells your parents they heard a screeching of tires and a bunch of kids go into your house.

He got a summons for drinking at someone's house when the police came and his dad had to go get him. He was doing things he should not have been in the back seat of a parked car and the police knocked on the window. He had a party in ninth grade when I went to NYC on business and another parent called me to check if I knew about it - shut down by his dad in 30 minutes. He was a lousy liar and when he lied I clamped down and he was grounded - not a little but a lot.

My daughter doesn't lie but I think she wants too. She tells me everything - so much that I don't know what I'm supposed to say to other parents. All the other kids lie to their parents. If she tells me she went to a party the night before I cannot say anything because the other parents don't know and she won't trust me. I don't know where to draw the line - I guess if there's danger - real danger that they are all in together.

But it would be so much easier if our teenagers just told us the truth - no matter how good, bad or ugly. There would be trust. There would not be fear. If they are not sure they should go to a party they could ask our opinion. We could tell them they can call us and we can pick them up if there is something going on they don't like. Doesn't that sound so much better?