11 #Awesomesauce Mom Observations about the Care and Feeding of Teenage Boys

1. They will not, under any circumstances, take Women’s Multivitamins. I believe this is rooted in an unspoken fear of sprouting Fallopian Tubes.

 

2. If you take them on a Very Special Pilgrimage to the home site of your favorite childhood book—say for example “Anne of Green Gables”—one of them will fall asleep in a chair in the corner (this happened.)

 

3. “Mom, there’s no milk,” is their favorite thing to say.

 

4. “Mom, can we get food?” is tied for their favorite thing to say.

 

5. When you are actually engaging them in an important conversation, about college, or marriage, or faith, you have to pretend you are a nature photographer and they are a wild mountain gorilla. Speak softly and act natural. If they figure out it’s a Big Talk, it’ll spook ‘em.

 

6. When they laugh at something you said, you have to pretend you didn’t notice. Wildly beaming with motherly delight is for them a buzzkill.

 

7. When they are behaving as those without a fully developed frontal lobe, and you want to git ‘em, bring up:

 

• Perimenopause (“I’m having a hot flash” while wildly flapping one’s collar works well)

 

• Mammograms (“Boy, they really squash ‘em down like #pancakes!”)

 

• Parental romance, or better yet, commence unbridled necking with their father. They will move quickly to exit the scene.

 

• Precede anything at all with the word “hashtag”.

 

8. When they are so annoyed they groan and mutter “Mom, can you not?,” it’s time to up your game. Slap your index and ring fingers from one hand on your index and ring fingers from the other hand to make the motion for hashtag, while saying “hashtag.” Then ask them to take out the #garbage, because they will want any excuse to clear the area.

 

9. Also—and this is some good clean fun—sprinkle little past-their-freshness-date sayings in conversation, just to amuse yourself with their horrified reactions. I’m talking about…

 

• “Isn’t this tuna casserole #AwesomeSauce?”

 

• “Boy, that show just made me #LOL, like out loud!”

 

• “That One Direction Group is just #Dope, amirite? “

 

I call these vignettes “Improv in the Kitchen” or “Small Comedy Sketches to Amuse Myself.”

10. When they are writhing in discomfort and agony over your Small Comedy Sketches, just shrug (they invented shrugging) and say, “Haters gonna hate.”

11. When you notice—in their smile or frown or the curve of their cheek—that there is still a bit of little boy residue, like glitter or flour dust, do not mention it. Just feel all the feels, and flee to your bedroom for a good cry. If your boy is a senior in high school, this will not take much.