Avoid the 13/40 split

I’d like to speak to all the young women out there, perusing these ramblings of a middle aged young at heart homeschooling mom. I’m sure you’re out there, reading about my life of quiet desperation supreme awesomeness, so I’m going to share a piece of very important life advice. Trust me, you need this.

Young women of this world, do whatever you need to do to avoid giving birth the year you are 27. Double the birth control, become a hermit, enter a nunnery. Do not spawn a mini-you during the twelve months you are celebrating your twenty-seven years on this little blue marble. If you need a hint as to why, that hint is math.

Give up?

Because you will have a brand new teenager in the house the year you turn forty. Your sweet little innocent cherub will be in the throes of hormonal poisoning at the very point in your life that you’re teetering on perimenopause. It’s like throwing gasoline on the goddamned fire. And if you’re super lucky, you’ll draw the Joker card and get an advanced-parenting kid, the kind that makes you wonder just what in hell you were thinking by having children, that maybe you should have just raised llamas because no one really cares if you screw them up and you love your kids too much to screw them up and yet you’re convinced you are.

We had a few good months there. Maybe fifteen or so months, where the Terrible Twos were THANKYOUSWEETBABYJESUSONAPONY finally over and school anxiety was evaporating and the teen angst/trauma drama/idiocy hadn’t hit. It was a pleasant time, idyllic in its pseudo-normalcy. Calm(ish). Peaceful(ish). Ignoring the fact that the Terrible Twos started at 15 months and continued until age 11-and-change, those blessed fifteen months were a balm to an otherwise bruised and battered spirit.

Those days are over. Crap.

I turned 40 in September. Yes, I made it through the day. No, I didn’t blog about it. I was on a blog hiatus for my own sanity and frankly I was too busy counting my grey hairs and saving my couch coins for highlights to cover them. But I’m now 40 and A will be 13 next spring. And just as he hit the Terrible Twos when he was 15 months old, he has catapulted himself into Teen Attitude without a second thought, several months before the official turning of the calendar.

Sorry, I did toddler-level crap for well over a decade (yes, almost all of it was SPD/ADHD/GT/2e crap, still exhausting). If I have to deal with a decade plus of teenager shit I’m moving out with no forwarding address. Sorry hubby.

So to all the young women contemplating a youngun’, do the math. Hold off and avoid the 13/40 split.

To everyone else, hold on tight. The teen years are ahead. May the universe grant me credit for time served have mercy on my soul.