Friday, August 31, 2012

The Day When My Daughter Insisted Upon Her Own Personality

My oldest daughter is going to run cross country this fall. I want to start running again to get into shape, so we have been running together this week. The benefits: mother-daughter bonding time! Motivation to get outside! Other stuff!

It has been good. We have run intervals, done sprintwork at the track, and are supposed to go for a longer, easy jog today. (Meanwhile, I'm on my third cup of decaf and she's eating a late breakfast. It's also Friday, which means there's more than an incredibly precise chance that we'll do pretty much anything else than a longer, easy jog today. Like, not run at all.)

One interesting thing has popped up over this past week's running. My 11-year old has decided it's time to start "growing up" and "separating herself as an individual" a bit. This has taken the form of questioning much of what I ask her to do during our run workouts. She questions me, and has a tiny attitude. Which is normal, I get it. But yo, you wouldn't do this when your DAD coaches you, would you? No. I guess it's just moms that get to see the full force of the fancy hormone-changing grump-tasticness?


Not being grumpy, just reading.


Which I guess, makes me special. With her mom, she feels like she can be herself, even if that self looks more like a cat getting a bath rather than the sweet kid we've raised from birth.

I tell myself that it's okay. It's a phase. It's supposed to happen this way. And besides, that's why God invented wine, for when our progeny do their hardest growing* and we need something to prop us up for the process.

My husband tells me our daughter wants to do things her way, just like me. (We'll deal with THAT characterization later.......crap, it's true.)


* (And we're not even to the years that end it -teen...)

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