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Call me The Worst Mother in the world for saying this but…

teenagers are not human.

And, oddly enough, there’s something absolutely perfect about that.

Let me explain how I came to this conclusion–the hard way!

When Number One became a teenager I suddenly had no idea what I was doing as a parent, and as is typical of many parents, I thought there was something wrong with my kid. In fact, when One was 12 years and 364 days old, she went from looking like this….

…to looking like this the very next day!…

My first child had become an alien. How? Why? And what was that weird language she was speaking?

I could not understand a word she said. Her mouth seemed to be filled with marbles.

Maybe they were the marbles I was losing!

I asked everyone if they knew what was going on with my baby girl turned E.T.!

I asked my neighbors if they had seen an alien space ship land around my house.

I asked the dentist if it was because of the fluoride.

I asked the doctor if it was a latent reaction to all the candied artichokes I had eaten when I was pregnant.

Everyone said it was normal.

It’s just a phase.

She’ll be fine.

Really? And what about me?

In desperation, I turned to the animal world.

Note to self: Speaking to caterpillars and dogs was proof that my marbles were dwindling at an alarming rate. And caterpillars are not technically ‘animals’. They’re whatchamacallits.

Another telling sign of my rapid marble depletion was that my brain had started to make swooshing sounds whenever I moved my head.

In a nutshell–where once upon a time my brain looked like this….

… it eventually came to look like this…

And so there ensued a whole lot of foot-stomping, wailing, and otherwise immature behavior in our house. Most of it was mine.

Until…

I did my homework.

I had bought all the books on parenting my young child… even all the What to Expect books, all of which gave me the impression that once my child and I got past the toddler years we would be home free.

(Insert five-minute laugh-track here.)

And then I read I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You: A New Understanding of Mother-Daughter Conflict.

I almost didn’t get past the title–the thought that my child could hate me sent me into a tailspin and cost me a few more of what remained of those marbles.

What I learned was that it wasn’t my teenager that was the problem.

It was me.

To put this in simple terms even I could understand:

I had become my teenager’s worst nightmare!

I felt a faint coming on.

I came to realize that Number One was doing a fine job at being a teenager. Indeed, she was absolutely perfect at it. Becoming an alien is exactly what’s supposed to happen when a human becomes a teenager. In fact, it’s as natural as learning to walk, although not nearly as cute. Can you imagine a parent saying, “Oh, c’mon, why is my baby starting to walk? It’s not fair.”

Yes, parenting teens is hard. But being a teenager is harder.

This parental paradigm shift was brought to me by my friend, the Universe. And it has kept me very close to One. And Numbers Two, Three, and Four.

And by the way I found out that… “Snargle gaggle floss” simply means:

“Please excuse me for a few years while my brain is under construction. This means I may appear to be behaving badly, but I’m actually just trying to figure things out. In the meantime, don’t give up on me, because I really need the security of knowing you love me, no matter what.”

Oh.

Now why didn’t she just say that?