When Did Training Bras Become All The Rave for Pre-Tweens and Younger Tweens?

The tweens - that finicky age where the child’s maturity level is nearing that of the teenager with all the insanity and none of the hormones, and yet is still miles apart at the same time.  At least they like to think their maturity level is approaching that of a teenager.

They are trying so hard to act like grownups while they are anything but, and that shows no better than when it’s either bath time or you ask them to clean their rooms.

When Did Training Bras Become All The Rave for Pre-Tweens and Younger Tweens?

When I was in the 8 – 12 year old range, I don’t remember the training bra being a big fashion need.  Nobody made a point to saying, “Hey! I have a training bra!”  In fact, I don’t know of anyone who actually got one before they started developing something to put in it.

I wasn’t begging my mother to let me have a training bra, I was fighting for the right to wear blue jeans – something my mother considered dirty farmer clothing good only for the farm fields and not suitable for a girl in the city.

Flash forward to now and it’s started for us in grade three.  Grade three!  With the wee little flat chested children still years from growing anything and the most important fashion accessory has become <dun dun dunnnnnn> The Training Bra!!  

Apparently everybody who’s anybody has one!  And with a nine year old going into grade four, it is the absolute end of everything social life related for her because she doesn’t have one.

This isn’t the 8 to 12 years olds with the emphasis on close to 12.  No, these kids are the pre-tweens to early tweens.  Kids 6 to 9 years old who think this is a fashion must have.

The nine year old regales me with stories of who has and who’s growing, and as I see these very same children around town I wonder what world she’s living in because they are all as flat as a pack of two year olds.  In fact, the one girl who does sort of have something isn’t growing boobs, the kid’s just fat.  I’ve seen boys weighing in the same with bigger boobs.  Hell, I’ve seen toddlers with bigger fat rolls on their chests.

Even the younger daughter now thinks she has to have bras because she has friends younger than her who have them.

With children determined to be older than their age and maturity, do you go ahead?  Do you buy the training tool for something that isn’t even there to train?  Do you buy the leash and dog biscuits to train a puppy you don’t even have?

Or do you cling to that last vestige of their childhood, reluctant to let them grow up before they (and you) are ready?

The nine year old is already pushing for The Talk!  While I have been willing enough to divulge some of what she should expect with the coming puberty, there are some things a nine year old just isn’t ready to hear yet.  She questions and demands, asking if I’ve left things out and she is certain that I have left out some big mystical secret of womanhood.  There are a lot of those secrets I’ve left out, but I would have less appealing names for them.  Nothing mystical or wonderful there.  We will have that discussion before that part comes, but there’s no point in scaring the crap out of the kid before she’s mature enough to understand.

As a parent on a limited budget with two growing kids in need of so many things they actually do need, I think I’ll be committing the fashion faux pas of the decade and hold of on buying those as yet entirely unnecessary items - The Training Bra!!  

The They Don’t Get me Syndrome

Everyone has felt it at some time, and probably at every age through their lift, that disconcerting feeling where you just want to stand up and scream “YOU JUST DON’T GET ME!”

These days we seem to have it in spades in our house.

The seven year old is dealing with it by being extremely irritable and snarky with everyone in her family.  As soon as she’s left our company for someone else, the attitude apparently does a complete three-sixty, or so I’ve been told.

The nine year old is trying so very hard to be more grown up.  She’s telling me how embarrassing it is to have the earliest bedtime of EVERYONE in school.  Unfortunately for her, I happen to be one of those parents who thinks staying up to ten or eleven pm is just too late for a nine year old who has to be up at six-thirty to go to daycare.  She is trying to act grown up, hang with the grown ups instead of the kids, and trying to convince me she’s in full blown puberty, even though she barely even knows what that is.  (That talk will come, but when I think she’s ready to understand and not be terrified by it).

And our new thing is pulling out crafts at bedtime.  When I point out there’s no point in starting it because its bedtime, I get the old “But, MO-OM, I just started it!” whine.  Unfortunately, for her I also happen to need to two hours after the kids are in bed to get shit done that I couldn’t get done while they’re up.

Like a broken record, the nine year old keeps telling me that I just don’t understand.  I don’t get it.  I don’t get her.  I don’t understand what she’s saying.  Etc,e tc, etc.

Unfortunately for her, I do get it, I understand, and I even get her.  I get both of them.  I’m also their mother, the maker and breaker of rules, and the one who has to be the badass making them obey the rules, go to bed when its time, eat healthy, and look after their needs over and above their wants.

And, unfortunately for Mom (me), there is nobody to get me.  The kids are too young to understand or be burdened with it.

I gave up being an independent person as well as my youth, looks and body, to have kids.  I didn’t have the opportunities for getting a degree and having the earning potential to support two kids and a daycare.  With daycare for two preschoolers costing more than I earned, I became a stay at home parent.

Flash forward, and due to changing financial circumstances in the house and the kids now being in school full time, I’ve had to go back to work.  On two incomes we’re making less than we had coming in before on just the one, plus we have the added expenses of daycare and increased gas costs.

After more than a year now working full time, nobody in the house seems to get that I’m not at home all day to pick up after everyone, clean the house, do the laundry, and make dinner.

Nobody gets that after working all day at an endlessly dull job, picking up kids and listening to them fight all the way home, and then trying to juggle them, cleaning, and making dinner single-handed is just exhausting both physically and spiritually.

Nobody gets what it feels like to work all day at a job, earning half the household income, and be the only one without spending money, without an allowance come payday.

Nobody gets the sacrifices you make as the mother, the things you do without, so they don’t have to.

Nobody gets what its like to try to buy all the groceries and other household necessities on the same old budget you’ve had for over a decade, despite adding two kids to the mix, and even though the cost of most of those things has doubled or tripled in that time.

Nobody gets what its like to listen to your kids telling you how unhappy they are, whining about all the things they want, knowing what they need that you can’t buy, their constant ‘I want’ demands, and knowing that you can’t even treat them to the occasional simple ice cream.

Nobody gets what it’s like to be the full time stay at home parent, the full time working parent, the hard-line rule enforcer, nobody’s friend, looking after everyone but yourself, sole-responsibility for cleaning up after everyone and doing everything for everyone, everyone’s reason for being unhappy and mad because you can’t let them have their way or everything they want, all at the same time.

After more than a year back to work full time the spouse still doesn’t get that you aren’t a stay at home parent anymore, you can’t just drop everything spur of the moment, take time off without notice, to do a last minute holiday or long weekend. Once again, you’re the bad parent and the reason for someone moping and sulking.

Nobody gets what its like to lose all independence, feel entirely dependent, and yet have the entire responsibility of the household maintenance and everyone’s happiness and well-being thrust on your shoulders while you are powerless to do anything but muddle through as best you can alone.

Nobody gets what it is to be the parent, alone and divided, working full time, house keeping full time, parenting  full time, no time for friends, nobody to talk to, no time for your self, the badass rule-keeper, hard-line budgeter, doing it all on your own parent.

They just don’t get that you feel their ‘they don’t get me’ syndrome times 100.

Except, of course, all the other single and single-married parents out there who are all feeling the same way.

Sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves that no matter how alone we feel, we aren’t alone.  There’s probably hundreds of thousands of us out there, all feeling the same things.

The Job vs. the Sick Kid: The Battle Rages On

A typical problem with being a working parent combined with juggling single parenting vs. a spouse on shift work – the foe: a sick kid.

This is proving to be one of those weeks that are the worst of all worlds.

Starting with the long weekend, where I undertook the task of doing the single mom camping thing for the long weekend.

I almost cancelled because the kids were fighting so much from the moment I showed up ad daycare to pick them up, all the way home, and the entire time I tried to get ready and load the car.

Adding insult to injury is the worry over the black water tank in the camper being full.  It’s reading full regardless of the level, which would not be an issue it I could actually dump it.  Yep, can’t dump because the pipe needs repair, and I can’t expect the kids to trek to the big bathroom in the dark in the middle of the night with bears hanging around.  And I don’t know how to fix the pipe.

Naturally, it also happened to be when my body decided to visit upon me the woman’s curse – early!  For me that means double the bloating, double the aches, pains, and cramping, double the fatigue and overall crummy feeling.

To make a bad weekend worse, the older kid started getting stuffy as all out and has a full blown head cold by Saturday, and by Sunday the younger is getting sick.  Monday morning what I thought might have just been too much sun has turned into a high fever, lethargic, and downright sicker-than-a-dog sick.

Staying home would have been an even worse weekend for everyone.  I would have spent it fighting with and getting mad at the kids, trying to keep them quiet all day every day so the spouse can sleep.

So, I pack everyone us and head home earlier than I might have Monday.

Now we’re into Tuesday, I ended up leaving the sick kid sleeping while dropping of the other, hoping desperately she’ll let the spouse sleep (who is on the evening shift this week and has to sleep during the day).  Hoping she can sleep for a bit, then he can drop her at daycare.

No such luck.  So far the illness is winning the fight.  She now has it coming out both ends, which means daycare won’t take her and the spouse is getting no sleep.

Now we’re in a pickle.  I’ve only been on this job a year, have already missed much too much time for sick kids (being basically a single mom and the only one who’s been able to stay home with sick kids all year while they’re hit with one virus after another), and the spouse has been on his job even less, and is still in training and can’t take time off.

What are working parents supposed to do with a sick kid when the daycare won’t take them, neither can take the time off work (and we can’t afford either to lose their job), and at only seven she’s too young to leave home alone for half a day?

And for us, the week has only begun.

Dinner at The Keg with Kids

We took the kids for dinner at The Keg.

Going to someplace like McDonalds or Burger King is a rare treat.  A real restaurant is even rarer.

They did exceptionally well - for my kids.  Up to about the point we were nearing eating out dinner (ok, halfway through eating).

A few gentle reminders to the 9 yr old to keep the volume low (apparently talking very loudly in a nearly empty restaurant is a necessity), and the 7 yr old not eating even though she likes chicken fingers and loves plum sauce, and they lasted about an hour before they began to completely fall apart.

The hubby tried to call it a date.

It's not a date if you have to bring the kids.

Next outing?  Maybe in a few years.