Instant Teen

Ten years ago, the day after my sister's wedding, in the circle of a family hug I announced I was pregnant for the first time. It was the first baby of the family. My mother raised her head to the heavens and hooted with glee and my siblings looked at me in shock. Later that day my older brother looked at me with eyebrows going every which way and disbelief in his eyes. "Really Zen? I can't believe it. Are you ready to be a parent?"
"Well, I have nine months to get ready." I said, rubbing my belly.
His eyebrows straightened out and then rose up, considering what I said.
"But you are going to have to be a PARENT." he said, aghast at the idea.
"Yeah...well..." feeling fear in my heart, "But they don't come out a teenager," I was thinking of how much trouble he and I were as teenagers..." they don't even talk for two years. I guess we can figure it out along the way."
"Yeah, that's true," he said with mild relief. He still looked skeptical, albeit glad for me. I was very present to how siblings can be happy having completely different lives.

I also got that his comment was not about me or any doubts in me, but more about where he was in his life. He just wasn't there. I was.
Whether I was ready or not, I wanted it enough to get ready. I still had fears though, and still do.
The teenage part is what is most terrifying...wiping butts, sleepless nights, those loomed as taxing and hard, but having your child out in the big bad world, where you don't know what they are doing... tempted with drugs, sex and rock n roll..oh noooooo. My heart clenched in a fist of fear when I imagined the teen years.

Obviously I have three boys now, 9, 7 and 4 and everyone has survived thus far. One day they announced they wanted to go to China. I want to go to China too, I thought...right now isn't going to work....but maybe we could bring China to us. My family had hosted students from Turkey, Japan and Korea when I was young and the idea of a teen from another culture suddenly was more exciting than it was scary. My kids could learn about China ( they are 1/4 Chinese, my mother is Chinese) and I could have a temporary daughter. So I Facebooked message a woman I met at a networking event a few years ago who was a coordinator for host families and exchange students.
A month and a half later...poof!
Instant Teen. We stood at the base of the escalator at the airport, with "Welcome to the USA Yanie Poon" signs excitedly sorting out the people before our eyes. When we saw her, we knew it was her. A petite, short haired 17 year old that looked 14. Fresh faced after a 20 hour travel ordeal around the world from Hong Kong, she ran to us with arms open and I hugged her with my own disbelief. How amazing is this courageous human being?

It has been three months and she is fully a part of our family now. Bronson brought home a craft with six paper people holding hands, our family including Yanie. She was meant to stay with us for just two months, we were the "welcome family". But we have so many adventures we want to do with her and she is such a welcome addition to our family that we are going to keep her for the school year. We don't get paid for it, and she does come with her own spending money, so we just pay for food, which is not much. We always have leftovers anyway. She is a senior at the local high school and is making friends and doing well. She plays piano like a dream and is up to any hiking or camping we do with the Cub Scouts. She watches the kids for an hour or so if I have to run an errand and is a good example for Ben in doing homework. She helps readily with the dishes, wakes herself up, does her homework without being asked and asks how she can help with dinner. I have a sneaking suspicion that this experience is not at all like it would be if I had had my own teenage daughter. She is grateful to be here. Perhaps because she is not our daughter of flesh and blood, but a brave soul who flew to live with complete strangers for 10 months, we also see her and treat her as a responsible young women. We see her as a young adult, treat her as one and she acts like one. We told her from the beginning, rules are: We will treat you as an adult, just follow a few rules. No drinking, drugs or dating. Groups of friends only. Always be in communication if you will be late or want to go somewhere and help out around the house. She does all that. And if she does forget now and then, it's not a big drama, we just talk about it.

The result is that being a mother of an instant teen daughter has been rewarding and fun. Going shopping and out to dinner with her, talking about life, marriage, school and friendships has been some of the most sacred moments of being a women that I have had. Having a daughter to laugh with about the boys stinky socks they leave scattered about, is therapeutic and lightens my heart. She makes everything exciting and new too.."Yanie's first Thanksgiving! First Christmas in USA, first pumpkin carving! First football game!" Being able to share in her journey, learn from her culture and enjoy a daughter has also been precious. On a Chinese holiday, Mid Autumn Harvest Moon, she took out several Chinese lanterns and candles she brought with her, and the kids delighted in carrying pink, yellow and red lanterns to hang outside of our house and honor the full moon. They pranced for an hour in the front driveway with the glow sticks she gave them and my husband wrapped his arm around me and asked "Is this what you imagined?"
"Better." I said. Having a teen daughter from Hong Kong is like the cherry on top of a sundae. Life is great, but she just makes it grand.

Zen Honeycutt

Challenge and Conflict in Play

It's 7:30 in the morning and my two older boys have already been awake and painting wooden creatures for half an hour. The boys furrow their brows with intent stares at their brightly colored dragon and scorpion as they silently paint with the utmost care and detail. They are creating. Not watching TV, not fighting, not being bored from the days of summer that blend into each other. I am delighted and inspired by my children's immediate excitement to wake up in the morning and paint, to be creative. I wish them a life time of creativity and to support that, I sit beside them and ask them about their creatures. I set aside my suggestions or approval and just ask them about what they are up to. They describe a whole world for their creature and what they can and cannot do in defense and attacking complete with sound effects. I notice that even in their creativity my boys are creating challenge and conflict.

Later after breakfast, two of them play a board game and it is short lived. The 7 year old gets furious that the 3 year old wants to be banker, which is preposterous because the three year old can't add. The 7 year old tries to explain this to him, by challenging him with math facts and the 3 year old ends up screaming and throwing the money in his face. The 7 year old is smug that he won this battle even though the 3 year old storms off and he has no one to play with. Meanwhile, the nine year old plays his legos silently in his room, his challenge is on a galactic scale. He is building a new space ship to overthrow the warlords of his Star Wars galaxy. If anyone comes in his room and bothers him their will be a full scale attack, so we leave him to his plotting and engineering.
The banker issue gets resolved when Bronson wanders back into Bodee's territory, and Bodee who was probably bored with playing alone, welcomes him back and they decide to split up the money and both be their own bankers. They play a new sort of game which involves both of them winning lots of free money.

Later in the afternoon, they suddenly scatter in all directions to play hide and seek and have a short squabble over the rules. I listen for them to work it out and I hear the humanity of their struggle. Someone found someone and then they joined together to go find the other person. When the last one was found by the second one, he objects to the first one using the second one for help. "Not fair!"
My survival instinct was to jump in and ask them to play "Nice Nice."

I realized in that moment, even though I have an instinct and ability to quell the storm, that there was no reason for me to intervene. Boys create challenge, conflict and struggle as part of their play. That IS Nice, or FUN for them. The challenge and conflict is the whole point. Someone chases someone and the other runs. They wrastle, argue or fight off a bad guy, which could be any one of the unsuspecting brothers, and none of it means anything that I, as a female, imagines. It doesn't mean that they don't care and love each other when they are yelling at eachother. It doesn't mean that they are hurt when they are crying. It doesn't even mean that they won't be best friends or good brothers if they scream I hate you. I make that up. They may make that up too, but in most cases, within a minute or two, they are back to playing "Chase the puppy" or "Kill the dragon" from under their pile of sofa pillows without a second thought. It doesn't mean anything to them, it's all part of the game. Boys create challenge and conflict in their play because that is what is fun for them.

It is not fun for Moms, and that's why so many of us feel crazy and exhausted after refereeing for even a few hours of boys playing together. Moms and females have a natural drive for connection, nurturing and safety, so even hearing boys fight threatens our sense of survival. That may be why so many Moms get their kids out of the house to sports and activities...keep 'em busy so they won't fight. The thing is, whatever activity they do, they crave challenge and conflict, if it's in sports, theater or music even, their is the challenge to win, complete something new and the conflict they face is from failure if they don't. We could instead find peace in their challenges and conflict.

Boy are, in fact little men. And the DNA of men has not changed for 10,000 years. Their natural instinct is to play at struggle and conflict so that they may succeed in war and protect us, protect their mother and wives and children. Protect the village. So when they are fighting like wolves over a laundry basket they want to use to push each other around in on the floor, I can instead hear the gears in their brains learning how to negotiate world peace. As they argue over play money, I can listen for the conflict as their growth and development into responsible men who can provide for their family. I can see their struggle to build a tower that keeps toppling, not as something I must intervene to fix, but as a time to observe or inquire what other creative solution they might try and be triumphant in building a city. As challenging as it may be to set aside my natural instinct to intervene, calm and fix things for my boys, I am much more interested in creating a space where my boys are self sustaining and confident. In being present to what I am committed to creating, I find that the less I do in parenting boys during the free play of summer, the more they learn and grow.
The result is that,rather then shushed or shamed, they get the space to expand and to be celebrated.


Zen Honeycutt

I have a understanding of boys that brings me peace and wonder after Allison Armstrong's programs about Understanding Men at www.paxprograms.com. I highly recommend her programs..

Something Special

I hope every parent believes there is something special about their kids, something magical, magnetic and marvelous.
I do.

Ben, my nine year old….I dreamed of him inutero as a laughing blue starfish. He was happy and as soon as he could laugh his laugh filled up the room and your heart with joy and healed you of all worry. He loves the ocean and once said “Mommy did you know that the ocean is where angels go for the birthday parties?”

At four months old, just when the erratic sleep patterns and frequent breastfeeding seemed to drive me to the edge of insanity, I had a dream. He lay in his co sleeper, looked up at me and said without moving his lips, “Thank you Mom, I love you.” It was Mother’s Day when I awoke and he had let me sleep for eight hours straight for the first time.

When the new baby sitter didn’t show up, I mumbled about maybe I could call one of the other ones that responded, and he said “Don’t worry Mom, Minnie will come.” I looked at the list. The last person on the list was Minnie. I had never said her name. I called her and she came and she watched my kids, sometimes insisting not to be paid because she loved them so much, for years. We adore her still.

Ben draws with an imagination that delights. He creates intricate, colorful and bold patterns and adventures with meaning and fun story lines. He won the Art Masters show for two years in a row.

One morning I was concentrating very hard about my upcoming day, selling my natural wellness products, and creating in my head that it would be a “thousand dollar day”. Suddenly at that same moment, Ben shouted from another room, “ One thousand dollars!” I thought I was dreaming…” What did you say Ben?” I called out. He repeated it. I asked why he said that and he said “ I don’t know , it just popped into my head!” I sold a thousand dollars worth that day. He is a very intuitive, compassionate, special and artistic boy.

Bodee, my seven year old…I met before I even had children, when I was in Hawaii, I went to sleep one night and my husband and I had asked the universe if we should have children and we would sleep on it. I had a dream. A boy with black curly hair and beautiful brown eyes looked at me. I heard “ Let me be.” I woke and knew I would have children. The boy was Bodee.

Bodee has a memory that astounds me. He is my GPS. Since he was barely three he would point in the right direction to go to a friend’s house or to find our car in the parking lot. I can depend on him.

Anything he tries, roller blading, drumming, skate boarding, chess, piano, Bodee is good at it immediately. He learned the theme song chorus to several movies like Iron Man, Indiana Jones and Star Wars simply from his father showing him for a few minutes. He loves to learn, to win and to be challenged.

He has something special in front of a film camera too. As an actor, he knows how to turn “it” on. His smile lights up the screen and he delivers what the director wants the first or second time. He is a good sport on the set and is up for anything. He is a very smart, silly and special boy.


Bronson, my three year old…to meet him is to love him. And I am not just biased. Women and girls fawn when they see him. They coo and giggle and pick him up and only let go if they have to. They swing and drag him around like rag doll, patting his head and loving him with all their hearts.

He just KNOWS too…he will bring me a flower when I am sad, and a toy to his brother when he is mad. The other day a worker at my brother’s retreat center was furious at a broken tool and yelled with all his might. Bronson brought him a rock without a word. The worker looked at it and threw it with a yell as hard as he could in the nearby pond. They watched the rock splash in silence and then Bronson said “Now do you fweel bedda?”
“Yeah. I do.” The guy replied. They looked at eachother, breathing, settling, knowing…and then looked back at the pond.

Bronson will not very frequently, do something messy like squeeze out the entire tube of toothpaste into the sink. When I discover it, he will look at me doe eyed. When I tell him that he can’t do that, he looks at me and voluntarily says, “I promise to never ever do that again.” And he doesn’t.Ever. He knows and he means what he says.

When he was 18 months he made a cheerio and fruit loop pattern bracelet for me. When his Mommy and Me teacher saw it, she asked me, “Did you help him?” I hadn’t noticed it, “No.”
“Ohhhhh, good luck with him.” She said with her eyebrows raised…it was a cheerio, fruit loop, fruit loop pattern, A, B,B,A,B,B,A,B,B,A and on…intentionally a consistent pattern…who knows what his talents will be?

Bronson can talk and share imaginative stories beyond his years. He loves to share intricate details of his dreams, his musings and of his imaginary day. He is self expressed and free. He is connected to others and delights in people, hugging during his story telling. Bronson is a very special being of self expression and love. All my children are.

My wish is that every parent take a moment to write down what is special about their children. Upload it “in the cloud” online, so it is always there. Start an email account for them and email it to them. Write an old fashioned letter and put in in a box of memories for them. Tell them before they go to bed.Because we never know if we have another day. Each day is a gift with our children. Someday they will be grown and out of the house and we will miss that something special about them that gave sweetness and love, charm and glory, and zip and vigor to our day.

Zen Honeycutt