Thinking

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

~Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

I have been thinking a great deal about my 13 year old daughter, of late. She has gone off on camp today, fortunately not at The Prom! We had issues over not being able to find the camp packing list and then losing the second one, given to her yesterday, the day before Camp. There were tears, there was shouting. It was rather tense. We managed to find out the info from another parent and get her bag organised and get her calmly off to sleep. She got up this morning excited and ready to go.

Then there was the issue of her losing her school jumper. A fact she kept from me for a little while. I got quite cross about this, seeing as it is only the first Term after all, and she needs to take responsibility for her belongings. As it turns out, I found it today, at the bottom of her sports bag! What a relief. I can't wait to tell her when she returns home.

And then worst of all, is the crossing of roads. On more than two occassions I have had to toot the horn or call out to her to alert her to oncoming traffic when dropping her off near her bus stop, on my way to work. She gets such a fright, as do I, and I'm sure the driver of the car. She doesn't always look properly before starting to cross. I don't need to say how scary this is.

I have been doing some research on brain development and thought I would share the following information:

Adolescence is a critical time for brain growth. Significant intellectual processes are emerging. Adolescents are moving from concrete to abstract thinking and to the beginnings of metacognition (the active monitoring and regulation of thinking processes). They are developing skills in deductive reasoning, problem solving, and generalizing.This period of brain growth marks the beginning of a person's ability to do problem solving, think critically, plan, and control impulses. This brain development cycle also impacts short-term memory. A middle school student can generally retain from 5 to 7 bits of information at one time.
source

I also found a great Australian site called Headroom with of information about understanding adolescents, amonst other things.
It is certainly a challenging time for my beautiful daughter. I am so looking forward to The Ballerina's return on Friday afternoon, so that I can hug her and tell her that I love her, and reassure her that she is OK, it just takes time for her brain to grow and develop.

Read this post over at Loved about Apron Strings, it is also thought provoking.