Guest Post: Author Lauren Kessler & Daughter, Lizzie

Lauren Kessler is the author of My Teenage Werewolf. Both she and her daughter dual post on their blog, My Teenage Werewolf. Enjoy the following post written by each of them, in their own words.Lauren’s Post:

When people find out that I’ve written a book (My Teenage Werewolf) starring my own teen daughter – a NONfiction book exploring her world and our stormy relationship –they’re astonished. Then they find out that my daughter Lizzie not only agreed to the book but put up with my 18-month immersion in her world.

She let you do that? they ask, shaking their heads.

Yep. I was Margaret Mead in Middle School, a fixture in her 7th and 8th grade classrooms, with Lizzie as my “native” guide, decoding the place for me, analyzing cliques, making sense of everything from lockerroom dynamics to cafeteria culture.

At home, she introduced me to her online world, coaching me through IMVU, a social networking/ instant messaging site popular with young teens. She taught me how to chat, what questions to ask, what acronyms to use. She gave me a crash course (I crashed) on Halo, a game she plays with great aplomb. I did marginally better – after intense tutoring — with Guitar Hero. She even – and I hesitate to tell you this – allowed me to be a volunteer counselor at her summer camp.

How come? We’re talking about a moody and mercurial teen here (Lizzie was 12 ½ when I started my immersion and 14 when I un-embedded myself), a strong-willed girl who could (and frequently did) freeze me in my tracks with her icy stares. Or, literally, slam the door in my face. Yet she let me into her life.

I think I know why.

And I think that reason is also the reason our relationship is better today. What happened was, I learned a lesson — a strategy, really – that any mother can learn and practice.

Here it is: I empowered her. I put myself in the position of student to her teacher. I told her, almost daily, that she was my “expert,” my tour guide through teendom, my go-to source. Suddenly, after more than a decade of knowing more about almost everything than she did, I knew less – and she loved that. She loved that sense of control, and she relaxed into it. She didn’t feel she had to push back so hard now. She didn’t feel she needed to reject me. In fact, as a teacher – my teacher — she was even-tempered and patient, two qualities almost totally lacking in her usual teen-girl persona. Newly endowed with power, she wielded it gently and with humor. Meanwhile, I worked diligently to listen rather than judge, to respect her knowledge rather than trump it. And so, slowly, we navigated our way out of the stormiest seas.
It’s all about sharing the power. I am not talking about letting go of the parental reins, about an “anything goes” philosophy. I am talking about learning to see and respect the emerging young woman who now lives in my household.

Lizzie’s Post:

When my mom first brought up the idea of writing a book about me, I thought it was lame – and a bit crazy. I mean I’ve gone to her book talks for years, and I’ve seen all these people who read her books, and I just couldn’t imagine that any of them would be interested in reading about the relationship between me and my mom. Kinda private, anyway. But then it hit me. I really didn’t have anything to lose. My school friends already knew my mom and what she did, so the project wasn’t going to be a huge embarrassment or anything. Besides…I’d get to have her on my territory!

Before my mom and I did this book, we didn’t have the best relationship. We were constantly fighting, and we seemed to have very little in common. Like she would be eating salads, and I would be eating cheese pizza, or she would be outside gardening, and I would be inside with an Xbox controller glued to my hand. And of course she wanted me to be doing more of what she was doing and less of what I was doing. Did I say “wanted”? I meant nagged. I think what happened when we were doing the book is that we just began to understand each other better. I realized that my mom, even when she was being really annoying, was actually wanting the best for me. And she realized – or remembered — that when she was my age she wasn’t exactly the perfect daughter either.

Another thing is that my mom spent a lot of time in school classrooms, and now she doesn’t give me crap any more when I come home from school and say I’m tired and had a really hard day. A lot of times when my mom tried to follow me through a 7-period, 7-hour day, she had to leave after 5th period to go get coffee to make it through the rest of the day. So now she has an idea of what I go through every day. On the downside, she did find out what homework I had, so I couldn’t get away with saying I had none or I’d done it all at school.

Anyway, I think we’re better together now than we ever have been. Maybe it’s because I’m older. That’s definitely part of it. But I think it’s also because we learned a lot about each other. I’m glad we did this.