While I take a week off, author of Confessions of a So-Called Middle Child is stepping in to guest post on Full Of It this week.  Enjoy!

I’m pretty sure my daughter wants to be a pole dancer when she grows up.

She also likes guys with tattoos. She tells me she’s going to get one, or two, or maybe even three.

 

With her allowance, she buys six-inch plastic pink heels that I am probably sure pole dancers wear from ShoeDazzle, that cheap online store owned and operated by the Kardashian conglomerate. Oh, yes, and of course she loves the Kardashians. She thinks they are the absolute apex of taste, style, manners and looks. She would LOVE to be just like them.

 

She sings rap, making sure that I hear each and every bad word.

She knows every model of Ferrari, Bugatti and Porsche by heart.

She tells me she will have all of them when she grows up.

I ask her how, and she tells me she’ll be a cardio-thoracic surgeon.

Great, I reply.

 

Have I mentioned, she loves plastic? She will buy a drink just because she likes the look of the plastic container. Needless to say I can’t stand plastic.

 

I don’t wear makeup. Or heels.

I can’t stand the Kardashians.

I don’t like excess, flash, or entitlement of any sort.

I wear baggy clothes and prefer to go unnoticed.

 

Sometimes I think she does it just to get under my skin. I mean, how, how can any daughter be so different from her mother? Though I know I must let her explore herself, I have to admit being downright embarrassed at times. I mean, this girl, this girl is so unlike me! Everything I value and I care for, she does not.

Will it last? Will she always be the kind of person I never would associate with if she weren’t related to me?

 

These are my thoughts sometimes when I see her experimenting with her outlandish make-up, her stripper shoes, her glitter shorts, which I allow her to wear IN THE HOUSE ONLY. Or when she talks about money or fame or cars…I want to cover my ears and hide.

 

But then when the day is done, and she is scrubbed clean and in her bed with the little hearts and she looks like the angel she is, I remember that when I was little, I thought my mom was a major drag too.

She wore no make-up.

She liked to read.

She was a Buddhist.

 

I, too, wished she were flashy, sparkly and crazy. She was just so drab. So boring. So dull!

 

I remember when I was a tween I saved all my money and bought a pair of Candy high heels—shoes my mother never, ever would have allowed me to wear. I also bought some gold spandex pants and a fuchsia belt. I would walk around my room for hours looking like quite the pole dancer myself until one day they lost their appeal. And then one day I became like my mother.

 

I don’t know what the future holds for my own daughter but I do know that no matter how painful or embarrassing it may be, I have to allow her to explore and grow. Because one thing I know for sure —If she can’t do at home, she’ll do it away from home. And then, who knows what could happen.

 

About Maria Lennon:

Maria Lennon is the author of Harper Collin’s newest middle grade series Confessions of a So-Called Middle Child. This newest series to hit shelves is about middle child and reformed bully Charlie Cooper trying to make good on her promises. Hilariously spunky and fresh, this brings “Mean Girls” to the tween level, peppered with snarky comments, major attitude, and advice to spare from Charlie Cooper, whose virtues, flaws, fears promise to hit home among young girls, braving middle school in the 21st century and all the pressures that come with it: popularity, bullying, social media, the list goes on.

Maria’s other works include a screenplay about the Red Brigade which was a third place finalist in Francis Ford Coppola’s screenwriter’s competition and her first novel, Making it Up as I Go Along (Random House, 2004).

Today, she lives in Laurel Canyon and has four children. When not driving one of her four children to school or volunteering at school libraries, she can be found sitting in a parked car, a café or a library writing novels, travel articles or just passed out.