Planning for Rob's 16th Birthday

Rob will turn 16 this June.  It is hard to wrap my mind around that sometimes.  In some ways, he is still so very much a kid. Enough of a kid that I have said there will be no license yet.  He is not mature enough for that and still so distractable.  He texts like it is going out of style.  I don't want a tragedy that can be averted by just waiting for a bit more maturity.  But I am rambling. . .

About 4 weeks ago I started asking Rob what he thought he might want to do to celebrate. I said that we could do his family party on Sunday as his actual B-day is the Saturday and he could do something with friend(s) on that day if he wanted.  I gave him a couple of ideas.  He said he would think about it.

I checked in a couple weeks after that.  He still had no clue.  I checked in this past Friday.  No clue.  I said that he needed to come to a decision so we could notify others if he wanted to spend time with them. But that he needed to understand that this was optional. And did not negate a family party.  Or the birthday mural.  He can even still have a pinata in the back yard if he wants to. (I did get a smirk at that one!)

 I said I was just trying to respect the fact that 16 is kind of a big deal.  But if at the end of this weekend he still had no clue, we might run out of time to plan something involving people outside the family.  We have a week of vacation and come back to recital week. The week after that there is something for Fiona, my mother's birthday, memorial day weekend and then we are at the door of his birthday.  He said he would think about it some more.

He finally decided he would like to have his best  friend spend the day and sleep over.  I talked with his friends Mom today and it is fine.  They go to the same church we do, and we can bring his friend to church with us the following Sunday.  The funny thing was that Vicki told me she went through the same thing with her son over his birthday this past April.  And he never came to a decision and she got so angry that they just had a family party. 

It kind of cracked me up as there are 2 years difference in the boys and yet developmentally they are very similar. But truly, none of it really angered me. I told her that I figure it takes at least 3 tries and usually 4.  It is sort of like gardening.  First you plant the seed. Then you water. Then you check for growth. Then you finally see something.  She said I was way more patient than she is.  Maybe, but I think it is more that having multiple kids has taught me that kids will flower in their own time and space and that we can't rush it, or have it happen on our schedule.