Mother, May I?

I may have just turned another year older but I'm pretty sure it's my son who will age me more than that in the coming months. My 11 year old (12 in Feb) has his first real girlfriend. By real, I mean, he likes her and she likes him back. No more than that but up to now, there's just been a whole lot of he liked someone who did not like him back and even more she liked him but he didn't care so much.

But apparently, he's "dating" this one particular girl now. They're "going out." Little miss thing has adored my son since the start of the school year (they didn't know each other prior to this year--middle school brought three elementary schools together so there were lots of new friends to be had) and he has recently decided he likes her too. And in the span of a couple weeks, they've fallen deeply and hopelessly in love. They never knew rainbows were so pretty or the sky so blue, the flowers so fresh or...blah! Um, really? You're 11. You aren't "dating" or "going out" with anyone because that implies you have mode of transportation without a "Mom's Taxi" sign on top of it.

I get lots of eye-rolling these days. Why must I rain on their pre-teen love parade? Cause it makes me feel old, that's why. And replaced. I told Chase last night: never forget, you love ME most. Girls will come and go but you only have one mom. He just smiled. I was serious.

I stumbled onto an instant message conversation between them that was on my laptop the other day--he hadn't closed it out afterwards apparently so I got a keen eye view into the state of their relationship . It went on for three pages but there was a theme: a lot of "I love you"s and "No, I love you more"s, "I'm thinking of u" and "I can't wait to see you again"s. With tons of extra letters, like this: I looooooooooveeeeee youuuuuuuuu. Because it means more like that.

Last night, I finally caved and allowed him something I've been refusing for months: set up a Facebook page. He's begged to do this, saying that all his friends have them. And while they're all definitely ensconced in the electronic age of staying in touch (texting, IM'ing, Xbox Live), I thought Facebook was taking it too far. But I've been giving it some thought, wondering what potential harm could come from it. And realizing that while I want to keep him young and more interested in SpongeBob than in socializing, I couldn't stop his growing up from happening.

So at last I decided to let him set up a Facebook page, provided I knew the password to the account, could access everything he was doing/seeing on there and he only accepted folks as friends that he knew. He got set up and sure enough, there must have been a hundred middle school students he knew on there--friends and friends of friends. He spent the first hour chatting with five friends simultaneously ("This is hard, mom!"). I think that's the main reason they have Facebook pages at that age--he didn't have a clue what a wall was or how to post photos. But the boy could sure do some chatting!

Girlfriends, now Facebook...the teen years loom closer and closer and already the socializing and drama of teen interaction has begun. I've always heard your kids grow up fast but it seemed he just took five giant steps forward overnight and he never even asked Mother, May I?