The Parenting part. There is no real guidebook to parenting. I find myself reading lots of articles on parenting teenagers nowadays. Like the biggest challenge for me right now is how to parent a soon-to-be-teenager while maintaining my fangirling lifestyle. It is so hard, okay. Really. At least for me, it is.

Cos first of all, not only am I a single mom, but I am a single mom that has to feed, clothe and provide shelter for 2 daughters. That, in itself, is not easy, but, my main goal as a mom, is to:

1. Maintain and improve my child’s self-esteem
2. Maintain and improve my child’s self-esteem while fangirling

Let’s talk about #1 first of all. Maybe it’s just my personality, and maybe because I grew up changing schools very often as a diplomat’s kid, but I feel like being liked and popular in school is important for kids. Being the outcast brings sadness, and although good grades are important, I feel like I will be more happy knowing my kids are well liked by their peers and teachers at school. I have 2 girls, and the eldest is an introvert and the second is an extrovert. I don’t worry all that much about the extrovert. She seems to do well in social situations. It’s the introvert that I spend more time and effort on as a mom. And since the introverted one is going through puberty, I feel like my whole momhood has gotten 3 times more difficult. 

To achieve #1, I have basically spent a lot of time, effort and money on making my children look good. I started this mindset from when the kids were still babies going to preschool. I was largely influenced by a BBC documentary that I watched in my 20s about immigrant families new to the UK, and how the children coped with the British school system. And they compared 2 girls (both emigrated from Pakistan), one girl where the mom took extra care in doing her hair nicely each day, and another girl, whose mom just combed her hair and never tied it. They both wore school uniforms, but the girl with the unkempt hair had fewer friends than the girl with hair tied in braids. Why? Cos the clean hair made the girl look cuter than the other girl with unkempt hair. That was a revelation to me! Young children are influenced by appearances and first impressions, too, just like adults!

When my kid started pre-school, I was able to observe this behavior in children in person. The toddler that was dressed in pajamas all day had fewer playmates than the toddler that dressed in daytime playclothes (ie. my own child). I made it a point, to dress my baby up in stylish comfortable clothes from 6 months up. I was that mom that waited for US/UK brands to go on sale and buy cute playsuits. I would ask my friends if any were interested to order, and we’d share the shipping. I’d save up money so that I can buy in bulk clothes for the entire upcoming year during the sale. Usually it’s the Christmas or Spring sale, and I’d stock up clothes for next year. I still do this for my kids even now. Anyway, the goal was to build my child’s confidence in her appearance from a very early age. 

And ever since they started primary school, I blow-dry their hair every morning. I overheard a comment a teacher made on wet hair, and I made up my mind, my girls’ hairs will be blown dry and tied every morning by me. I spend about 25-30 mins every morning blowdrying their hair. We have to start at 6.30 am. I feel good when my kids tell me that their friends think their hair is nice. When other moms ask me what is the secret to my kids’ beautiful hair, I tell them it’s “Mommy hair salon.”

So #1 objective is done, ticked. No problems there. 

The difficult part is #2. Back when she hadn’t started puberty, my eldest didn’t care about what kind of music I listened to, or which concerts I bring her to. She just wanted to do fun stuff with her mom. And that was great for me, cos I could listen to whatever in the car, and she’d be OK with it. Then now suddenly, she tells me, she doesn’t like hiphop. She said she’s never liked AOMG, she just put up with it cos I controlled the music in the car. I WAS SHOCKED YO, OKAY. Suddenly she has an opinion. And suddenly, she doesn’t want to tell me who her one pick is from Produce X 101. Suddenly she doesn’t want to go anywere with me. She doesn’t want to be seen with me when I squeal at a concert. She thinks I’m embarrassing. She’s become a teen!

This entire new phase has just completely stunned me. Cos now, I don’t even know if she thinks it’s ‘right’ to like the same group as her mom. You know what I mean? Just like how we were once embarrassed by our parents’ actions, she is now getting embarrassed by mine. And she probably (who knows) doesn’t want to be seen liking the same stuff as me. So now I feel like I have to fangirl in caution. I can’t do it in front of her. I have caught her rolling her eyes at me a couple of times, and let me tell you, it made me want to slap her face.

#2 makes me lose my self-esteem. Cos my entire life since I was 10 focused a lot on fangirling and being able to fangirl openly. At the office, I even have a transparent photocard of JBJ stuck to the corner of my desktop monitor. And when we upgraded our monitors, my boss was like, “Eh, don’t forget your picture.” lol.  Not being able to fangirl openly at home is really crushing. But I cannot make myself be a burdensome parent to her. I want her to be a confident teen, but I want her to be confident with the view that other people with different viewpoints can still be cool. You know what I mean? I want to teach her that people who are different from her, are still okay. To accept differences. That part of parenting is hard. And I haven’t discovered the right way to do this yet.