Today is my second child’s 13th birthday. It is incredible to realize that he’s on his way to manhood. Now I have TWO teenagers (both boys) in the house. New freedoms, new responsibilites, new difficulties to navigate. How do you tell him no when seemingly everyone around him gets to do stuff he can’t? By one circle of friends and family we are very strict (controlling computer time, internet access, tv, video games, phone, bedtimes, etc.), but by another circle we are very lenient (genres of books, types of music, topics of discussion, freedom to roam, etc.). Stuck in the middle are our kids. Sometimes I feel very alone with my husband. Thank God we are together, and my prayer life increases every day as we make our stands in life. Some days I just want to move to Montana . . .<\/p>\n

BUT, all in all, it’s good. And my kids are great – even when dealing with their personal buttons that get pushed (jealousy, fear, anger). I thank God for the privilege of being their Mom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is my second child’s 13th birthday. It is incredible to realize that he’s on his way to manhood. Now I have TWO teenagers (both boys) in the house. New freedoms, new responsibilites, new difficulties to navigate. How do you tell him no when seemingly everyone around him gets to do stuff he can’t? By …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7zbKo-RB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}