End Tween Drama With Just 5 Minutes A Day

I confess, I don't have a tween. When my first baby was just a year old, I thought I knew it all. Somewhere between age 2 and 3, reality bit me in the butt. So, since I don't have a tween, I won't profess to know the solution for tween drama.

I do have a daughter and at 8 months old she's already showing signs that she will test my patience and require a lot more finesse than her older brother. When my time comes and I'm facing down a moody overly-dramatic tween girl… I hope I can remember this awesome advice from Rachel Herrscher at Today's Mama.

The answer was found in head gear. Just go ahead and raise your hand if you’ve had head gear. I don’t care if you are alone. Own it. It’s an elite sisterhood that brings ones self image to ones knees. But I’m convinced you’re all stronger, better people for it.

My daughter got head gear a couple of weeks ago. We’ve spent some time dealing with the logistics.

We usually spend about 5 minutes each night handling head gear. It’s just the two of us. Don’t get me wrong – we eat dinner together, we run errands together, we spend time together all of the time. But this was different. It’s just us. Every night.

This was just enough different that I started to notice that she was happier. She was communicating with me better. She was stopping herself before she went over the “sassy cliff of no return”. The eye rolling got less and less. The tension seemed to disappear. It was all about time. She was finally getting enough of what she needed from me.

It was the 5 minutes that neither of us knew we needed.

First of all, I have to commend her for finding an upside to head gear. That said, It's got me thinking about ways I can get 5 minutes of one on one time with my kids every single day.

If I make it a priority now, who knows, maybe I can avoid the angst ridden tween era all together. Yeah, probably not, but at least I'll know how to handle it when I get there… maybe.

Read more about Herrscher's 5 minute fix and how it's working for her at Today's Mama. Then, share your advice for handling tweens in the comment section.