The #1 Thing My Mom Told Us as Preteens (and Now I’m Telling My Kids)

The other night, one of my children received a phone call from a girl at school …

Then, he entered our living room and dropped on the couch. “Are you OK?” I asked.

“I was so quiet by phone,” he told me. “I probably think I’m bored.”

While we sat together, the white lotus stopped on television, I told him something that my mother told us many times growing, something I have thought for decades since then, and observed and witnessed so many times, now I know in my bones.

“Honey,” I said, stroking his hair, “in situations like these, Everyone cares for themselves. “

It’s true, don’t you think? Have you ever returned home after a party and you are awake asking you how someone? others Found? Have you ever had an uncomfortable and regretted interaction that someone others Was it inherently shameful? Have you ever hung the phone worrying if someone others Was it too reserved or too talkative or too quiet or too loud? No, of course not, you think of yourself. Everyone thinks of themselves.

Curring on the couch, I told my son: “If the person on the phone even noticed that you were silent, what they probably did not think:” Why is he so quiet? “Instead, they would think: ‘Am I uninteresting?

From time to time, I have to remember even myself, and I’m 46 years old! Recently, one of my best friends was silent in the text message, and finally I had to ask:

(Our texts remind me of this meme)

In a nutshell: We all worry! We are all trying! We are all more difficult with ourselves than any other person who has been or will be! And once you realize that everyone is analyzing themselves, and no one is analyzing you, you can be kind and sincere, human and uncomfortable and forgiver and loving and whatever you want because you will be free. XOXOXO (Do you remember this other cure of social anxiety?)

PS 21 completely subjective rules to raise adolescents and adolescents, and the best that my mother did as a mother, in general.

(Photo of my friend Claire with her daughter and my son. Xoxo)