Tweens

This one might anger some folks. But don't worry... if I know you personally, odds are I'm not talking about YOUR tween.

You know what's normal?  Growing up and watching your friends get married and have kids.  You know what's not normal (at least not normal-feeling)?  Getting so old that your friends and people you went to school with start having tweens.  It seems odd to think that some of my friends have kids that literally are on the verge of starting middle school. I was a middle schooler once. My friends were middle schoolers once.  I myself have a daughter who is a scant 4 years away from tweendom. It's weird growing up.

Especially today.

Not to go all old-assed man on you guys, but kids these days are a totally different ballgame from even my generation.  And this is nowhere more evident than in tween culture.

Now, for the uninitiated, a "tween" is a "person who is between the ages of 10 and 12 years old (although some say the range is 8 to 12, 9 to 14, or 9 to 13, or 11 and 12), in grades 5-7 or 4-8"

Basically tweens, in Britney Spears talk, are "not a girl, not yet a woman" (feel free to substitute masculine gender nouns where applicable).

p.s. Brit, puberty called... you're definitely a woman.

I mentioned above how different kids were today from when I was a kid.  Considering I'm only 30, that's kind of saying a lot.  12-year olds today have cell phones, iPods, iPads, designer skinny jeans, banking accounts, XBOXes... they're completely plugged in.

You know what I had when I was 12?  A Super Nintendo that I could only play between 3-5 and on the weekends.  That was it.  That was the extent of my electronic distractions.  We didn't have the internet (Windows 95 and AOL didn't come about until the next year) or cell phones (well, my mom had one, but it was the size of a shoebox and had an hour-long talking time battery life) or cable, but we DID have imaginations.

We rode bikes, we played in washes, we played tackle football and broke each others' collarbones for making fun of my mom (sorry Ryan)... long story short, we had fun. And not the destructive, selfish jerk kid kind of fun.  Good, clean fun. As far as I know, we did no lasting property damage.  Again, as far as I know.

But I had something most tweens today don't: Responsibility.  Over the summers while I was in middle school, I would work for my grandpa. Doing construction. June through August. In Las Vegas. For $2 an hour. 

But it taught me how to work. It taught me pride in that work and, most importantly, how awesome pay day was. If you mentioned work to a tween today, I'd imagine their eyes would glaze over.

"Work?  Like, as in DO stuff??  Ugh.  Whatever.  Does it have, like, wi-fi??"

Remember how I wrote about toddlers, and training them to bring you things? Tweens are like those toddlers, who now just disregard their orders. It's infuriating because they're infuriating, but not yet legally old enough to beat up or abandon.

Now, before some of you parents of tweens start to bombard me with comments and emails about how awesome and sterling and fantastic your tweens are, read this:

You're probably right.  Your tween is probably awesome. 

But for every awesome tween, there are 3 or 4 that are giant pieces of poop pie.

I'm no behavioral therapist, but a lot of it might just be the culture.  Kids today are the first real products of the "Barney Generation"... you know, the "I'm special, you're special, we're all special in our own little ways" generation? 

He's lying.  Some of you just aren't that special. At all.  Sorry.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped giving kids Fs in school, and handing out trophies to the winning team, or even keeping score.  Somewhere along the line we started grading papers in purple because it was "too abrasive".  

I guess, in some small way, tweens are kind of society's comeuppance.  Kind of a karmic pimpslapping for getting away from teaching kids to have balls.

Before I signed off, I thought I'd leave you with a small list of things we have to thank (blame?) tweens for:

1. The Twilight Saga books and movies
2. Skinny jeans
3. Justin Bieber (partial credit/blame to Canada, as well)
4. YouTube sensation "Fred" (this dude has almost 1 BILLION video views on YouTube... the History Channel has about 25 MILLION.  Let that sink in for a minute)
5. Anything NOT cartoon on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel
6. The Backstreet Boys (tweens in my day weren't perfect)
7. Rebecca Black and "Friday"
8. My Super Sweet 16 (though some blame should be meted out to the parents as well)
9. The crash of MySpace
10. The impending crash of Facebook
11. NBC's Chris Hansen and Dateline: To Catch a Predator
12. #YOLO
13. Textttt messagesss thatt r typedd liek thissss <3
14. The kissy face and peace sign pictures

The list really could go on and on, but I really must stop.

So, with all that said... to tweens, the inventors of the awkward 2-4 year pit stop between not knowing and not caring!