This graduation season, I moved the tassel to the other side of my mortarboard for I have passed Parenting a Tween and commenced Parenting A Teenager. Where’s my stinkin’ cake? What, no moonbounce in the backyard? What a rip-off.

Graduating a kid from tween to teen usually doesn’t register on either end of the celebration spectrum. That’s a shame. Having a child turn 13 is a special time for the child and also the mother and father. It also marks a turning point in the ever-evolving parent/child relationship. In fact, it just might be the most important time in both of your lives.

Of course, the baby years are important. However, I’m reminded of a baseball saying: “You can’t win the World Series in the first month of the season but you can lose it.” I think this applies to parenting too.

So much of the parenting world, from “expert” books to those tired parenting memes to the overall cultural conversation about kids, revolves around the early years and the sleepless nights. In retrospect, all that stuff — the baby, toddler and early elementary years — is the easiest part of a parent’s job responsibility. We can get that shit done with only determination and a stronger gag reflex. For our efforts, we’re rewarded with baby smiles, adorably mispronounced words, a fountain of kisses and air-tight squeezy hugs.

So, don’t drop your baby on its head. Don’t blow secondhand smoke in its tiny face. Definitely don’t be an asshole as your child grows from baby to toddler to tween –someone sorta resembling a real-life actual person. But try as you may, you aren’t going to “win it all” at parenting in those early years.

With that in mind, here’s what I’ve learned about parenting by parenting a tween:

Watch those ‘foreverwords’

I was speaking with a friend when she mentioned the term “foreverwords.” Say your tween child has done something. Maybe that something is grand or maybe it is life-altering in what could be a possibly terrible way. Regardless of how good or poor their decision-making proves to be, how you respond initially — the actions and words you use in that very moment as you and she/he teeter on a high wire — will form the foundation for a possible shift in your parent/child relationship.

The idea of pausing before speaking or acting out those foreverwords hit me hard. The wrong choice could be ugly.

The tween years of parenting require more nuanced thought, on-the-fly nimbleness, and patiently considered words and actions. Our rewards during this often confusing and conflicting time won’t always be as adorable or evident or immediate or obvious as they were in those baby and toddler years. However, they will be powerful for the life of your child.

So tread lightly, moms and pops. The cement is wet still and awfully impressionable. You do not want to misstep and cause cracks in your kid’s permanent foundation. Not now, not after you took such care to keep them alive and reasonably happy for the past decade or so.

Be more involved with them than ever before

You don’t get to parent less or clock out in any way from the job when your kid reaches the tween years. The exact opposite is true. You need to put in more hours, give your parenting decisions more thought, and double down on your commitment to the job of being a dad or mom.

Parenting a tween (and I’m sure a teen as well) requires more from you. I’m afraid many parents don’t get this memo. Many parents think their job is nearly over in the tween years and they check out through the teen years.

That’s a terrible, terrible move.

Yes, your older child is pretty darn self-reliant now. They have a phone, they can let themselves into the house by themselves and stay at home while you run errands locally. It’s kinda great for you and them.

You can have conversations about some grown-up stuff with your tween and it’s actually enjoyable and thought-provoking at times.

While all that is true, your 11-, 12-, 13-, 15-, 17-year-old child needs you to be a more actively involved parent now. More than ever before.

They need us more, even if they insist they don’t. So we need to parent more.

More thoughtfully, more passionately, more earnestly, more actively.

More.

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This blog post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

A version of this first appeared on Out with the Kids. It first ran here in 2017 and has since been updated. Photo: ©LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS / Adobe Stock.

“Ohhhh, turn it up! It’s Graduation Week!”

That was my message to my 4-year-old who was about to finish pre-kindergarten and to my 10-year-old who was graduating 5th grade. Yup, two in the same week!

Graduation Day will make any dad proud and, since my dad never made it to any of my graduations, it means even more to me. My dad never made it because he had to work. How many other parents are in that same situation? I understand some people can’t make it, but if you can make up for a lost day of wages and still choose your work or other things over an hour or two of showing love — that’s no bueno.

Kids can only graduate from a grade once, so missing it when you could be there is lame. It’s a proud moment that doesn’t happen every week, and you should never miss an event at which your child is the star. Pictures of this special day are cool, but being there is priceless.

Have fun with graduation

Graduation is supposed to be for the kids, but you know dads like me still have to have our own fun with it. We wake up every day and make sure our kids get to school, so we deserve this day as much as they do.

I found a deal for $5 “big heads” on Groupon and jumped on the opportunity. It was a simple and cheap process that brought us tons of fun and memories.

The look on my kids’ faces when they saw themselves as huge cardboard heads was insane. All their friends and parents smiled while asking where we got them from.

I’m a sucker for making my kids feel like stars and making sure I had fun with it helped big time.

Take lots of photos

We have all encountered rude parents who block your view and photo ops at graduation. Often they are so excited they don’t even know they are doing it. It is what it is.

If you have to get in someone’s way to take pics of your kids, do so but don’t be rude. Don’t just barrel people over. Think about what you are doing.

Whenever my kids got called for an award or even their diploma, I weaved my way to the front to take a picture. If you’re a little shy like me, you do need to get over it. If you don’t, you will end up with some wack photos.

I abide by the rule of asking for forgiveness later, not asking for permission to capture the moment. however, always make sure you don’t mess it up for someone else. Get out of the way once you have your shot.

In conclusion, graduations are special for everyone involved. Childhood goes by way too fast and you never get a replay of moments like these. Do all you can to be there, take dope pictures and have fun. You will thank yourself when you see how proud your kids are and the smiles on their faces when you hug them. That feeling is the best.

A version of this first appeared on Cool4Dads. It first ran here in 2019 and has since been updated. Photos: James Lopez family.

My two oldest kids didn’t have kindergarten graduation but I’ve noticed it’s that time of year again and several schools around us are doing so. This curious ceremony has eluded me my entire life. So what exactly goes on at a kindergarten graduation?

Are there actual caps and gowns? Or just kids wandering around wearing ball caps and dresses?

Do the kids write things atop their graduation hats like high school and college graduates do? Things like, “The real world starts now,” “Party time!” or “NAPS ARE DEAD TO ME!”

Is there a valedictorian? Is this the one specific 5-year-old who mastered the “word wall”? Or is it the kid who can do two-digit addition in her head? Did this child write an admission letter and get scholarship money to attend the elementary school of his dreams? Or is he or she going on a dodgeball or freeze tag scholarship?

Is there a commencement speaker? Somebody who can speak about what life is like after kindergarten. Someone who’s been out of kindergarten and into the real world for a while. Maybe a really mature third-grader can talk about mind-blowing things, like learning cursive!

After the ceremony do all the kids hug and cry because they feel they will never see one another again … until summer vacation is over?

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. I’m not joking.

Since my kids didn’t get a kindergarten graduation I guess they’ll have to wait until the end of fifth grade (gasp!) for them to go through a graduation ceremony.

A version of this first appeared on Indy’s Child. Photo by USAG Yongsan on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

The annual meeting had always been the same: stale donuts, terrible coffee, and someone constantly talking about this graph or that. Once, according to company lore, someone accidentally brought bagels, and while everyone was at least one degree away from any concrete confirmation, they all accepted it as gospel, because how wild is that? Bagels, man.

It was June, the month of graduations that didn’t happen in May, and everyone was, obviously, giddy. The meeting was the official launch of the latest “Grads and” campaign, held by those that ran it, and included all the hoopla one would imagine.

The Kind of Hoopla One Would Imagine

Together, the “Grads and” team would discuss cards, mugs, T-shirts and assorted knickknacks. This year, finally, there was a real buzz in the air, what with talk of a car magnet (which is like a sticker, but easier to remove) shaped like a mortarboard with the year written upon it in a variety of potential school color combinations. The inclusion of the year was important, so as to keep customers from using the magnet again at some point in the future. They needed to be convinced that the year made it a keepsake, and that subsequent graduations would require purchasing their own version of it. Business, as you may have guessed, can be pretty cutthroat sometimes.

In fact, this meeting was more intense than most, which really had nothing to do with the new car magnet, because everyone loved that idea, and everything to do with the elephant in the room*.

“Grads and” was lacking. It was the first half of a thought, missing the recently departed after. That afterthought had been “Dads,” added years ago to make graduation seem even more important, and also to “tie-in” the hot necktie market. There would be far fewer “tie-in” jokes this year, and everyone agreed the meeting was worse for it.

“Grads and Dads” had worked because it felt right, especially to the team. The catchy duo made for the holiday season of the summer (aside from the Fourth of July and sometimes Labor Day or Memorial Day, depending on your school calendar), and losing “Dads” left the “Grads and” people scrambling for a replacement.

Possible Replacements

Grads and Bads? No.

Grads and Sads? No.

Grads and Rads? Cool, but no.

Grads and Fads? No.

Grads and Mads? Seriously, do they even have straws left for grasping?

No.

“Why?” was the question. “Why did ‘Dads’ leave ‘Grads and’ hanging?”

Why “Dads” Left “Grads and” Hanging

“Because,” said someone, “combining Grads and Dads was a bunch of crap. They each deserve their own holiday, and putting them together diminishes their respective importance.”

At that, they all nodded. Then someone started one of those slow claps that are so powerful that you may have peed a little.

The whole experience was pretty humbling. In fact, if felt more movement than moment, then the tears, the hugs.

“Hey,” said someone else. “We should totally go get bagels.” And then they did, because you only live once, people.

In closing, congrats to all the graduates. And, IN ADDITION TO BUT NOT AFFILIATED WITH a Happy Father’s Day to those who observe the holiday, which totally stands on its own.

* Not an actual elephant

The window of elementary school is officially closing behind our family with our youngest moving up soon. In fact, the boys are each moving up an academic notch, to middle and high school, respectively. Between them, we shall leave no path wanting wear, and little said of undergrowth. We are moving, quickly, into the big, bold future. Transition — it’s a thing.

I never really thought about life after elementary school. That is, I knew it would happen, but later rather than sooner. In theory, we’ve prepared. We have college savings plans for the boys and something growing toward retirement for my wife and me. But all of that was always far, far away, not next week.

It’s not that I’m blindsided by the existence of change, but with a combined 12 years of elementary school serving as the center of our life and routine, it has all blended with forever, and I lost track of time. After all, when one is floating across the sea eternal, it is understandable should they stop searching for land upon the horizon.

Land, ho! We’re beached.

I suppose the thing I find most surprising, is that I’m OK with it. That’s a big deal, considering I’ve made a career from melancholy, over a decade of waxing bittersweet nostalgia in real time for more parenting outlets than I care to remember. I’ve held to the early years of childhood like nothing else mattered, and, I suppose, at the time, nothing did. However, in doing so I have spent far more paragraphs pining for moments passed than pondering the escapades awaiting ahead. Fun fact: adventure is still out there.

It’s funny: the transformation of a moment, the loss of luster as first steps become a whirlwind of sprints and dance moves. While the beginning was and always will be a big deal, there is something deeply satisfying in seeing the learned become the applied, the steps into springboards. The boys can walk the walk, and now it is time to see where they are going.

There is probably a way to spin the downside. For instance, I can barely lift them, and unless we’re in the pool neither will ever again ride upon my shoulders. And, they eat everything. Constantly. To the point that we’re spending more money on groceries now than ever before. Also, there is less hand-holding and so many things that they’ve outgrown.

Yet, for all that, I see their growth as a wonderful experience: their strength of back and character, a hunger for nourishment and knowledge, and the daily reminder that hand-holding is also a thing done figuratively. The only downside is in failing to appreciate it as it happens.

One day, these moments, too, will fade into that blur behind us, the constant projection of highlights and gag reels, the montage of their youth upon the inside of our eyelids, but even then, spread apart as we may be, there will be new scenes to cherish. I can only hope the boys share them on Facebook because I would never want to miss them.