For all you moms out there with sweet, little children who think you’ve hung the moon and want nothing more than to spend every waking moment hanging out with you, cherish that time. There will come a day, and it’ll come sooner than you expect, when most things you do are totally uncool. You’ll suggest the food truck rally downtown or just a simple dinner out, and it will be met with massive resistance. They’d rather FaceTime with their friends, watch Netflix, or as I’ve been told many times before, just have some alone time.
I’ve been known to force the issue. Tell my kids that they have to go with us to dinner or whatever event I think is going to be totally amazing. This typically ends in my yelling at the kids that they are ungrateful and ruin everything, and my husband wearing a smug look of I told you so. One day I stopped the madness. I began pulling out the he who cares the least strategy about such things, and it actually worked. Sometimes my children gladly jumped in the car and other times they didn’t, but the times they did were full of fun and conversation and not drinks being thrown at each other in a restaurant (yes, this happened).
That’s why when my husband recently suggested we attend the Midtown Music Festival in Atlanta, I sat back quietly and waited for a response. When it was met with “Sounds like fun. Let’s go.” instead of “Why would we want to do that?,” I decided I was onboard. Sure, I’d attended music festivals before and knew not everything about them screamed family-friendly, but my kids were older. It wasn’t like I was showing up with a toddler in tow or a baby strapped to my back. Besides the occasional smell of pot in the air or a few non-radio-friendly lyrics, what could possibly go wrong?
I suppose that depends on your standards for wrong. It’s important to note that I take a fairly lax approach when it comes to certain parenting decisions around movies, music, etc. Obviously, I think through the content and determine the acceptable nature, but I’m not spending a great deal of time worrying if my kids hear a few cuss words. They know my rules and expectations, and the minute they show me they can’t handle certain freedoms, those freedoms go away. With that in mind, I’d like to share a few highlights from what ended up being one of the most unexpected and best trips we’ve ever taken as a family.
- The minute we stepped through the gates we were surrounded by dancing twenty-somethings. I saw this “older” couple frolicking through the lawn singing to DNCE, and I said to my husband that I hoped we were like them when we get older. Guess what? We were them only we’d chosen to bring our twelve and fourteen-year-olds which probably aged us a good ten years.
- The twenty-somethings judged us and judged us hard. I heard them ask under their breath on a couple of occasions why anyone would bring kids to a music festival. My response? Twenty-year-olds are the least qualified to judge. Trust me. I was twenty once.
- I teared up a little when I realized my husband and I have excelled at exposing our children to a wide variety of music. Various bands covered Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa, Sabotage by Beastie Boys, and Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley. My son knew every word to every one of those songs. I’ll pause now for my Mom of the Year Award.
- If your kids ever ask you if they can go to a G-Eazy concert, say no. Nothing good can come from it. Trust me. I now fully understand why many of his songs haven’t made it to mainstream radio stations. My daughter still likes to push my buttons by suggesting she feels like his music speaks to her and asking me to explain what getting “turnt-up in the strip club” means again. The sarcasm is strong with that one.
Rain plus mud equals a pretty awesome time. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t thrilled about losing a flip flop to squishy terrain, but I learned my kids could be troopers on that final day.
As we ended the last night singing loudly to The Killers, I realized I wouldn’t trade that weekend for anything. Sure, there may have been times when I wondered what I was thinking bringing my kids to a music festival but those times were overshadowed by two very distinct moments. As Twenty One Pilots ended their set with the song Trees, my daughter placed her head on my shoulder and swayed with me. Sure, she told me it was because she was tired, but that’s just teenager code for “Thank you. It’s been a good day.” During that same concert, my son had a blast jumping around with his fist in the air. He is at the age where jumping around to music with his mom is becoming completely uncool, and it felt a little like that might be one of our last, pure moments before all of the awkwardness and insecurity of adolescence really sets in.
Would I do it again? Absolutely! I’ll take cringing at a few lyrics for those two moments any day.
