I have a 12-year-old son. This is not a unique condition. And you might think that I would be well prepared for the associated challenges, having been a 12-year-old son myself at one time. But you’d be wrong.

Regular readers of my blog posts might recall that my family and I recently moved from rural Central Pennsylvania to urban Sydney, Australia, for six months. My son wasn’t too keen on the idea of leaving his friends and his dog behind to start seventh grade all over again in a new country. But his mother and I were confident that once we arrived, he would realize that we did, in fact, know what we were doing and that we were not, in fact, trying to ruin his life.

Australia is great. We’ve had many wonderful experiences and met many wonderful people here. My son is slowly warming up to the place, but he has still not completely bought into the idea.

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