Fix Your Face

“Fix your face, hon,” 

I whispered to my five-year-old when his grandmother scooped spaghetti onto his dinner plate and he realized it had mushrooms. 

“Remember to keep a happy face, no matter what!”

I reminded my kiddo before opening birthday presents at his party, knowing good and well there would be a mix of Nerf guns he wanted, Pokemon cards he stopped collecting two years ago, and random dollar store trinkets no one has ever asked for.

“Baby, your face…”

I nudged my teenage daughter at the high school info session. She was starting at a new school, nervous about making new friends, and unfortunately unaware that her anxious face leans strongly toward a scowl.

I’ve spent over 18 years trying to teach my kids the subtleties of nonverbal communication, the skills of controlling your body language and facial expressions. It’s so important for our kids’ socialization that they understand these small movements can communicate as much as – sometimes even more than! – their words alone. 

This is especially hard for young kids still learning how language works, preteens, and adolescents whose brains are too busy overhauling their wiring system to notice things like minor muscle movements, and neurodivergent kiddos who are trying to navigate a world that often feels highly illogical.

As it turns out, this is also especially difficult for perimenopausal moms who are trying to be supportive of their families while their own nervous systems are falling apart.

We know perimenopause – the years-long period before menstruation ceases when estrogen production slows at a drastic and/or erratic rate – is not a new phenomenon, but because women’s health is historically vastly understudied, we are now learning more about it than ever before. As it turns out, perimenopause is a drastic biological overhaul, so intense that some people call it “reverse puberty.” And just like pubescent kiddos struggle to regulate their emotions, moderate their vocal inflection (cue the defensiveness when you tell them to “Watch your tone, mister!”), and execute appropriate facial expressions, perimenopause will send even the most Zen mamas straight back to middle school with our crying episodes and RBF.

When you’ve got puberty and perimenopause both happening in the same house, it can lead to some pretty dramatic and frustrating lapses in communication in the family. (Luckily, my husband is already bald, so he doesn’t have any hair to pull out while he watches all this unfold.) For all the times I have told my kids to “fix your face” to correct some unintended messaging being sent, they’re now saying the same thing to me. I have told them I love them millions of times, I’ve given them opportunities to build independence and resilience rather than trying to control them, I’ve made myself a safe person to talk to openly without judgment – but none of that matters when my face says “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

I don’t mean to make that face.

Most of the time I’m not even thinking that (most of the time), but my face is probably responding to some tangential thought I had as I was nonjudgmentally listening. In fact, when having serious conversations with my teenage daughter, I have started putting a blanket over my face while she talks so she won’t be distracted/discouraged by my facial expressions. It’s not a permanent solution, but it has genuinely helped our relationship! 

Even more than preventing my own facial misunderstandings, realizing the effects of my “reverse puberty” has given me renewed grace and patience for my teenagers when they inevitably misstep with their nonverbal cues. Rather than snapping at them for disrespect, I can laugh and say, “Woah, babe, did you feel how hard your eyes just rolled? I’m worried you’ll need glasses if you keep straining your eyes that way.” Usually, they’ll claim they didn’t roll their eyes, but when my response is lighthearted and compassionate, they’re more willing to laugh it off than get defensive and lead to a fight. We can both see these gestures as unintended and not to be taken too seriously, and in turn, when they’re telling me a story and I cringe, they can laugh and say, “Yikes, mom, your face!” while tossing me a blanket to put over my head.

We’re all relearning to communicate in this season, and just like everything else, it takes time, commitment, and persistence to get through. By the time we figure it out, we may all be on more stable emotional planes, so this will all be moot, but in the meantime, I’m trying to prioritize the relationships and make laughter the key to our success.

So mom, welcome back to puberty – you’ve got to fix your face. And if you can’t, at least grab a blanket for now.