It definitely felt like we had crossed a threshold when we walked into the Talmud Torah gymnasium last night. The dance music blared and a laser light show flashed to the beat. Kids literally ran around in circles, giddy with the noise and hopped up on candies.

With Purim approaching, many of the younger kids dressed up in costumes for the sock hop. In grade one that means girls dressed as princesses and boys dressed as superheroes. (One day I will write a post about why kids have such limited range of options to choose from when picking their costumes.)

Neither Ben nor Ella wanted to wear a costume, but they did want to dress up. Ben wore his black suit jacket with his pink shirt and jeans. Very cool. He told people he was a private eye, no doubt a reference to his recent role in the Spies in the House video.

The strange part was watching them pass into that pre-teen world that they are entering. The marketers call it ‘tween’.

It’s been happening for a while because they watch a fair amount of TV and have been imitating the tween persona in various ways – experimenting with sarcasm, realizing parents can be embarrassing sometimes, being mouthy. Ella is very independent in her fashion sense and insists on picking her outfits and dressing herself. She knows what she likes which I respect enormously in a 6 and a half year old.

Watching them during the dance was interesting. The girls ran around together, danced together holding hands in a small circles of three girls. The boys were a bit crazier, but no holding hands and dancing. Benny spent a fair bit of time dancing on his own and doing his cool moves. He likes dance and movement, whether its doing cool hip hop dance moves, or karate-style moves. He likes to move it, move it.

Overwhelmingly though, it felt like the first night of the rest of their lives. I wasn’t prepared for that feeling at all. For me it was just going to be a noisy 2 hours of crazy kids running around. But it seemed transformative for them in a way. They were both very mature for the evening and were very well-behaved when the time came to leave.

“That was fun, dad,” they both chirped on the way to the car.

Oh my little tweens.