Posts

Why I Choose to Parent my Teen Conspicuously

Forain – The Tightrope Walker

Monday morning I went for a walk with two friends who are mothers.  As it often does, talk fairly quickly turned to our teenage daughters and the triumphs and challenges we are facing right now.  We took turns talking about and listening to each others’ unique perspectives and it felt good to be in the company of others whose values are similar and who may have fresh ideas for looking at sticky situations.

I was struck by how incredibly important parents are to children as they go through the early teen years.   Despite the fact that Eve is more interested in spending hours alone in her room (well, not digitally ‘alone,’) and she maintains that she has her own ideas about everything and my opinions aren’t always welcome, I know she is still looking to Bubba and me for a baseline.  She is in the throes of determining her own personality, her own values, and finding her unique path for the near future, and I have to respect that, but her frame of reference is us.  I can see her picking and choosing which pieces of me to absorb or eschew, shrinking away into her own space and crafting her world view from the bits and pieces she has decided are important.  She is watching the way that Bubba and I move through the world, how we react to lack of control, how we prioritize, how we act in community with others (or not).  We are the starting point from which she jumps and our role is so important in giving her something to either emulate or discard, something to react to.

One of my girlfriends was lamenting the fact that her teenager has such a negative view of her own life.  “She has clothes, food, a roof over her head. She doesn’t have parents who scream at each other all the time or kick her out of the house. How hard could her life be?”  We all laughed in that way you laugh when you know you’re all sitting in the same stew pot together.

We kicked around the notion that, in order to differentiate themselves and individuate (their most important developmental ‘job’ right now as teenagers), they have to craft some kind of backstory that justifies defiance, a pushing away. They have to have something to push off of in order to propel themselves out into the world with less fear and trepidation.  It is so much easier to push off when you’re angry or defiant than it is when you’re reluctant to leave.

There is such a strong temptation to take that “backstory” personally.  I have found myself more than once, mouth open, words tumbling out to justify or defend or belittle the “hardships” Eve has built up in her mind.  If she is listening, all I am doing is giving her ammunition in those moments.  When I’m feeling particularly disparaged by her, it is incredibly tempting to check out and let her spend hours alone in her room texting her friends, not invite her to play a game with the family or walk the dog with me or sit and do her homework in the kitchen while I make dinner.  
And then I remember what it was like to be a teenager who didn’t have parents that were available.  I remember feeling adrift much of the time, as though I was making choices about who I would be in a vacuum and ultimately, wondering why it even mattered.  It is hard to deny or embrace something that isn’t actually there.  In the moments when one of my parents was around, even if I felt they were being perfectly horrible, at least it gave me something to decide NOT to be, some solid ground on which to put my feet as I leapt in the opposite direction.
Even though I suspect Eve would say in a very brave voice that she doesn’t “need” us as much anymore, I think that the things for which we are necessary are simply different than they were in the past.  I am entirely convinced that our presence as role models in her life, however quiet and unobtrusive it may be at times, is incredibly vital to her sense of who she is now and who she may become over time.  I don’t expect or even want her to emulate either of us to the exclusion of her own burgeoning personality, but consistent availability to her, emotionally and physically, may just be the thing she needs in order to feel safe about trying on new personalities.  It may be both the bedrock and the safety net she needs to set her compass by.  

/3 Comments/by

Food and Memory


Eve discovered grapefruit about a year ago. She was helping me unpack our weekly CSA box and as she pulled two pockmarked peach-colored fruits out of the box she exclaimed, “These oranges are huge, Mom!” My brain flooded.

At first, I was astonished to realize that she was eleven years old and had never eaten (or seen) a grapefruit. I had a moment of shame before my own memories of grapefruit rushed in to wash it away.
My mom standing at the kitchen counter, small curved-blade knife in hand, cutting in to each segment of a halved grapefruit to release it from the thick casing separating it from its neighbor. This knife was created specially for this purpose, down in to the segment she plunged it and with a curve of her wrist, she expertly pivoted it in a teardrop shape before lifting the blade and moving on to the next segment, turning the fruit slightly like the minute hand on a clock so that her hand was always in the same spot. She would place each half-grapefruit in a shallow bowl, dust the tops with sugar and hand them to us on Saturday mornings. I hated it. The bitterness assaulted my mouth and made it water uncontrollably until I thought I’d drool. The sickly-sweet sugar sitting on top of the bitter flavor made me shudder. I soldiered on, seated next to my father who ate his with the kind of pleasure generally reserved for things related to cars and soccer. He ate quickly, sometimes groaning with pleasure, and then grabbed the fruit in his freckled hand and squeezed it over his spoon to catch every drop of the juice. Squeezed it over and over again until it looked like a deflated football, the segment casings glistening white like the skeleton of the fruit. It was his favorite weekend breakfast. I would eat as much as I could and hope for a distraction as I tossed the rest so I wouldn’t get busted for wasting food.
I had to use these grapefruits. And I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce Eve to something new. I remembered seeing something on a cooking show about sprinkling brown sugar on the top of a grapefruit half and putting it under the broiler for a few minutes to caramelize it. Eve ate both halves and asked if I would do the other one for her, too. I considered for a moment showing her my father’s trick for getting the juice, but using my hands in the same way he had used his was too painful to consider. Instead I described how to get the juice out. She squeezed it into her bowl to mix with some of the brown sugar bits and asked for a straw.
In the last few weeks I have rediscovered grapefruit. This week two enormous Texas Ruby Reds showed up in our CSA box and Eve was out of town with her classmates for four days. I used a small paring knife to free the flesh of the grapefruit and stuck it under the broiler with some brown sugar. As I ate the segments, warm and crunchy on top with brown sugar, cool at the core, I lamented my technique and considered buying a grapefruit knife. Too much flesh left behind clinging to the skin. I didn’t cut closely enough in my effort to avoid the bitterness of the pulp.
When I had eaten every last segment I lifted the fruit and squeezed the juice into my spoon, noting how my hands have freckled and aged over the years and look a little like his did. Tasting the bittersweet, sitting in the quiet, I shared breakfast with Dad.
/9 Comments/by

Before and After


There are so many milestones in life that we take for granted after they’ve come and gone. Those acts that we wait for, sometimes prepare for hour after hour, and once they are performed, there is no going back.

Driving.
Passing a momentous exam.
Having sex for the first time.
There are others that are not quite so enormous, but still have an impact. Getting your first cell phone or laptop. Your first library card.
Bubba and I are holding out on Eve. Despite her carefully calculated attempts to convince us otherwise, she is not getting a cell phone anytime soon. She has interviewed all of the other girls in her classroom to determine how many of them have their own phone. She has banded together with a classmate who is similarly deprived and they have made bar graphs and pie charts to display the cruelty with which they must contend. Eve, knowing the limits of my patience, is an expert at the art of parry and thrust. She pushes pushes pushes until I am just about to the wall and then she retreats. Sometimes for days at a time and just when I least expect it, she strikes again from a different direction. I can hear the gears in her brain turning, working on new angles to use.
I don’t really remember when I got my first cell phone. For me, the equivalent pre-teen angst was most likely being allowed to wear makeup or shave my legs. I never had my own phone in my bedroom and, as a latchkey kid, the lobbying to be left home alone was not an issue. I was struck this morning by the thought that, although I must have pleaded with my mother to wear eyeshadow and mascara, I don’t really recall that first day I went to school all made up. Ironically, I can count the number of times I’ve worn makeup in the past ten years on the fingers of one hand.
I have a friend who refused to own a cell phone for years. While the rest of us had ours tucked into our purses or pockets, she held out on some principle that was mysterious to the rest of us. She didn’t need the ‘toy,’ wasn’t intrigued by the notion of calling people whenever she wanted to, and as soon as Skype became available, she even got rid of her home phone. She does have a cell phone now, I suspect due to the fact that she has two kids in two different schools and lives in a large urban city and works part time outside the home.
Whatever the reason she finally capitulated (and I know Bubba and I will, eventually, too), I wonder if she looks back on that moment and senses something pivotal about it. I’m betting she doesn’t. I’m betting that the majority of times she is compelled to pull her cell phone out of her purse to answer or make a call, she simply takes it for granted. No matter how much Eve fights to have one or how strong my friend’s conviction was not to have one, the moments, months, and years that follow the actual acquisition of the cell phone almost instantly erase the memory of the ‘before-time.’
I wonder how much of that is due to human nature. How many times have we as individuals and as groups of like-minded people, fought hard and long for something that we truly wanted or believed in and, once we accomplished it, taken it for granted? I know that Eve feels that getting a cell phone will have a domino effect in her life that will make it so much better. My friend thought that the slippery slope she would get on simply by purchasing a cell phone wasn’t worth it. I am willing to bet that neither of those things is true.
There are some times in our lives where the before and after are markedly different. For those people who lived before indoor plumbing was widely available in the US, the after had to be unimaginably glorious. Not having to pee in a bedpan in the middle of the night or walk outside in the snow to poop in a wooden shack? Priceless. But for so many of the things we fight for or against, the changes are minimal or it takes us such a small amount of time to incorporate them into our lives that it makes me wonder what we’re really fighting for.
/5 Comments/by

Learning All the Time


I heard someone say once that the reason we get defensive when someone insults us is because there is a part of us that believes in the veracity of the insult. Think about it. Don’t we usually come back with, “No, I’m not!” or some such defense or proof that we are not, indeed, guilty of whatever our accuser has said we are guilty of? I know I do that. Once someone says something about me (unless it’s my kids – I long ago figured out how to let go the slings and arrows of being told I’m the meanest mother there is), I am immediately driven to prove them wrong. I see my girls doing it with each other, too.

“She called me a butthead!” Lola shrieks.

“Well, are you one?” I ask.

She is offended. Until she realizes that her bottom is most definitely not on her head and giggles. I remind her that just because Eve is older than her and flung the insult with a great deal of passion, does not mean that Lola is, indeed, a butthead. And if she were one, is that something under her control or not? If not, then it isn’t much of an insult, is it? That’s like calling the dog a dog. No matter how loudly or indignantly you say it, it’s just the truth and not derogatory. It isn’t his fault he’s a dog. He just is.

Like most of my parenting tactics, however, it seems that I must repeat this speech for both girls somewhere between half a million and two billion times before they actually either recall it on their own or think long enough to apply its actual meaning to this particular situation.

Why is name-calling so effective? Who first discovered that it had the power to stop another human in their tracks? Name-calling is like the sound bite of relationships – rarely accurate but effective at grabbing attention. I know that when my girls descend into “jerk” and “idiot” they have simply stopped attempting to solve whatever misunderstanding they are having and are simply trying to get the point across that they are MAD. I’m pretty sure the names are designed to hurt feelings, too, although neither of my girls would admit that they purposely wanted to hurt her sister. When we all sit down later to discuss the issue, sometimes I ask them for a character sketch of a jerk or an idiot or a butthead and, once we have all of the traits down on paper, it turns out that neither of them fits the description. So why is it so much easier to label other people with mean names than it is to say we are simply angry or frustrated or hurt?

I wonder if it is because calling someone else a name puts all of the blame outside ourselves. If we admit that we are upset, not only does that make us seem vulnerable, it somehow invites personal responsibility into the mix. If you are a jerk, however, it must be all your fault and I am teflon-girl. Certainly when I am accused of being a jerk or an idiot I have a moment, however fleeting, of panic. Is it all my fault? Did I make a huge mistake? What have I done?

I suppose that if I remember to think about the fact that I am probably not really an idiot (or the worst mother who ever walked the face of the planet), I might see that I have hurt or confused this other person inadvertently and, by not becoming defensive, maybe I can find a way to solve the problem without hurling some insult back first.
Easier said than done, but this is one of the opportunities having Eve and Lola has afforded me to look at my own behavior. Hopefully, it won’t take me more than half a million reminders to do things a little differently.
/4 Comments/by