Maybe tween-agers don’t want parents to listen to their problems, suggests Ann Hulbert in Slate, reviewing the movie Thirteen and a book, Not Much Just Chillin’ : The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers.
Empathetic listening and therapeutic understanding, the kids suggest, can be overrated: What they really need are adults who can help them look and think beyond the often narcissistic travails of middle school, not prod them to obsess more explicitly about every personal problem.
In both the movie and the book, writes Hulbert, “the problem isn’t so much that grown-ups won’t or can’t begin to imagine teenage turmoil; it’s that more than a few of their elders are parasitically invested in adolescent identity confusion themselves.”
My solution is quite simple: Put all children in one of those sci-fi comas at the age of 12. Revive girls at 18, boys at 21.
Now that’s just silly. You have to live through adolescence, not sleep through it.
It’s a tough time, learning to be an adult. No wonder some of us never manage it.
And it’s one of the ugliest phases for the rest of us. Of course, we’re better off than some places — most of our 14-year-old boys don’t have Kalishnikov’s (however that’s spelled).
My grandfather used to say that children should be born at the age of 21 with an independent income. I think he started saying it when my mother learned to drive.
Has adolesence always been such a trial, or is that a relatively recent phenomena?
If it is, did the benefits of the changes that cause it to be a trial outweigh these costs?
funny, i always looked a little askance at florence king’s ideas on child-rearing, because her attitude toward kids and family life seemed to vary from indifference to outright hostility, but she made a good counterintuitive point many years ago: the last thing most adolescents (and a fortiori, pre-adolescents) need is encouragement to melodramatize themselves any more than they do.
joseph epstein’s said the best thing his parents did for him was let him know what they expected of him, that they’d be there if he needed ‘em _ and stay out of his way.
Halley was an astronomer at age 10. Richard II was 14 when he pacified Wat Tyler’s rebels. Rossini was conducting orchestras at age 14. And we all know about Joan of Arc. This can be one of the most creative times of life.
Maybe part of the problem is that we treat them like big children when they are clearly capable of great achievements at that age.
On the other hand, for melodramatic, impulsive, self-destructive behavior in adolescents, read “Romeo and Juliet”. I don’t think kids have changed that much. We have child prodigies now, and they don’t reveal that much about the average teenager.
I do agree wholeheartedly about the role of parents here. It’s our job to provide some perspective on things. You can understand that part of the reason your child is having problems is immaturity - and when can you be immature, if not in childhood? - and still help them out of it.
We’ve come almost full circle. In my distant youth (I was born in 1941) over-interested parents were an acknowledged problem.
There was one humor book (which I never read) titled “‘Where did you go?’ ‘Out.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Nothing.’” which if I understand correctly means the same as “Not Much Just Chillin’”
I also remember the term “smother love” from a basic psych course, although that was used for the REALLY pathological cases.
When I was 12 I thought all those “why don’t we send him to boarding school” comments were jokes. I found out later they were all too serious, though I never escalated quite far enough to be shipped off.
I wonder if maybe some of the “adolescent angst” (and “pre-adolescent angst”) is a side-effect of living in a relatively safe and prosperous nation - a couple hundred years ago, kids were contributing to the family income (working in mills, on the farm, out hunting) in some way and there was more of a genuine concern about “will we survive?”
I doubt that many Iraqi teenagers - or teenagers in a famine-plagued African country - or teenagers living near a war zone anywhere - have the luxury of worrying about their zits or their popularity or whether they’ll get a car for graduation.
Not that I’d trade the relative safety and prosperity of my nation for a more outgoing and less self-absorbed generation of kids or anything.
I do know that when I was a ‘tweener and a teenager there were plenty of times when what I really needed was for someone to say a hearty “Get OVER yourself, already!” to me.
Joanne, your comment reminds me of an old system for raising children. You put them in a barrel and feed them through the bunghole. When they’re 18, you either let them out, or drive in the bung. (I remember Heinlein quoting this several times, but I expect it was a common story in the early 20th century.)
Historically, kids became adults too early to spend much time on adolescence. (I seem to recall that boys joined the Roman army at age 14, for example.) Nowadays we expect kids to stay in school until 18 at least, and getting a bachelors degree takes until 22 (or 23 or…). Then, after a year or two of living at home, “kids” become adults and move out on their own…
We have handled this lengthening period by giving adolescents many of the priveleges of adults (driving, sex, tho we took away booze) and few of the penalties (children’s court springs to mind). The time may come when we don’t consider anyone under 30 an adult; before then, I hope we’ll develop a more rational system for handling the in-between period.
I’ve angled for some increased responsibility from my sixteen-year-old, by reminding her that in some cultures she’d be expected to have established her own household and started having children by now. Not that that’s optimum. But she certainly shouldn’t be asking me where her jeans are.
“prod them to obsess more explicitly about every personal problem.”
Isn’t that pretty much the American way of life? I’ve been in business meetings where this method of “problem solving” are up an afternoon.
Fortunately, as a teen, I worked. The guy coming through the drive through doesn’t care about your problems, he wants his fries and he wants ‘em now.
“I wonder if maybe some of the “adolescent angst” (and “pre-adolescent angst”) is a side-effect of living in a relatively safe and prosperous nation - a couple hundred years ago, kids were contributing to the family income (working in mills, on the farm, out hunting) in some way and there was more of a genuine concern about “will we survive?”
I’d say that “adolescent angst” comes from simple boredom and from the knowledge that one is completely useless. This is not a happy state for any human being past childhood.
Adolescent behavior is very easily explainable in terms of incentives and rewards. Simply put, responsible behavior doesn’t shorten their sentence, and irresponsible behavior tends to lead to a stern talking-to before being bailed out. Since responsible behavior is hard work and irresponsible behavior is fun, rational individuals in such an environment will tend to behave irresponsibly.
Unfortunately, onlookers will see the behavior, and conclude that those people are biologically incapable of functioning as adults, blame their behavior on “hormones” (a fancy way of saying “evil spirits” and about as meaningful), and set about lengthening the amount of time that people are subject to that environment.
What to do? First, the school system seems to be designed to teach as slowly as possible. Between endless repetition and a schedule with outlandishly long and frequent breaks, several years of our children’s lives are completely wasted. Fix this, and our “children”, armed with marketable skills, will be able to move out and take their place as adults early in “adolescence”. Once they do so, they’ll live in an environment where responsible, studious behavior brings real rewards, and dumb, irresponsible behavior brings frightening penalties, and the evil spirits (excuse me, “hormones”) will cease to exert such a malign influence on those people.
And you’ll see our teenage out-of-wedlock birth rate drop as well. Leaving irresponsible individuals in posession of working reproductive systems is a really bad idea, for one thing. Also, earlier self-sufficiency means that the window of opportunity for bringing forth children that one can’t support has been shortened considerably. Finally, earlier self-sufficiency enables earlier stable marriages, which shortens the window of opportunity for bringing forth children out of wedlock.
Richard II peaked too soon.
I think the Greatest Generation invented adolescence for their children (hey! something else to fawn over them for!)