Hot Buttered Toast – Spare + Care
Trusting our kids + keeping our promises to our better selves
We’re not losing them – they’re finding themselves.
It’s been a big week. We have, I’m pretty sure, decided that it’s time to up sticks. Two adults, two kids + a pup… off to pastures new… recognising that fresh starts, on all sides, are needed now.
I’m trying to rest in that ‘breath’ before the whole getting house valued/on the market/sold/moved debacle kicks in. The girls are already planning their new bedrooms. Which makes me wince. That consumptive instinct… new new new. Except that’s not at all what it’s about (I realise, as I sit with a cup of hot water looking out at another rainy day)… in order for them to understand the big move we’re about to make, they need to flesh out their mind’s pictures… and planning their bedrooms is how that process begins for each of them. Their space; their ‘home’.
I listened to a brilliant podcast with Dr Aviva Romm and Lisa Damour, on The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, this week. One of those conversations that had me nodding along like a dog on a dashboard. Among the many gems, the realisation that that our children will reach an age – ordinary 12-13 – when they start to, sometimes fiercely – individuate. Wanting to spend more time alone is normal (healthy). Wanting to close their bedroom doors or lock the bathroom door, out of the blue, is normal (healthy). Arguing with what we say, doubting our authority on any given matter, rolling their eyes (yep), assuming we can’t possibly have any idea on Earth what it feels like to be them or go through what they’re going through is all, utterly, wholly, almost-universally ‘normal’ in teen-land.
We’re not losing them – they’re finding themselves. And you can’t find yourself if you’re not free enough to be alone and work out who you are when no one else is watching.
A few other big things struck a chord. We are still fighting the good fight re our almost-11 year-old and ‘the phone’. Yes, she’s the last kid standing in her year (and the year below) at school without one – but we’d rather take her tears about being left out than the impact on her mental and emotional wellbeing, which cannot be undone.
Lisa Damour said something interesting… up until the age of 14, kids aren’t able to question things they see and hear in the same way that they can after that age. At aged 14, the cynical mind kicks in. The part of the brain that questions, mercilessly, dissects and disputes. ‘Nah, that can’t be real. Nah, they seem fake. Nah, that’s rubbish. Nah, I don’t trust them/that.’ And that’s precisely the part of the brain we want our kids to have fully SWITCHED ON before they find themselves in the realms of social media.
The myth of authority pervades the social media space. The number of followers you have a shortcut (in a young teen or child’s mind at least) to expertise and success. My eldest daughter has several times ordered things from the internet, in the middle of the night, when her brain is in its most irrational + suggestible state. She is most likely at that same time to feel low self-esteem, to be comparing herself to others online and to be catastrophising. We have always had a no-screens in bedrooms overnight policy at home, but that won’t always stop her sneaking her phone back into her room when everyone else is asleep.
The cycle broke, only when we stopped taking things from her and she started giving them to us. Rather than marching in, demanding devices be handed over and then doing our best to smuggle them into a secret spot (which she seemed always to be able to sniff out), we flipped the script. And it was our eldest who helped us see why we needed to do that.
Trust – though a very tricky issue with teens, in particular, for whom lying in order to simplify, shield and safeguard their own necessary individuation is pretty much a universal impulse – is at the crux of it all. How can you trust a kid who doesn’t tell you the whole truth, but instead tells you the story they need you to hear, or – more complicatedly – the story that is wholly true in their personal experience, but might be wildly different from the whole truth/story?
The truth is complicated. I’m learning to really LISTEN to the kid opposite me. To honour the wisdom she already possesses rather than focus on her lack of life experience. To honour her as she comes to know herself better. She is, thankfully, on the cusp of that questioning 14 year old self… and I can see her already beginning to disassemble the false narratives she’s being handed. Social science and justice fascinate her – a new interest. She has gone from wanting to be an author/illustrator (‘when I grow up’) to a judge – in just the last few months. What a leap. She is literally taking in the narrative, challenging it, and making up her own mind.
This is the arc our kids are walking. Learning from mistakes; a big lapse in judgment for her this week, which has provided hours of heart-to-hearts at home, as she explores what happens when we misread a room, or follow a crowd into places we don’t belong. How to cope with consequences. How to ask for help. How to stand up for herself when someone (often an adult) misreads her. Life lessons that never stop coming, however young or old you are.
As for me… there have been a few things that continue to shift…
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