I love this quote and it reminds me of an attitude that I wish parents could adopt when raising teens. “Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.” (p. 479, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Picador, 2002.)
It’s hard to trust that teens will learn and grow from their experiences. What teens do is often frightening to parents and adults, and they probably only know about a quarter of what is really going on. I remember doing a workshop for a large group of parents of teens and asked them what they did when they were teens that they hid from their parents. Many of them climbed out windows in the middle of the night to meet friends, “borrow” the family car, or simply roam around the town. There was a lot of cow tipping and other acts of mischief, and certainly a fair amount of drug and alcohol abuse and sexual experimentation.
Often my work with adult clients takes us back to their teen years where I hear stories that would have made my hair curl had I been their parent. Recently, I asked one such client what he would say to a teen if he had one now, and the following is what he told me. I thought it was wise and kind and respectful and helpful, yet most of the parents of teens I work with would never consider saying such a thing. They would prefer to believe that they can micro-manage and control their teens and maintain an illusion of control that they rarely have.
To my teen, if I had one: “I will always be your parent but that does not mean I have control over your decisions. In fact I know that I have no control over your decisions and that you are going to do whatever you chose to do despite what I tell you, good or bad. I will always try to be there to offer support, to help guide you through your decisions and to give you my own personal perspective on what is right and wrong but ultimately it is your life to live, not mine. You have the power to make your own decisions and so will YOU have the responsibility of living with the consequences of those decisions, good and bad, not me. Very soon you will be an adult and the weight of that responsibility will be all your own, not mine. I will go on making my own choices for my own life and I will not be defined or dictated by the choices you will make in yours. In the end, I will one day be gone, and when you look back on your life you will either have the pleasure of knowing that you ultimately made your own choices or the anguish of knowing that you ultimately made your own choices.”
Kyle also sent this with permission for me to publish it on my blog with his name attached.
A Walk On the Side of My Youth by Kyle Gentry Kushner
I can smell the innocence in the air…
Before a face worn
I walked the streets of my youth
We drew a line where the sidewalks would end
We drew a line where youth would begin
In the twinkling night we’d see stars fall
and the lights from the cars trail by
Through the alleys we’d roam enhancing our minds
Free, under a twilight sky
Now night falls
As I still walk
Listening to the voices of my past
The friends I once knew
and these sidewalks that grew
Would take our innocence too fast