 Drama: April 27, 2011 Issue [#4360] |
  Drama
This week: Teens: More drama than there used to be? Edited by: Fyn  
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The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. ~Quentin Crisp
Little children, headache; big children, heartache. ~Italian Proverb
Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other. ~Laurence J. Peter
Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "Age and Death," Afterthoughts, 1931
Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years. ~Author Unknown
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. ~Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874
Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet. ~Judith Martin
Teenagers complain there's nothing to do, then stay out all night doing it. ~Bob Phillips
You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. ~John Ciardi, Simmons Review, Fall 1962
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Not sure if it is hindsight, perspective or perhaps a faulty memory, but it strikes me that being a teenager forty years ago was a much simpler period of time. The biggest things to worry about were not having a date for the prom or going to a dance and spending the evening being a 'wallflower.' The lines were clearly set in stone about what one did or didn't do; what was (or was not) acceptable to 'do' and, for the most part, we cruised along handling the bumps in the road with the security of family and friends to sustain us.
When my kids were teens, they earned their cars or didn't have them, were in before curfew or didn't go next time, kept their rooms as mini-disaster zones but, at least, had a clear path to the bed. They fought amongst themselves, settled issues without resorting to violence and mayhem, and followed the rules (or at least were clever enough not to get caught. They have all grown up to be awesome adults, responsible, hard-working and good parents. This because of, or perhaps in spite of any parenting issues I had as a parent. Yet different folks have different methods and despite the wanting of parents to have their kids turn out okay, it isn't always the case.
Now these 'kids' have teenagers and some of them clearly have issues with step-parents, rules, trust and behavior. I was noticing this over the weekend. The boys, who live with their dad and were visiting their mom for the weekend, were far more interested in their Nintendo DSes than interacting with their grandparents and great-aunts and uncles whom they hadn't seen for a while. Didn't seem to matter to them that we should have liked to actually, gasp (!) talk to them and hear more than a grunt in return. Personally, I'd have made them leave the 'toys' in the car.
We also have recently become pseudo folks to one of the granddaughters who is seventeen. There are issues at home and so she is spending the rest of the school year with us as an alternative to quitting school or changing schools and losing an entire year. I remember talking with my kids, being able to hold entire conversations with them that included complete sentences, laughter, and give and take, compromise and a sense of having communicated. There were no prolonged silences. They didn't retreat into sullen hiding inside a movie or endless texting. (course there weren't a gazillion instant movies or cellphones with texting either!)
My eldest daughter went out with one guy in high school. They've been married for fifteen years now. My youngest daughter dated perhaps four young men in high school. When she broke up with someone it was after months of dating and her heart had had time to be invested in whomever it was. My granddaughter seems to go out with a different guy every other day and each switch to someone else is accompanied with angst and tears and heartbroken posts on FB.
Sometimes I wonder exactly when it was that I changed planets. Is it that everything is so much more immediate these days? Everything seems to be NOW. No more waiting until you can afford to buy a car. Seems quite a few kids these days have them simply because parents won't or can't get their kids where they need to be and it is easier on them for their kids to have their own vehicle. A job seems to be to have money to hit the tanning booths, get the nails done or buy still more clothes to toss on the bathroom floor.
Worse is that the rules that always applied, and worked for generations seem to have flown out the window. Now there are power-plays, manipulation, tears and sullen silences. "No one under stands them" said, of course, with exaggerated rolling of eyes that never seem to meet ours. Sometimes I feel very old!
Not the least of which is that, once again, we wait up for our 'kid' to get home, worry about the time she is gone and wonder precisely where she is. And don't get me wrong, she's a good kid, but the drama that surrounds her is formidable! I feel for the parents today with teenagers. Honestly, I had no clue just HOW much everything teen had changed. It is scary. Trying to find the right mix of the 'what I did then' as a parent and how things are 'now' and dealing with it as a grandparent thrust into a seventeen year old's life is daunting. We are 'old fashioned, don't get it and are clueless about what they deal with.' No, not really, but it certainly is different! Those emails about things we simpler when we were kids is so very true!
What this all comes down to is writing a realistic teen character of today is not the teen I remember being, or the teens my kids were, but a new breed of pseudo-adult that comes from a different place, has different expectations and handles things differently that we (or at least I) did in the past. I expect any and every generation of grandparents has experienced this. Who knew one would have to research today's teen lifestyles to handle being a a full time grand/parent? We want to make a difference and perhaps the best we can hope for is to maintain the status quo, keep her safe and have us all survive this! But instilling our sense of ethics, moral values and 'old fashioned ideals' might just be a bit too much to hope for. But we are going to try. I'm certainly going to be better equipped to write about this age now.
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