Why Teens Are My Favorite

This week marks the beginning of a school year where I have two kids in high school. If you’ve been there, then you know, it’s weird. To have dedicated so much time and attention to their wellbeing and every need, and then suddenly, they don’t need you in the same way anymore.  Suddenly it feels like they have both hands on the finish line and they are pulling it towards you, fast and determined. 

When children are little, we relish and delight in the ways they look and act like us. Spitting image, and all that jazz. It’s charming and affirming to have a little version of yourself to mold and correct and to right the wrongs of (or carbon copy) our own upbringing. It’s terrifying to become a parent, but also so full of hope. 

And then suddenly, in a blink we arrive to the teen years. That little version of ourself is now their own person, and not especially interested in doing as they are told. I love the amazing people my teens are becoming, and I love parenting them now more than ever, but where once my preferences and priorities had the last word, now I need to make space for evolving young adults to figure out their own needs and desires. It’s unsettling and imperfect to watch and it requires a lot of self control to not meddle too much in the process. 

The Grief of Letting Go

To be honest, I’m kind of in a teen state of mind myself, so maybe this doesn’t bother me as much as it could. Midlife has given me a very teen-like intolerance for other people’s demands, and unnecessary dinner conversation, and dishes, and a world full of adults that we all prefer keep comments to themselves.

So, when my teens shut the door on me, I think yea, I get you, I could use a break from this broken world, too. 

For this reason, I’ve come into the teen years choosing to hold it all very loosely, and I’ve done this by reframing this time as a season of transient grief. There is so much changing and evolving in both of us. We are both grieving the loss of their childhood, and the loss of their need to be parented in the same way. This is only heightened by my own grief around the closure of the first half of my life, and what comes next now that parenting isn’t the centerpiece of my purpose. 

This season of change contains a lot of recalibrating our relationship by adjusting expectations and responsibilities. We don’t talk enough about the grief of this process. The tension between a child’s need to be set free, and a parent’s need to still be needed and appreciated for all that we have given and sacrificed. It can be intense and crushing at times. 

But if there’s anything I’ve learned in these last few years, it’s that I have to keep my eye on the long game. They are not done yet, and neither am I. We are still changing and becoming, and the name of the game is grace and repair, and holding my hands open and ready for that fleeting moment I am really needed. It feels like giving them more power and control than they are ready for, and sometimes it is, but that is both the rub and the point of it all. 

Trusting the Evolution

Even with the moral compass that has been instilled in them, freedom given at this age is terrifying. Terrifying! Nothing makes your palms sweat like trusting your child to lean into their autonomy. To lean into their own agency of choice. To lean into not needing you. 

While there is a lot of ability in my kids, the only way they will learn how to fully live their lives is to be given the space to make mistakes. To feel capable but also unsure. To step where they don’t belong, and then find their way back. While also holding car keys. And a pay check. Surrounded by influential friends and teachers that I don’t know very well, or at all. 

That is the dance. That is the trustfall that is parenting. You hope the foundation is strong enough to support the release. It’s a ride. They are trying to figure out how to be autonomous in a world that expects them to both fail and act older then their years. A world that expects them to be impervious to the shortcomings and mistakes we have heaved upon them. A world that is delivering them a broken system and little hope for anything more than a flat-out struggle to succeed. 

So, I figure, the highest form of parenting during these years is to meet them in this struggle. To lean into the early years when I trusted them to push the envelope, even with me, which makes it easier to trust them to do it now. To not shame them for faltering or failing, or forgetting their calculator on an important test day. To not hold up their imperfection as proof of my failed parenting. Let’s imagine that they are not done evolving yet, and that rejecting my recommendations and choosing the absolute opposite of what I want for them, is the first step to growing into a capable and resilient adult. 

As a parent, there is so much to be learned about our unhealed wounds and judgements in witnessing this evolution in our children. It is some of the hardest work of our lives, if we choose it. It requires that we heal our own wounded child in order to allow them their own right to self expression and autonomy. I knew then, and I know now, that as much as my hand is molding them, they are also molding me. 

Becoming Obsolete

A good deal of my adult life has been about them, so it is tempting to now make their life about me. When I brush up against their resistance or their defiance, I’m tempted to feel jilted and rejected. Don’t they know what I’ve sacrificed to get them here? Don’t they know what has been suspended and muted and healed and burned in order to make way for their healthy development? 

They don’t know. 

It’s not their job to know. And in my desire to keep them safe from harm, it’s easy to forget that their purpose is not to prop up my fragile ego, but rather to take what they’ve been given and pay it forward into the world. To make these tiny breaks now, until one day they break themselves free and fly. 

Where once it was my job to step in, now it’s my job to step back, step aside, breathe into them confidence and assurance. Allow them to burn the toast and forget to put their laundry in the dryer. Allow them to lose something important and not rush to replace it. And most importantly, for me is to resist the temptation to lay my boulders of grief and unmet expectations on their chest, just as they are trying to wiggle free during the most defining years of their young life. 

This is why they get to speak without being interrupted. They get to weigh-in and make final decisions on things that impact them. They get space. They get forgiven. And they get as many chances to get it right as they need, so when I’m not there to whisper in their ear, they already know what it is to hear their own whisper from within. They already know how to lean on their own compass, and trust their own intuition. I surmise, that aside from an education and three meals a day, and all the love I have to offer,  the greatest gift I can give them is to love them through the process of being a human having a very human experience.

In that vein, my whole goal is to eventually become obsolete in the day to day workings of their lives. To love and cheer them on from afar as I witness the full version of their independence. I can feel those days coming fast now, and this is why the teen years are my favorite - what a privilege to watch the evolution of a child, from birth to flight. To watch all of that hard work be activated in the real world, and to watch them own their life in the most beautiful ways. 

It’s hard. It’s wonderful. Some days it breaks my heart. But I feel the significance of these days and how important it is not to dismiss them (or my children) as we are refined into better versions of ourselves. The world wants to tell me these are the awful years, but I think they are simply marvelous in how we are pushed and pulled through the complexity and challenge. For this reason, I’ll cherish them for it is the last season when I can really call them mine.