When I manage to observe my teenagers with empathy, I can see that they have a tough time trying to figure out their position in this world and their identity. Perhaps a tougher time than my generation had.
This new generations, at least in the modern Western societies, have been bombed with information and options to a much higher degree that any generation before. Even adults are having a hard time figuring out how to live their lives surrounded with hundreds of TV channels, thousands of commercials creating and shaping their needs, millions of consumer goods dragging credit cards out of their wallets, all the internet goodies giving them an illusion that there’s absolutely no need to go away from their computers at all… It is so understandable that adolescents fall prey to all these temptations in their teenage years of confusion, fragility and many searches.
When in my teenage years, I used to spend a couple of hours each day roaming with my dog around forests and another couple of hours per day listening to music in darkness just to sort out my daily confusions, thoughts, existential dilemmas and emotions. I can imagine that these modern teenagers have the same dilemmas blurring their beings on the one hand, and many more distractions that keep them from actually facing and digging through them, on the other.
And there’s yet another thing that keeps my mind busy lately, thinking that we parents could help and support them a bit more than what we actually do. I read that some anthropologists claim that puberty is an invention of modern times and that ages back teenagers did not face the same periods of confusion between the childhood and the adulthood as they do now. The crucial point seems to have been the rituals of maturity.
Becoming a fully responsible adult seems to had been a more clear-cut achievement, with people knowing just how long they were children and from which point on the childhood was gone. In some cultures they have sent them to monasteries for a year or so, to go to savannah to kill a lion, or just let them have their 12th or 14th or whichever birthday; and from that moment on they were to kiss their childhoods goodbye, leave their warm families, go into the world, build their own house, get their own goats and cows and field and lives; and be fully responsible for themselves.
Our modern kids do not have any of that; what they have is many years of lack of clarity, many years during which the liberties of a child are confused with the responsibilities of a grown-up person, where they want to enjoy the comfort of the family house, but not share the responsibilities of the household. And this long passage is not only killing for us parents, but also for the teenagers, adding tremendous weight to their already not easy search for identity, meaning and a way to live.
I can count myself as somebody who, though not with the best childhood possible, have been fortunate enough to affirm his adulthood and maturity with three initiations in one life. The first one was my suicide attempt at 16 – a clear and fully responsible choice to step out of the painful-but-safe known into the complete unknown. The second was to leave, again, the known and pre-set life and jump into the void of roaming, with no money and maps, in a heavy-duty hippy style, around Middle East and Africa for half a year. No mommy and daddy around to get me out of troubles, only me and the big, uncontrollable world. The third one was the 13 months of obligatory military service in the Yugoslav army – where my needs, wishes, thoughts, feelings, values… did not matter a thing. Yet there I was, finding my way through the day, one after another. Ok, I was not enjoying every bit of these passages, but they were actual thresholds and every single time I came out on the other side more firmly grounded in the reality of this life. And, despite all of that, it still took me another decade or so in order to start acting and living as a fully responsible and mature human being.
So, no matter how irritated sometimes I can get while observing my three teenagers dragging themselves around the house, whining over petty little things that happen to them during the day and resisting to take on even little discomfort or responsibilities, if I look with my heart I can see they are not having a nice time. Sometimes having no problems and facing no boundaries can make you numb and ignorant of everything. Which is painful.
So I am seriously considering creating certain maturity rituals, perhaps encouraging them to take a year off, go pick oranges in Australia or something to make money and afterwards backpack around the world a bit. Or go to a humanitarian mission for a few months somewhere on the other side of the planet. Or go work somewhere for a year and then see if studying is still such a boring and terrible idea. Or… Hm. Do you have any ideas for initiating teenagers, in a humane way, into the adulthood and reality of life?
This is a great post Robert. I read it his morning and it’s been on my mind all day .. so many issues raised in the lines and between them.
Have you read ‘Iron John’ by Robert Bly? He argues that since the Industrial Revolution we’ve missed out on direct experience of what our parents do for work – and it was also responsible for creating more definite boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘non-work’. Before then the kids helped in the fields (or wherever) and had a greater appreciation of what being an adult meant. I recently had a long conversation with my 16 year old (daughter) trying to explain what work I do … and she still has little concept of it. I really felt like an alien trying to describe a distant planet.
I have no idea if this is practical (but am sure it must be possible to make it so) but why not take your kids with you for a week or more when you’re working. Not exactly a ritual, I know, but might help them empathise with you more.
Other ideas … make a ritual out of anything that involves them taking more responsibility in their lives. Ritual doesn’t need to be elaborate but something to welcome in the new responsibility and give up something from before. Opening a bank account (smashing the old piggy bank), buying all their own clothes for the first time (burning their old clothes), learning to drive (smashing the roller-blades), changing schools (throwing out some of the photos from their old school).
I really wouldn’t recommend encouraging them to do 2 of the 3 things that you mentioned from your teenage years .. going on a trip might work though!
Thanks again for this thought provoking post!
Comment by ianpeatey — October 4, 2008 @ 9:58 pm
This is a great post.. I don’t think it’s healthy for today’s teenagers to have so much spare time.. to have everything served on a silver plate. When they are old enough to take responsibility for their own life – they should get a chance to do it.
Myself I never had any critical time when I was a teenager. But I just couldn’t wait to finish school and get my freedom. I loved my parents and I had no problems living with them.. didn’t disagree.. nothing. But still – I wanted to make my own decisions.. do my own laundry and cook my own food. I would say that’s an instinct.
Comment by holeycheese — October 4, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
I’d recommend both the trip and the army service. But why only 13 months? I did 3 years.
But really – backpack around the world is not a bad thing. But if you pay all expenses and they keep calling you for more money, it’s useless. Rather volounteer work like picking oranges in Australia, working at a orphanage in Africa or working at a kibbutz in Israel (we’ll have them over for coffee).
Comment by thatdudeyouknow — October 4, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
Robert, what a great post – i stumbled on it from Facebook. Having two teenagers myself, I can certainly sypmathise. But there’s something that it’s important to understand about the age we’re living in. In previous generations, even our own, the next step for teenagers was to be socialised into the dominant social model – whatever that might be, modern societies were more cohesive thirty years ago than they are now. The choice was the culture or the counterculture. You could go with the herd that bought the dominant discourse about what life was about, what was possible and what was real, or you could go with the heard that rejected that discourse and invented another one instead. (I recommend you read “In over our heads” by Robert Kegan). These days, with the information explosion, there can no longer be any illusion of a dominant discourse, and there is precious little guidance out there for teenagers to help them choose what they want to commit to. But at some stage, teenagers need to commit to belonging to some collectivity or other, because otherwise their development will be stunted and they will remain, as you say, manipulative little parasites who feed of society without ever having developed a self to contribute from.
My 13-year-old son asked me the other day “Mom, what’s a good job?”. After some probing, it turned out that what he meant by good job was something that would earn him enough money to be able to spend his spare time doing what he wanted – mainly playing sports with his mates and the rest of the time on video games and these massively participative online role-playing games… And his request for information from me was a canny attempt at finding out what subjects he really should make an effort with at school and which he could just not bother with. Hmmm. That’s pretty single-minded and efficient, if you ask me. But my response to him was not what he expected. “David, forget all that. The world no longer functions the way they tell you it does at school. What you really need to do is sense what in the world stirs up the passion and fire in you. You must start with the assumption that everybody has a passion, and find out what is yours. That is the place from which you will find your place in the world, and then it won’t even matter whether you earn a fat salary or not, because you’ll be doing what you love all day, every day anyway.”
However long the journey, at least that way it will be meaningful.
Another way in which our current society is different than the one we were born into is that kids have further to develop in order to be able to master it. A study of Spiral Dynamics is helpful to get what I’m saying here.
Stay well, and give my love to Lucija!
Comment by Helen Titchen Beeth — October 5, 2008 @ 11:07 am
i couldn’t agree more, it is almost as the younger ones have little responsibility and they are bored, uninspired and numb as you put it. Here in Africa the tribes go through an initiation that is inhumane to a point… graphically I shan’t go into but they have to spend a week in the bush alone, build their own huts and feed themselves off the land. Once the week is up and if they survived they then get circumcised without pain killers… yip scary stuff but then they are men and this happens at 17.
I think backpacking really did a lot for me, my life education was the world and I travelled alone, had to make my own mistakes and make my own way. It did me a lot of good – my brother has never really done anything like this and he finds it hard to stand on his own feet, I mean this not in a bad way just that he suffers because of it.
Great post Robert, wow.
Comment by SanityFound — October 5, 2008 @ 11:13 am
“all the internet goodies giving them an illusion that there’s absolutely no need to go away from their computers at all…”
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY, ROBERT?
Anyway, you are preaching to the choir on the rights of initiation thing. In America, in the early 1800s as the West was being settled, children as young as 7 had learned to handle a rifle in case the family needed protection. Could you imagine that happening today?? We infantilize our youth and wonder why they think all adults are hypocrites.
Comment by Hayden Tompkins — October 5, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
My mother did this to and for us since we were children. First of all, we did service for others. So every year we made candycane reindeer and took them to old people’s homes and visited them. As teenagers of course it was this big drama chore thing. But we always felt happy after going because it was no longer about us.. we were giving back to people who were alone in the world. We saw how tough it was.
The other thing was that we had to have jobs. Period. She did not pay for anything (basically she couldn’t afford any of the nice stuff). We had to buy all of our own extras if we wanted them, we had to work for them. This lead us to value money, and to be willing to work for what we had in life.
My mother didn’t do our laundry or cook us special meals. She was too busy working. I was responsible for my own laundry from a young age. Kids can do for themselves. I don’t understand these mothers who feel the need to do their kid’s laundry at over the age of say 11 or 12. They are plenty capable to be responsible for their own stuff. If it is dirty.. well tough shit, you didn’t wash it. Wow, that sucks to be you!
That is my 2 cents. That is how I am raising my niece. She has to earn her stuff. Period. I told her not to expect a car from me (even though I can afford one). Nope.. if she wants a car, she can get a job and get the money and earn the money. Period.
Comment by Amber — October 6, 2008 @ 6:08 am
Amber – wow! I like this. This is how I want to raise our kids too. Though I have to be very careful because sometimes it is easier for me to just do things by myself. To teach kids to do things in the house takes patiance. Though I think is totally worth it.
I grew up like that myself.. From a young age I was home alone for a couple of hours in the afternoon – until my siblings came home. Our mom used to call us before she went from work – to ask us to get started with the cooking, so that the food would be ready by the time they came home from work. Of course she did preparations so we didn’t have to do everything from scratch all the time.. But at least we learned basic cooking and we were taking turns who should do it.. same thing with the dishes.
Maybe not already at age of 11 or 12, but definitely at 14 – I was doing my own laundry – and not only mine.. of course I filled the machine up with other stuff too.. and at a certain point I realized I was the head of the laundry room at home. But it didn’t bother me. I had more spare time than my parents. So why not.
When I was older and was working.. of course I payed parts of my income to my parents. I was gaining enough to provide myself. I could have lived by my own. But I chose to stay with my parents for a while.. and of course I would never expect them to provide me in that situation.
More kids should grow up like that… To be a kid or a teenager is not supposed to be a 20 year long stay in a “hotel”.
Comment by holeycheese — October 6, 2008 @ 10:27 am
I read somewhere that we don’t really mature until both our parents die.
I’ve got a bit of a problem with the whole “maturity” thing. It just seems like role playing to me. Kids grow up sooner or later and to be honest, I don’t think that kids have enough experience (at least I didn’t) to understand what is going on in their lives when they are young. We all just muddle through it all, just like our forebears.
Sometimes I think that life is a bit like a trip to the moon. We go on an journey collecting samples and we spend the rest of our lives analysing what we’ve picked up.
I think that rituals are a way to ensure conformity within a society and they also create an “us and them” schism.
All throughout history adults have felt that their kids had no respect, didn’t understand the value of things and were lazy etc.
No matter what parents do, their teenagers will rebel against them and cause all sorts of strife. Accountants end up with hippy children and hippies end up with kids who want to be accountants. I suspect that the pain in the butt teenage thing is all a part of the pushing and shoving dynamic that is needed for them to leave the nest and strike out on their own.
Comment by razzbuffnik — October 7, 2008 @ 3:44 pm
P.S.
Nice photo.
Comment by razzbuffnik — October 7, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
Gosh, people, this is some valuable stuff you have shared here and I am grateful for your openness. And sorry I did not find time to respond to your comments sooner – I have been away for couple of days.
Ian – the notion about kids not having the direct experience of their parents’ work is really interesting. Just a couple of years ago, when our oldest was about 15 or so, during our casual conversation, I realized that he thought that all my long hours behind my computer were spent on, you know, things people do on computers, playing computer games, watching you tube, stuff like that. I almost fell of my chair. This kid really thought that the only work I did was actually giving trainings, and that all the time behind the computer in my office was me wasting my time on games… I did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Holeycheese – I agree, their competence for being responsible should be completely put in practice, for everybody’s sake, especcially for their own’s. I was – not really in a best possible way, but still – brought up so that it was normal for me to take my part of responsibility in the household as well, do my part and not have anybody having to clean after me.
Dude – yeah, when bacpacking around India for the first time about 22 years ago I became friends with a great guy from Israel and he told me about the three years. What a lovely ritual indeed…
. Backpacking: certainly not with my money, I would just encourage them, but they will need to make and save money for it, this comes with a package, of course.
Helen – welcome! I agree that a social paradigm might be changing substantially, but we will not be able to tell before we are way out of it, isn’t it? But it is already clear that with the generation Y values seem to be changing, and it is more about the lifestyle and the integration of work and play what defines a good job for them. I don’t mind that as well, of course, but I was trained through the socialization to suffer with less than this too. Which is not healthy. I will tell Lucija about your greetings, thanks.
Sanity – yeah, I am not sure I am really enthusiastic about the maturity rituals you are mentioning there. Backpacking – sometimes I wonder whether this is still the same thing as we did in our time. With all the internet, thorntrees, facebooks, GSMs, GPSs and the stuff, they hardly interact with the alive surrounding, everything seems to be pre-set and fully explored. Where’s the adventure, where’s the unknown?
Hayden –
… I am not sure I would enjoy even more kids walking around the place with rifles…
Amber – yes, this is very similar to the regime at our house. We buy them regular clothes, if they want fancy stuff, they need to participate with their own money. Everybody needs to do two household works per day and has one weekly responsibility + some work around the house over weekends. Everybody cooks lunch once per week… And the volunteer work, yes, me and my wife are starting to direct them into this direction too: “You guys are downloading a lot, so try to upload back to the network too.”
Razz – honestly, I would love them to mature before I die, you see
. Strong and interesting points you are making here. But, what I am trying to say here is that I would love to help them to have a bit clearer sense of their place in life, since I observe that they are not really happy the way they are dispersed all over the place. In other words, hardening up a bit would most likely help.
Photo: thanks, early morning, rural Belgium, August this year. When you come you will need to teach me a thing or two about taking shots of the full moon. I never make it right and it always comes out more like a sun or a flash light in the sky: http://robertkrzisnik.wordpress.com/travel/albania/20080715_999_50/
Comment by Robert — October 8, 2008 @ 12:29 am
For a shot of the moon, try f8 at 125th of a second, 100ISO. I’d then bracket with shots at the same shutter speed but with f11 and f16.
The moon is very bright and if you expose for it then the rest of your shot will be dark.
The best solution is to take two exposures using a tripod. One for the moon and then one for the landscape (try f11 for 30 seconds 100ISO, by the way this exposure works well for fireworks with cityscapes at night) and then put them together in photoshop. If you don’t know how to do that then I’ll show you next year when I visit.
Comment by razzbuffnik — October 8, 2008 @ 3:02 am
Hello Robert, and all those who contributed after,
This is another great post and highly interesting discussion. I’ve been thinking about this question around the teenagers a lot because I have had quite a few teens aroudn me these last 7 years. They were 12-14 at the time they entered my life (when I got to know my husband) and are now 19-21. All of them seem to just hang around, not contributing at all ( or so little it doesn’t count), not working at school, with no passion in life but friends and computers. And for all of them, the parents are doing everything for them and don’t want to see them leave the house. One just quit the school to get a job, but his parents say he should stay home. And I do believe that while they want to be nice and take care of their kids and do everything for them, it’s actually doing them wrong. I do believe that one should encourage one’s teens to go out there in the world and take responsibility.
And I do agree that rituals are very important as transition steps. the most important with them is that they not only give access to new rights and possibilities, but they force to say goodbye to other ones. And I think teens need to learn to quit some things. I’m not in favor of painful rituals and don’t like the social pressure that goes with it in the tribes and peopls who practice them, but I think the symbol of it is important.
When I was 16 I went to live in Norway in a norwegian family going to the local highschool, not coming back home for a year. That allowed me to clarify some of the fuss that was going on in me at the time, as Robert very well described. It created some other kind of confusion and questions, but that were much more constructive and helped me move forward. However they supported me financially still and did til I finished my studies and I think that would have been even better if I had gotten a job etc to learn by myself. I would also have been able to really think about what I wanted (or not): since my parents had paid my studies , I felt I had to be up to it to make it worth the investment and staid on the track without questionning what I really wanted.
I really think that parents should help their kids leave them and go out there in the world, not casting them out of their houses but with all their love and emotional support, but not the financial one, at least for a year off.
Comment by Ludo et Anne-Claire — October 8, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
Razz – OK, I’ll try that and see what comes out. But the photoshop thing and two shots – no go with me. Too much hassle. I’ll rather spend another half an hour howling at the moon than staring at the computer screen..
ACC – thanks for sharing this. I agree completely. The last sentence wraps it all up for me.
Comment by Robert — October 9, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
I can soo relate to so much of what you say…I’ve just read it and plan to come and read it again + all the comments – there’s just so much food for thought…so many issues raised in the lines and in-between them…
I’m supposed to cooking dinner – be back asap – probably tomorrow…so glad I happened upon your great thought-provoking blog…à bientôt, India J
Comment by India J — October 15, 2008 @ 7:07 pm
India J – welcome… I hope the dinner was great
Comment by Robert — October 19, 2008 @ 12:05 pm