A glimpse of teenagers
They were laughing too loud, and hanging out the bus windows to check out a pedestrian: “Oooo, look at the boo-tay on that chick!” they hollered. Lounging across the entire back of the bus were three boys and a girl, all in that indeterminate age between 15 and 18, texting like mad, cracking jokes, cursing for the joy of hurling something foul from between their lips.
You know. Teenagers.
I sat in the sideways seats at the back of the bus, like I always do. It put me right up against the girl at the back window, perpendicular to her noise and heated youth. The kids made no effort to modify their giddy brand of hormones and insanity, but neither did they ratchet it up a notch to try to offend me. I simply tucked myself away in my wee iPod Shuffle world and blasted shockingly loud, rauccus music into my own head. A win-win situation.
Folks in the bus were staring at the kids, shooting them dirty looks, but I remember being that age, and daring to be a different person away from my parents. These kids weren’t hurting anyone. They weren’t threatening anyone. Heck, they seemed mildly amused and hyper-aware of the parody of teenaged-ness they were concocting. And along the way, they were making some pretty astute observations about humanity, architecture, and the struggles of good and evil. I was glad to be next to them. They were snapping pics with their phone cameras and cracking each other up over some of them; other images seemed to be of a building or a trick of the light that had caught someone’s eye.
The girl’s hand tapped my shoulder gently. “Look,” she asked me, turning her phone’s screen to face me. “There’s this piece of string on your back. Look. It looks just like one of those AIDS ribbons, or breast cancer.” There, on her phone, was a close up of a loop, a symbol of hope for a myriad of ills. She shook her head in wonder. “Funny, how sometimes, a little thing like that, a little nothing, can mean a whole lot of something.”
In the mornings, I watch the teens make their AM romantic hookups, boys getting off the busses to the waiting arms of girls by the subway entrance. They fall in stride and disappear underground, a brief hiatus between transits, before school, after breakfast… I wonder what the girl in the My Chemical Romance and the pristine black spiked collar wears with her family on the weekend. Her look is so crisp, so clean-edged, it’s absolutely Done in a way that punk in the 70’s and early 80’s never was. Sanitized post-punk, clashing with my memories of friends unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed.
My kid will be a teenager some day. Whatever foundation I lay now, for honesty, trust, and responsibility, will be what we have to fall back on when he’s a teen. Think about it. if you rely now on intimidation and physical punishment to control your toddler, what are you going to do when he or she is younger than you, stronger than you, and so full of hormones the kid can’t think straight? Do you really think you can win by brute force your whole life?
And is that really how you want to spend it?
Tags: my-chemical-romance, single-mom, single-mother, teenagersRelated Stories
POSTED IN: childcare
6 opinions for A glimpse of teenagers
Amy at Fannfare
Jun 26, 2007 at 11:07 pm
We’re certainly not winning by brute force over here, lady. But we’re struggling with **3** and a newborn’s changes to the household. Any specific titles that you found particularly helpful? Just getting through “Positive Discipline: The First Three Years,” and it works in fits and starts. Maybe I just LIVE in fits and starts. :) Send me off to Borders again, wouldja?
daisan
Jun 27, 2007 at 12:03 am
What an insightful post, Christina! My commitment to positive discipline has made such a difference in my relationship with my son. I’m far from perfect (just today I locked him out on the porch while I tried to think of a way to get him to stop hitting his baby sister over the head with a pillow) but the change in my attitude has really reaped wonderful rewards. I can only get better, right?
buterflymom
Jun 27, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for that positive story about teens. I’m a single mom of an almost 14-year-old girl. I also think that along with positive reinforcement and consistency that also living your example speaks louder than any words. At 41 I’m heading back to school to change my career (we should graduate at the same time in 4 years). It’s all a learning process that never ends.
:) Peace.
Gayla McCord
Jun 27, 2007 at 2:09 pm
When I was about to embark on my own adventures of being a single mom to 4-year-old twins, the one thought that kept me going was that *I* was the one that had a vested interest in the adults they would become.
I nurtured that little adult and by the time I remarried when they were 11, I could see I’d done a good job.
Even today, they are teenagers and we have our bumps, but their walls are decorated with awards of sportsmanship, citizenship, honor roll and anti-drug program participations. Sometimes I find myself just standing in silence looking at their walls wondering what might have been had I not had the courage to remove them from a life filled with alcohol and abuse.
Great post :) Christina
christina
Jun 27, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Amy, all I can recommend is what I keep tellling my overly emotional little King of Everything: You’re entitled to your big feelings, but you may not take over/hijack the room with them.
Borders has lovely coffees.
Next on my book list is “Playful Parenting” since I seem to have lost my sense of humor. But if my kid calls me or anyone else monkey one more time, I’m afraid he’s going to get beat up by someone who doesn’t have a sense of humor, either. Sheez.
christina
Jun 27, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Daisan, it’s a great way to parent. It takes the conflict and power struggle out of the relationship and puts both child and adult on the same team.
And locking the kid out of a situation where he’s causing harm to someone else isn’t a bad thing to do.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: