 |
|
|
From my book, THE 7 STAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
The bottom line is that our teens probably will try drugs, get drunk, and have sex before they’re in college (we hope not all on the same night). The most we can do is try to arm them with enough self-esteem and good sense to make only a few stupid decisions “none of them life-threatening” and to have the courage to learn from their mistakes. In fact, we really shouldn’t aspire to raise Prince Perfect or Miss Goody Two-shoes. Why? Because there’s compelling evidence that teens who never break the rules, who refuse every beer and cigarette and come-on, don’t fare so well when they’re out on their own. Think about the kids who die each year from binge drinking. Inevitably, there’s an article citing the child’s unsullied past. His parents or close friends appear totally flabbergasted. “He was always such a good boy...he never drank or did drugs’never.” Apparently that’s the problem. According to researchers at Boise State University who studied the drinking behavior of 266 incoming freshmen, the model students were less likely to know how to handle their liquor or how to pace themselves than veterans of the party scene. Also, they were less likely to have had a discussion about binge drinking with their parents. Mom and Dad just assumed they knew better.
After all, why would you have to tell an A+ student that drinking successive shots of vodka can kill you?
You have to talk to your kids for the simple reason that all teenagers say they have good judgment when they don’t. All teenagers engage in risky behaviors, because they believe they’re invulnerable. And all teenagers lie to their parents, even when it’s patently obvious that they’re guilty. The key is to avoid the trap of focusing so intensely on the lying that you lose sight of the behavior behind it. When you find yourself caught up in the heat of an argument or, as often happens, put on the spot or cornered, find a way to stop the music and step out of the dance. There’s absolutely no way to communicate effectively with a teenager who is screaming “You don’t trust me! You never believe me! I’m never, ever telling you anything again!” Nor is there a way to keep your cool and say exactly what you want when the top of your head has just flown off.
When It Comes to Sex
More than anything these days, I worry that I won’t know what’s going on. Or I won’t want to know. Or my kids won’t want me to know what I know particularly when it comes to sex. It’s not so much the door to their room that I worry about them shutting but the door to our continued communication about a subject that’s increasingly difficult to discuss. Embarrassment isn’t a problem for me; thanks to the content of 90 percent of the shows they watch on television, we’ve discussed date rape, STDs, masturbation, penis size, contraception, vibrators, and what I think “going to third base” really means.
But as the kids mature, I’m faced with the conundrum (a word that sounds vaguely X-rated) of trying to provide the right information without crossing the line into conversations that are gratuitously revealing or unnecessarily personal. In Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But
Were Afraid They’d Ask), Justin Richardson and Mark A. Schuster note, “It’s one thing to say, “Sex can be wonderful,” to your six-year-old, who is making puke sounds about it in the backseat. It’s another to say it to the sixteen-year-old seated up front next to you. You know and she knows that you didn’t just read about this in a book.”
What strikes me as most critical is that you communicate the message that communication is the message when it comes to good sex. Being able to talk to the person you love, to make certain that sex is always consensual and that both partners feel comfortable expressing what they like and what they don’t, should be the headline every time our kids broach the topic of relationships. Long before they get involved with someone sexually, they’ll be practicing and demonstrating their skills at asserting themselves, listening, empathizing, and negotiating with their friends and family.
The irony at our house is the fact that my children’s sexual development coincides with my approaching menopause. For some mothers this awareness of their “sexual devolution,” as one friend put it, brings out competitive or even inappropriate behavior. “I realize now how often I flirted with the girls’ boyfriends,” the mother of twins told me. “I wasn’t aware of it until my own mother pointed it out. And though I was really defensive and angry at first, I had to admit I turned on the high beams around certain of their male friends. I’m really quite ashamed of it, looking back.”
Feeling envious, competitive, or suddenly displaced when your teenager falls in love for the first time may be natural, but it’s usually unexpected and often guilt-provoking. Even if you think the young man or woman in question is a doll, you’re suddenly relegated to a sad and awkward corner. Even if you swear your child’s happiness makes you happy, the longing for a time when nightingales sang from blossoming trees the minute your beloved entered the room may render your own garden sadly in need of weeding (or planting).
Even if you think you’re prepared to deal with the inevitable break your adolescent’s first romance produces, think again.
Several mothers I interviewed described experiencing a vicarious thrill when their daughters started dating. And even those whose children were not involved in a relationship talked about the tension generated when their teens’ personalities began to take shape. We love the better halves of our adolescents, the parts we lack or envy or through which we relive pleasurable parts of our past. But when our children are not like us, when the qualities we associate with a successful adulthood ‘integrity, intelligence, thoughtfulness, tenacity, determination, ambition, affection’ are in low gear or in reverse, we often panic or become infuriated.
When your recalcitrant seventeen-year-old refuses help in math even though he’s been getting C’s, or when your fifteen-year-old daughter, the chess prodigy, decides slide guitar is more her thing, you may feel as though the ground has splintered under your feet and your chances of climbing back onto a happy, grassy knoll are nil. But underneath the Mohawk is a kid with whom you may still have much in common; in fact, recognizing that your teenager is quite separate and different from you is a gift. It spares you the curse of unrealistic expectations, of trying to force your teenager into a mold defined by your fantasies, not by hers, of sending the destructive message “If you will bury the parts I don’t like, then I will love you.”
We all know parents who send this insidious message, who wear their children’s accomplishments like a designer blouse. One mother I know actually called me recently to say, “We got into Yale!” Her narcissistic boast is the extreme of our natural tendency to overidentify with our teens.
Of course, as the title of this stage implies, by the time you’ve figured it all out, they fly away. Phyllis Theroux wrote about the end of her kids’ adolescence: “It is leaving me. The power I once held absolutely over my children’s lives. I no longer hold a fat ball of twine in my hand but a fistful of string from the end of the skein.” As you trace the course of that ball of string, stretching back as it does through eighteen years of motherhood, you’ll see tangles and tapestries and, one hopes, sense the strong, generous net you have woven for your children. That net will never go away; it will support them when you’re not around and draw your children back to you in the years to come.
What’s hard is learning to stop weaving that net yourself and letting your kids mend it themselves. And, at the same time, to imagine and plan for a life that will be as dramatically different as your years were before you became a mother. Just as we had to prepare ourselves for the tremendous impact our children’s arrival would have on our identities and on our relationships, the end of this stage of motherhood requires an equally dramatic and far more heart-wrenching adjustment.
These days Steve is as likely to tear up about his adored daughter’s imminent departure as I am. We’re both stunned to have reached this place along the path and to sense the even scarier transition that lies ahead when Nick goes off to college. “I just can’t believe it,” I whisper across our pillows in the dark, and when Steve sighs like a lovesick teenager, I know he’s heard me. I’m extremely grateful that we’re on a similar emotional page, at least right now. For some mothers, saying good-bye to their grown children seems to shine a harsh light on their marriages. “I know Bruce is sad to see Rob go,” the mother of an only son confessed, “but when he talks about the fun we’ll have in our soon-to-be empty nest, the trips we’ll be able to take, and the kind of freedom we’ll have next year, I feel as though we’re shouting at each other across an ocean. I’m feeling miserable. And he just doesn’t get it.”
As is true during other phases of motherhood, the need to believe that your husband is feeling your pain, that you’re in step during this last difficult adjustment, can lead to disappointment and anger. Which may explain in part why, despite an overall decline in divorce rates, there has been a 16 percent increase in the number of divorces among couples who have been married thirty or more years. But it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect your husband to “get it.” His relationship with your children, his sense of himself as a father, and the degree to which that image is central to his identity are vastly different from yours. More important, he’s not the man you married just as you are dramatically different at this stage of your relationship than you were twenty or so years ago.
Moms Need Friends at This Time
If your husband can’t come through for you or if you happen to be single or divorced, don’t try to go it alone during the teen years, especially when the going gets tough. Long before your teenager heads out the door, you will have experienced acute loneliness and a need for someone – anyone - to pull up a chair, make you a cup of tea, and listen to you vent. Just as it may have been the mothers you met in your Lamaze class who understood you best when you were together in the postpartum trenches, it may be the mom of another college-bound kid who looks you in the eye and lets you see yourself.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a band of empty-nesting friends, seek them out. There’s actual scientific evidence that suggests our instinct to “tend and befriend” when we’re stressed is highly adaptive and beneficial. These days I don’t need a neuroscientist to inspire me to pick up the phone and confess to my friend Val or Patty or Maxine that I’m already mourning Maddie’s absence from my life, that I wish there was a way to reclaim my heart, mind, and soul from hers because it feels as though they’re being wrenched out from somewhere very deep inside me. They never preach or try too hard to placate, but when I finally pause long enough to ask, “How’s your life?” they inevitably shine a light into the dark. Having watched each of them and many others - my older sister, colleagues, cousins, and, of course, my own mother - find a way to redefine who they are during this last stage of motherhood, I am reminded of how resilient, powerful, creative, patient, and blessed mothers are. And how proud I am to be one.
< Back >Buy the book now
|
|
