in the spirit of throwing enough mud against the barn that some of it will stick, i will give some more unsolicited advice on how to parent adolescents. today i would like to slaughter another sacred cow. (i like hamburger. and i love sam kinison. i became immediately addicted to his mind when he was complaining that people in India should never starve with all that steak in their front yards. ::sigh::) okay. there is a phrase that gets circulated in America to excuse our addiction to work, and it goes something like this: "it isn't the quantity of time you spend with your kids, but the quality." you know better. and as soon as some of you read that, you will blink and realize that you know better. see how long you stay married with that "quality over quantity" philosophy. we THINK that kids amuse themselves, but how do we know if we aren't there while the "amusing themselves" thing is actually happening. NOT having parents around is convenient for sex. NOT having parents around is convenient for drug use. the time in life that most parents pick to NOT be around is the time when our input is most critical. the last part of the brain to develop is reason. your adolescent is experiencing a hydrogen bomb of hormones around the same time they are developing the facility of making decisions. we know the advice of the hormones: "do it. do it. do it." it would be a very nice time to have our voices as parents gently reminding them of the aspects of decision-making that horny kids tend to ignore.
i am dumber than a two-dollar dog, but my kids both talk to me. they are as different as day and night, and both VERY alive and smart. but it didn't "just happen." good marriages don't "just happen." good friendships don't "just happen." true spirituality doesn't "just happen." yes, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He said so. He IS truth. He also said we would experience persecution. He told us to invest in each other by bearing one another's burdens. He told us to invest in those who are perhaps different from us by carrying their heavy load twice as far as asked. (occupying armies had the right to ask Jews to carry their packs for a mile. Jesus said to go two miles.) in the Manufacturer's handbook, we are told to fellowship with each other (not always easy from the travel involved to the people at church who bug you), to live our faith out in front of spouses, to love each other as the proof of our love for God ... spirituality requires an investment. so does parenting. and the thing that is most needed in your relationship with your child is common experience combined with humor. i don't even listen to you describe your relationship with your kid. "oh, we are really close." yeah? within half an hour, i will tell you how close you are. you can't make up OR hide shared stories. if you have no shared stories, you are not close. that isn't bad to know. it doesn't have to stay that way.
white middle-class Christian society does not have a rite of passage into adulthood. our children's lives are negatively impacted by this. Jewish children are celebrated into adulthood at 13. want an eye-opener? start a drug clinic like i did and realize after three years of adolescents, you haven't had one Jewish kid needing drug treatment. i FIVE years working at the prison, i never had one Jewish kid. kids need a system to stay addicted. there have to be people ignoring symptoms, people providing the money and access ... addiction and alcoholism require help. it is called codependency. it is willing participation in a sick system. i am not Jewish. i don't know the full extent of lifestyle differences. but i am convinced that the ritual of adulthood makes a HUGE difference. i had talks with both my kids at 13 and informed them i was working with them as adults from then on, not ordering them around like kids. my son reads this blog. ask him yourself. i have had the most painless trip with my adolescents of any parent i know. but the rite of passage is only the start.
psychology is a billion dollar industry. "psychology drugs" is a multi-billion dollar one. we have shrinks in on dating services (no offense intended. i LOVE dr. phil). it is hard to find anybody with any discretionary money at all that doesn't have some "self-improvement" book around. but i have never read of something that i believe is pivotal. maybe someone has written about this and i just haven't seen it, but i believe that you should have your "own language" with your kids. i am not suggesting that, like edgar rice burroughs did for his tarzan character, you make up an entire language. you can use english. but "how" you use english is different from any other two people on earth. God has arranged for differences on purpose. for instance, i have never seen it happen that lots of partners before marriage makes someone a better lover after marriage. sex by definition has infinite possibilities in the combining of what both enjoy and feel comfortable with. but i am the only me and you are the only you and together we would be the only couple sharing our individual traits. (if you are printing this, underline that last sentence. it is HUGE.) sex manuals are primers at best. the kama sutra has remained a favorite for centuries because it gives so many suggestions that folks can find new things to try. any couple that does the entire book probably works in a circus. but notice the principle.
for those new to my writing, my grandma said that sex is meant to be a picture of what has happened between hearts. sex is an easy picture. now visualize what i have been talking about on a relationship level. i have friends who hunt. i would kill my foot and let the livestock run free. there are also a lot of hunters that aren't my friends. what is the difference? shared experience and humor. hunting makes me a little sad, but one of my best buddies over the years is a friend who hunted. we both sold like madmen, him from God-given talent, and me from dogged persistence. we liked to get buzzed, order pizza, and watch star trek and play cards. he was good company. he died driving drunk one night. i deeply miss him. he never once told me how to improve myself. but our bets on how much we could sell made me a lot of money i wouldn't have otherwise worked for. this is the kind of latitude i advocate for parents to have with their children. my aunt studied and learned about football so she could watch it with her boys. how can you BE any cooler than that? my mom became a swimming encyclopedia because of my love for swimming. i have been discovering urban music because of my son, and not all of it is x-rated stuff. it is a different experience than i am used to, but it is one i am learning to enjoy.
these run longer than i expect them to. next post i will give some exercises that will show specifically how to develop this ability to talk candidly and comfortably with your teen. rainbow, you are now in my friends! love and peace to all you hippy types in my excellent world. see ya around campus.
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