random thoughts on teens and independence

I clearly recall the day when I decided my kids are old enough for me to step back and give them a chance to be more independent. I didn’t think about it much, neither have I doubted it – this is what I’ve seen in my childhood, this was what everyone around me used to repeat and so I knew it should be. Once children turn 13-14, they must be able to deal with most of their daily chores and commitments, and once they reach 16 or 17 they can even live by their own.

My own mother abdicated somewhen in the middle of my puberty and at 17 I was already doing what I wanted, including hanging around with the wrong crowd, lying, smoking day and night and stealing money.

And so, convinced in the rightness of this decision, I stopped waking up early in the morning and helping the kids to get ready, we stopped driving them to and back from school, and we generally let them to manage their rooms, food, lessons and time by themselves. Shortly before that, a friend had asked me on the phone how much longer I was planning to make breakfast for my son – until he grew a beard? – and I felt quite ashamed. It’s no secret that I’m a helicopter mom and I’ve often been accused of overprotection through the years so I got myself together, clenched my teeth and removed my crown.

I may be controlling but I am also smart and know how to overcome myself in the name of just causes. A multitude of relatives and strangers around have been bragging about how independent their teens were and how they barely could see their eyes at home, which only made me more determined to correct my mistake. Not that our children have ever been unable to take care of themselves or have waited for us to feed them in the mouth – on the contrary – but the peer pressure on one hand and on the other hand the teens’ own fight for freedom naturally lead to such parent’s conclusions.

Looking back now I see that both Hanko and I were very believable in the role of loving but distant parents who do their best to give their children space. Which we later declared a fundamental mistake. Simultaneously with our withdrawal the problems began but because the collective, the movies, the books and the doctors have always claimed all teens to be problematic, we accepted those issues with wise understanding.

Things never escalated to excess but felt unnatural for our home and our ideas of upbringing. Things like occasional scandals, school troubles, bad marks and hours of toxic silence. Then the lies arrived, then selfishness and evasion, and eventually a swirl of alcohol bottles and nicotine vapes vacuumed The Son. Not much but enough.

I clearly recall the day I realised this won’t work. I didn’t care what the world thought or what psychologists preached – I decided to rewind and regress to where we were before. After all, if a person’s brain hasn’t fully developed by the age of 23-25, what responsibility and independence could we expect at 14-15-16? I was left on my own very early on and I did become adaptable and independent, but I don’t like the price I paid for these qualities. Too many mental disorders, too untimely exhausted nervous system, it’s just not worth it. I know other early weaned teens, and I don’t like their outcome either.

This is how Hanko and I agreed to commence an experiment. We took the decision to stand by our children to the very last (without intruding) and to do our job. Not to do their job – they have been taking a good care of it since they were little – but ours. To keep getting up early in the morning and helping them prepare their food, to do the school drive to and from whenever needed, to chaperone them at all extracurricular activities, to bake bread, to suggest meaningful Saturday movies, to irradiate them with quality music, to drag them out to mountains and markets, to keep our egos in the back pockets for at least a few more years, to create memories, to listen (even when we are not quite in the mood) and to talk with them, to talk a lot.

I once read that if we decide to help a butterfly leave its cocoon and just cut the cocoon open, we will probably kill it. The butterfly needs those efforts to crack the cocoon because they strengthen her wings. The painful metamorphosis (which applies more or less to all forms of life) is not a random event – it is meant to unfold important organs and activate muscles, without which the flight of life is impossible.

It’s been more than a year since the experiment started and it’s going very well by far. Our home is cozy and calm again, the problems have disappeared, the grades have improved, the children feel and look better. Their father and I not so much because our personal time and space have completely melted away, but we keep telling ourselves that this too shall pass, and we better enjoy it now while we still can.