A group of parents were gathered in a coffee shop planning future programs for their schools. These folks are part of a group trying to help keep parents engaged in the process of parenting their teens. Lots of lively ideas were being shared. Head shaking occurred when someone would bring up another hair-brained escapade of a local teen. "It's like," one mom said, "we expect them to have our heads on their shoulders."
Teens don't have our heads on their shoulders. In fact, they have these brains that are still working on fully developing the pre-frontal cortex which houses judgement and decision making. Research is telling us that they won't be done with that task until they are around 25. So they do foolish things and we shake our heads, sometimes get mad, and often inquire "What were You thinking?" (By the way, when they say "I don't know!" they are telling the truth.)
I spoke with a mom at a middle school PTA meeting recently. She was regretting the loss of an open, lively relationship with her almost-teen daughter. Her daughter was convinced that Mom could no longer understand the lives of her friends. As we spoke I watched this mom develop her own understanding of what happens when we express shock at the newest thing happening among teen friends. But more, what she realized is that she needs to share, in a calm way, her concerns about her daughter's new found freedom. Her daughter doesn't have the benefit of the years of experience that Mom does. Her daughter doesn't understand why Mom is sometimes fearful of teenaged independence. As we parted Mom was talking about the ways she might share her own memories of boys and girls and middle school. She spoke of talking more about what she is thinking so that she and her daughter have an understanding of what would make these next steps easier for both of them.
In some ways Mom was starting to put her head on her daughter's shoulders.
Comments