By The Time I Was Your Age...
Our older son turns 14 tomorrow and, as I think about it, is a pretty remarkable age to be. I have good memories of 14, but when I think about my son having similar experiences or the kinds of "firsts" I had at that age I get a little freaked out.
Granted, I'm a July baby and when I was 14 I was entering my freshman year of high school. The social functions of a kid's life are often very different in middle school (Bailey is in 8th grade) than they are just a year later so I think my wife and I will find the experiences we had at 14 will more likely happen to Bay in his 15th year. Either way, all these "things" are coming or some variation on them are coming and even though we have an exceptionally bright, mature 14 year-old he is still a kid and he's still going to have to learn a lot along the way.
My wife and I talked about all of this the other night in a conversation centered around a theme of "What were you doing when you were 14" and I thought I'd share the highlights form my end:
- By the time I reached 14 I'd made out with exactly one girl. By 15 the number was 3. I had my first actual "girlfriend" during that year.
- I'd consumed alcohol but hadn't been what I would call drunk.
- At a party my brother threw I wound up driving the car of one of his friends down to the local Safeway because they all wanted frozen pizza but all were too drunk to drive. They gave me my first driving lesson. I was 14!!
- I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into A's baseball games and to rock concerts in Oakland with just me and my friends. No adults.
- I had my first job at a Burger King. I did it for 6 months.I started what would become my summer job all through high school just before I turned 15, working on a window washing crew.
As I think about Bailey being the same age I've been thinking about some key differences of then vs. now and who he is vs. who I was. As noted above, there is a difference in school years and high school vs. middle school but I think the bigger factors are that he is the older of two kids, where I was the youngest of three, and he's living in area comparably smaller than the region I grew up in.
I don't especially worry about the drinking because I don't see he and his peers having the kind of access to it that I had. Again, part of that is high school culture versus middle school but the other issue is our home dynamic being different than the one I was raised in. When I was 14 my brother was 17 and a high school senior. My parents would take a weekend getaway and leave the two of us at home (my sister had moved out by then). Obviously my wife and I won't be doing that any time soon.
My wife and I have also been very honest with him about drugs and alcohol and the experiences we either personally had or that we witnessed. The message has not been one of fear or "All these terrible things will happen to you if you (insert bad ideas here)" but more one of, "Look, every kid eventually does something dumb and we expect you to make mistakes but trust us when we tell you that none of it is worth the risk of putting yourself or others in danger". I'd like to think it helps that I don't drink and when he's asked me why I tell him that even if I didn't have an allergy to alcohol (which began in my mid 20's) I've just never much liked "drink culture". I just don't view as a necessary component of being an adult and, yes, I do think far too much of our adult social lives still have too much beer and wine at their center. The message has been "When you're 21 make that decision for yourself and there is nothing so great about it that makes 21 such a long wait."
Girls? He had a "girlfriend" (nothing major) for about a year in our former city and from what my wife got out of him it sounds like it didn't go beyond kisses (singular kisses, as opposed to make out sessions, etc.). He has a ton of female friends and I'm sure he likes a few of them beyond friendship and a few of them are coming to his birthday party this weekend. He knows that if he wants to go on group dates that he doesn't need to ask for specific permission and that if he wants to go on an actual date where we either provide transportation or he meets the girl at a location that he needs to make sure the girl has the green light from her parents. The other lessons or pearls of wisdom we've tried to pass on are more anecdotal like "Don't immediately date a good friend's ex", "Know your salad fork from your dinner fork, open doors, and be a gentleman", "No means no", and "It doesn't matter how cute your good friend's younger sister is you don't go there ever without expressed written permission, preferably in blood."
My wife and I have concluded that within the circle of fellow parents we know either casually or know pretty well that we're probably the most liberal and/or open minded about these things. And I think that comes from the combination of our backgrounds. I grew up in the suburbs where was there was plenty to do with parents who were usually very willing to let me do it and she grew up in a small town with very conservative parents who were often so restrictive that even the smallest breaking of the rules seemed like mass rebellion. She wishes she'd had more freedom, I appreciate the freedom I had but also know how much I abused it, and somewhere in the middle I think we've arrived at a rash approach to how we hope to handle our kids in their teen years: Give them enough rope to make a noose but not enough to hang themselves. To borrow a line from the minister father in Footloose: "If we don't begin to trust our children how will they ever become trustworthy?" I love that line because I think it very, very true. Kids learn but we have to let them learn and we learn from our mistakes. The trick is to make sure their mistakes result in fixable results, not in permanent damage.
I'm amazed at our fellow parents who, it seems, are more frightened by the emerging hormones than by anything else. Perhaps my view on this would be different if Bailey was a girl (in fact, I know it would be!) but even with parents of boys it seems their biggest fear is their son being alone with a girl! I certainly have my concerns and I definitely don't want either of our sons to get anyone pregnant or anything but on the list of issues that teenagers will encounter sex and being sexually active rank behind drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, and the roller coaster of emotions that come with rapidly changing hormones. The stuff that was hardest for me as a teenager were those horrible feelings of depression and worry, concerns about friends, or feeling like no one understood how I felt. I'm far more concerned about my kids experiencing the intangibles that can make adolescence so difficult.
Right now I wonder if my parents thought about all of this when I was 14. I'm going to see them later this week. I think maybe I'll ask. In the mean time, I feel blessed as I always do to have a kid who, all considerations of changes in technology, times, and surroundings, has a better sense of confidence, smarts, and wisdom than I think I possessed at his age. My biggest wish for his birthday is that he'll stay on the path he's already on.
J
Granted, I'm a July baby and when I was 14 I was entering my freshman year of high school. The social functions of a kid's life are often very different in middle school (Bailey is in 8th grade) than they are just a year later so I think my wife and I will find the experiences we had at 14 will more likely happen to Bay in his 15th year. Either way, all these "things" are coming or some variation on them are coming and even though we have an exceptionally bright, mature 14 year-old he is still a kid and he's still going to have to learn a lot along the way.
My wife and I talked about all of this the other night in a conversation centered around a theme of "What were you doing when you were 14" and I thought I'd share the highlights form my end:
- By the time I reached 14 I'd made out with exactly one girl. By 15 the number was 3. I had my first actual "girlfriend" during that year.
- I'd consumed alcohol but hadn't been what I would call drunk.
- At a party my brother threw I wound up driving the car of one of his friends down to the local Safeway because they all wanted frozen pizza but all were too drunk to drive. They gave me my first driving lesson. I was 14!!
- I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into A's baseball games and to rock concerts in Oakland with just me and my friends. No adults.
- I had my first job at a Burger King. I did it for 6 months.I started what would become my summer job all through high school just before I turned 15, working on a window washing crew.
As I think about Bailey being the same age I've been thinking about some key differences of then vs. now and who he is vs. who I was. As noted above, there is a difference in school years and high school vs. middle school but I think the bigger factors are that he is the older of two kids, where I was the youngest of three, and he's living in area comparably smaller than the region I grew up in.
I don't especially worry about the drinking because I don't see he and his peers having the kind of access to it that I had. Again, part of that is high school culture versus middle school but the other issue is our home dynamic being different than the one I was raised in. When I was 14 my brother was 17 and a high school senior. My parents would take a weekend getaway and leave the two of us at home (my sister had moved out by then). Obviously my wife and I won't be doing that any time soon.
My wife and I have also been very honest with him about drugs and alcohol and the experiences we either personally had or that we witnessed. The message has not been one of fear or "All these terrible things will happen to you if you (insert bad ideas here)" but more one of, "Look, every kid eventually does something dumb and we expect you to make mistakes but trust us when we tell you that none of it is worth the risk of putting yourself or others in danger". I'd like to think it helps that I don't drink and when he's asked me why I tell him that even if I didn't have an allergy to alcohol (which began in my mid 20's) I've just never much liked "drink culture". I just don't view as a necessary component of being an adult and, yes, I do think far too much of our adult social lives still have too much beer and wine at their center. The message has been "When you're 21 make that decision for yourself and there is nothing so great about it that makes 21 such a long wait."
Girls? He had a "girlfriend" (nothing major) for about a year in our former city and from what my wife got out of him it sounds like it didn't go beyond kisses (singular kisses, as opposed to make out sessions, etc.). He has a ton of female friends and I'm sure he likes a few of them beyond friendship and a few of them are coming to his birthday party this weekend. He knows that if he wants to go on group dates that he doesn't need to ask for specific permission and that if he wants to go on an actual date where we either provide transportation or he meets the girl at a location that he needs to make sure the girl has the green light from her parents. The other lessons or pearls of wisdom we've tried to pass on are more anecdotal like "Don't immediately date a good friend's ex", "Know your salad fork from your dinner fork, open doors, and be a gentleman", "No means no", and "It doesn't matter how cute your good friend's younger sister is you don't go there ever without expressed written permission, preferably in blood."
My wife and I have concluded that within the circle of fellow parents we know either casually or know pretty well that we're probably the most liberal and/or open minded about these things. And I think that comes from the combination of our backgrounds. I grew up in the suburbs where was there was plenty to do with parents who were usually very willing to let me do it and she grew up in a small town with very conservative parents who were often so restrictive that even the smallest breaking of the rules seemed like mass rebellion. She wishes she'd had more freedom, I appreciate the freedom I had but also know how much I abused it, and somewhere in the middle I think we've arrived at a rash approach to how we hope to handle our kids in their teen years: Give them enough rope to make a noose but not enough to hang themselves. To borrow a line from the minister father in Footloose: "If we don't begin to trust our children how will they ever become trustworthy?" I love that line because I think it very, very true. Kids learn but we have to let them learn and we learn from our mistakes. The trick is to make sure their mistakes result in fixable results, not in permanent damage.
I'm amazed at our fellow parents who, it seems, are more frightened by the emerging hormones than by anything else. Perhaps my view on this would be different if Bailey was a girl (in fact, I know it would be!) but even with parents of boys it seems their biggest fear is their son being alone with a girl! I certainly have my concerns and I definitely don't want either of our sons to get anyone pregnant or anything but on the list of issues that teenagers will encounter sex and being sexually active rank behind drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, and the roller coaster of emotions that come with rapidly changing hormones. The stuff that was hardest for me as a teenager were those horrible feelings of depression and worry, concerns about friends, or feeling like no one understood how I felt. I'm far more concerned about my kids experiencing the intangibles that can make adolescence so difficult.
Right now I wonder if my parents thought about all of this when I was 14. I'm going to see them later this week. I think maybe I'll ask. In the mean time, I feel blessed as I always do to have a kid who, all considerations of changes in technology, times, and surroundings, has a better sense of confidence, smarts, and wisdom than I think I possessed at his age. My biggest wish for his birthday is that he'll stay on the path he's already on.
J