Rock + Hard Place = Parenting. Chart Your Course and Sail On.

Forgiving Children is Easier Than Forgiving Ourselves.

When our children become teenagers, every day is a chance to forgive them their human imperfections. The lost jackets and phones and textbooks. The ugly words said in anger or frustration. The mess they leave in their wake. The bad grades or missing assignments or lies told in desperation. There is so much to forgive, even as we maintain their boundaries and reinforce the rules of decent human behavior.

Like artists who trust the messy process of creating a masterpiece, we know we must make peace with our children's imperfections. It's not always easy, but in general, we get the concept. We try to  forgive our children the awkward fits and starts they will make as they emerge from the cocoon of adolescence into the fully realized wings of their adulthood. Forgiveness. Yes. Imperfection. Yes. These are the lullabies we sing to ourselves when things get really ugly during the teenaged years.

Parents Get Lots of Practice.

It's more difficult to forgive ourselves. Lucky for all parents of teenagers, Mother Nature affords us an excellent opportunity to practice. She gives us teenagers who resent our very identities, who will often tell us exactly how lame we are, who cause us to question the core of our value (if we let them).

Here's the truth: parents, we cannot win. No matter how hard we try, no matter the purity of our intentions or the pedigree of the parenting advice we read, we will mess it up. One example gets at the core of the issue. I give you:

Conditional vs. Unconditional Love: A Study in Why Parents Cannot Win

Some children (and adults) are truly wounded by a sense of conditional love from their parents. We know many people who live in fear of failing, who shuffle under the weight of parental expectations. They fear no one really knows them. These souls seek to be good enough--or accomplished enough or beautiful enough--to earn the love they seek.

On the other hand, I know just as many teenagers (and adults) struggling with unconditional love. These people reject praise and are suspicious of compliments; they fear no one really knows them. They resent the parents (or others) who have told them they're great, no matter what. Often, these young people cultivate oppositional identities, act out in secret, or lose a sense of their own value. They do not trust an all-forgiving, all-encompassing, always-there love--perhaps because they feel they have not earned it.  

Sometimes, the two examples above come from the very same families. The same parents, apparently identical upbringings, but opposite results.

Parents, we cannot win.

Do we throw our hands up and stop trying? Do we throw the teenager out with the filthy bathwater? Of course not. But it helps to know: until further notice, while raising our children, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Nothing we do will be perfect; we cannot manufacture an upbringing guaranteed to save our children from strife.

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Odysseus, with Scylla on one side and Charybdis on the other, steered carefully, cut his losses, and saved his ship. Parents, too, must navigate with care.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Chart a Careful Course.

What can we do? Start by forgiving ourselves--for not knowing how to do better, for failing to do our best sometimes--the way we would want our children to forgive themselves. Let us adopt the attitude of the artist, who trusts the imperfect process as well as the unique product. An artist's worst mistake is to let outside criticism alter the interior vision or the creative process. An artist knows imperfections can produce pure genius.

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How can parents stay true to our course? Always, in every situation, get some distance and give yourself a wake-up call: KNOW-PROTECT-HONOR. Do I KNOW what's going on with this kid? Must I PROTECT this kid from any real and present danger? Can I HONOR this kid's unique process of growing up? If you are satisfied with your answers, trust the messy process, unfurl your sails, and carry on. You'll find the best course for you and your family. It will be rough, but it will be okay.

And If You Still Feel Guilty, Do This:

Forgive yourself like our new role model the artist, and if that doesn't work, put a little extra money aside each month for your child's eventual therapy. It may assuage some of the guilt you can't help feeling about how much you're screwing it up.

And--because sometimes good music helps us be more gentle with ourselves--listen as Mick and Keith lament our most ancient, human position:

When Teenagers Start Talking, Listen!

When They Start Talking, Stop.

If you have teenagers, you know they only talk to you at inconvenient times. When you are exhausted, on the phone with your doctor, or rushing to meet a deadline, your kid gets chatty. (Please see "Mom, Interrupted" for my catalogue of just one such evening at our homestead.)

If you hear yourself saying, "Not now . . . " to your adolescent son or daughter, STOP. Take a breath. Drop what you are doing. Ask your careening-toward-empty-nesting self,  "If not now, when?" (Tweet This)

Approach with Care.

If your teen should ask or say something demanding your attention, STOP. Sit frozen if you must--ignore hunger, bladder, errands that need running--if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the midst of a real conversation. It's like coaxing a squirrel to eat from your hand. You don't want to make any sudden movements or break the magic of the moment.

And what magic it is when teenaged people start spilling their guts! When that veil lifts, amidst their ramblings (if we are patient enough) we will hear secrets, code words, intel about friends, and the true longings of their confused little hormonal hearts.

Listen Carefully.

If we pay especially close attention, as their frontal-lobes gradually develop, we will hear the whispers of understanding, forgiveness, and even burgeoning, adult respect for us.

And then the veil falls and they're grumpy and reticent again. So it is: ephemera, a moment in time . .  and the stuff that dreams are made on.

Don't stop trying to get your kids to talk. I have posted some practical tips on doing just that (Good Questions to Ask) (One More Vote in Favor of Family Dinner). But as we schedule more formal attempts to get through to them, let us not miss their casual, spontaneous, serendipitous (often just so inconvenient!) moments of communication.

Unplanned, catch-em-while-you-can moments of conversation reveal the everyday magic of living with teenagers. (Tweet This) Our dinner will keep; our plans can be re-scheduled; our children will never be this age again. (Tweet This) So much of it is painful--seize those fleeting moments of genuine connection when they appear (like magic) before your very eyes.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Happy Mother's Day.

Anne Lamott says the only two prayers we need are these: Help me, help me, help me and Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Indeed.

Every single day.

My sons Augustus Lane and George Talwin have for 17 and 16 years, respectively, honored, blessed, challenged and created me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Help me, help me, help me.

And God bless Marcia Stephan Lane for being my mother, which could not have have been an easy job. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

How to Get Teens to Talk: "If Not Now, When?"

When They Start Talking, Stop.

If you hear yourself saying, "Not now . . . " to your adolescent son or daughter, STOP. Take a breath. Ask your careening-toward-empty-nesting self,  "If not now, when?"

If you have teenagers, you know they only talk to you at inconvenient times. When you are exhausted, on the phone with your doctor, or rushing to meet a deadline, your kid gets chatty. (Please see "Mom, Interrupted" for my catalogue of just one such evening at our homestead.)

Approach with Care.

If your teen should ask or say something demanding your attention, STOP. Sit frozen if you must--ignore hunger, bladder, errands that need running--if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the midst of a real conversation. It's like coaxing a squirrel to eat from your hand. You don't want to make any sudden movements or break the magic of the moment.

And what magic it is when teenaged people start spilling their guts! When that veil lifts, amidst their ramblings (if we are patient enough) we will hear secrets, code words, intel about friends, and the true longings of their confused little hormonal hearts.

More than a whisper: JK Simmons' shout-out to Mom & Dad 

Listen Carefully.

If we pay especially close attention, as their frontal-lobes gradually develop, we will hear the whispers of understanding, forgiveness, and even burgeoning, adult respect for us.

And then the veil falls and they're grumpy and reticent again. So it is: ephemera, a moment in time . .  and the stuff that dreams are made on.

Don't stop trying to get your kids to talk. I have posted some practical tips on doing just that (Good Questions to Ask) (One More Vote in Favor of Family Dinner). But as we schedule more formal attempts to get through to them, let us not miss their casual, spontaneous, serendipitous (often just so inconvenient!) moments of communication.

Unplanned, catch-em-while-you-can moments of conversation reveal the everyday magic of living with teenagers. Our dinner will keep; our plans can be re-scheduled; our children will never be this age again. So much of it is painful--seize those fleeting moments of genuine connection while you can.

[Optional: if you want to get maudlin about it--as I am inclined to do--here's a little "Cat's in the Cradle" to mess with your head.]

"We'll get together then, Son . . . " - Harry Chapin

Role Models Who Honor: Sage on a Mountaintop (Mentor Them.)

Parents who seek to HONOR teenagers need new role models to guide our way.

The Sage on a Mountaintop (or Mentor) instructs us to breathe deeply, see with non-judgmental eyes, and guide our children to the realization of the very best versions of themselves. The Mentor archetype, so prevalent in the Western canon, began--like many good things--with the ancient Greeks.

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When Odysseus shipped off for his epic journey, he left his son in the care of the elderly Mentor. And when grown-up Telemachus went in search of his father (to save him from all that globe-trotting, monster-fighting and nymph-imprisonment), Mentor accompanied him (except it's actually that wily goddess Ahtena, in yet another disguise).

The Mentor character—so familiar in so many coming-of-age stories—maintains an objective stance, laughs gently at the hero’s plight, and helps guide younger people to the actualization of their real and full selves.

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Mentor teaches us to HONOR our progeny. We never know the mentor's personal agenda; mentor characters exist solely to lead the young hero to self-actualization.

Putting our own dreams and desires aside, when we are parents, is not so easy. Often our kids are good at things we did—better than we ever were. With hearts full of love, we afford them opportunities we did not have . . . and we tend to expect them to make good on our investments. Sometimes our kids wear OUR ideas about success or happiness like ill-fitting, itchy sweaters.

Mentor-as-role-model reminds us to step back, see our children for who THEY really are, and help them realize THEIR unique, singular, God-given gifts.

Here's the best news: much of this mentoring is NOT YOUR JOB! Developmentally, teenagers seek to differentiate themselves from their parents. They are programmed to reject our advice and rely on the opinions and guidance of others (especially peers). As you may be aware, teenagers value anyone--teachers, coaches, friends, pop stars, neighbors, street-preachers, derelicts--more than Dear Old Mom and Dad. Really. Anyone who isn't a parent has more cred with our kids than we have.

So put good mentors in their paths. Know the teachers who influence them; introduce them to music instructors or youth leaders or other adults you trust. If your teenager shows interest in a new passion--however odd it may seem--do some research. Encourage their fledging interests by putting them in touch with adults who can help them (and whom you know to be good people). 

Above all, give thanks--in person, when we can--for the other mentors who help us raise our teenagers into responsible adulthood. When we are able, parents do best to act like mentors, as well. Ideally, we maintain an objective distance, a healthy sense of humor and a vault full of sound guidance. The truth, however, is that most often, adolescents take their cues and their advice from other people.

May all our teenagers--as they journey toward meeting the pure potential of their grown-up selves--find mentors who lead them well.

Gimme Shelter: Why I taught Grammar to Kids Who Didn't Care (Parenting in Colorado, Part Three)

(or What I Learned about Parenting from The Rolling Stones)

In this interview, Mick Jagger calls the song "a very moody piece about the world closing in on you . . . ."

My hometown greeted 2014 with the lawful sale of recreational cannabis. Naturally, parents and educators are talking a lot about marijuana here in the 303. The debate is a many-tentacled beast in our local zeitgeist, and I will address various aspects of it in a series of blog posts here.

Today, I share my thoughts on the importance of helping teenagers learn to think critically about ALL issues in the world, including drug use.

---

Oh, a storm is threatenin' / My very life today / If I don't get some shelter / Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away   -M. Jagger, K. Richards

I. The Inner Fortress: Shelter from the Storms of Life

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We do not like to admit it, but parents cannot truly keep our kids safe. The storms threaten with too much force; the best we can do is offer some shelter. 

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The best protection against the slings, arrows and other outrageous fortunes life offers is knowing how to think. Messages from corporations, institutions and industries barrage our kids every minute of every day. The only real shelter lies within themselves: the ability to discern good from bad, right from wrong, and truth from deceit.

This is the key to ultimate, adult liberty: being free to make choices unfettered by ignorance. This is also why I endeavored to teach high-school English.

II. Rhetoric is Power. Learn How to Wield It, or Fall Victim to It.

Although I think many students remember me fondly, I was not the kind of teacher who inspired a life-long romance with literature. As I reminded them often, I didn't give a whit about how much they liked a book. We had bigger fish to fry. 

Most high-school students would rather talk about anything besides grammar. Literary analysis interests them only slightly more. Discussions of tone, theme, purpose--and God forbid syntax or diction--inspire resentment and apathy in the average teenager.

And yet, nearly every day of my teaching career, I insisted on talking about grammar and analysis. And it was awful.

Why not change tack? Why sail against such rough winds, instead of taking the smoother course of young-adult lit and how it makes kids feel? Because their brains are worth it.

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Adults have the opportunity (if not the mandate) to teach kids how to protect their brains against predators. In our brave new world of constant media messaging, the task is more vital than ever. I lost sleep over teenagers who fought my instruction (due to their unfortunate, adolescent circumstances), because unless we understand how arguments work, we are powerless against the barrage of arguments invading our mind-grapes.

III. Critical Minds Build Strong Backbones.

These almost-adults will soon be making decisions about where they spend their money, whom they support in elections, and how they conduct themselves in the wide, weird world. Our parental, teaching, and grown-up decree is to give them shelter from the storms threatening to blow them off-course. 

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So we diagram sentences. We write formulaically in the classroom until we can prove a thesis with air-tight precision. It's brutal work, but the minds of our future adults are worth the struggle. When they know how to defend a logical argument of their own (which means knowing how to craft a smart sentence), students are more capable of recognizing the fallacies in the arguments aimed squarely at them.

The forces threatening our teenagers--and all of us--are too many to fathom. Nary a parent I know would argue against the importance of fortifying our children's inner strength in the face of all the evils in the world. That strength--that ability to make sound, responsible decisions--begins and ends with understanding the messages we receive and interpreting them wisely.

Let us give our teenagers the shelter of strong backbones and critical minds. The study of rhetoric--which begins with grammar and embraces logical argument--is an excellent place to start.

See you in English class.

[In honor of the human need for shelter, I will be giving Keith Richard's children's book for Christmas this year. Gus and Me: The Story of Granddad and My First Guitar, here at amazon.]

Please stay tuned for more installments! Follow me on twitter @lisafilholm; tune in often to www.beyondmamabear.com; book a workshop or lecture for your parenting group now!

Open Culture's article on background vocalist Merry Clayton

Anthems of Youth: Ah, Sweet Rebellion!

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Teenagers fashion their rebellion precisely to piss us off.

Generation after generation, adolescents figure out new and specific ways to drive adults up a collective tree. Every now and then, I spend a few moments contemplating my own wild quest to form an identity different from my parents. Granted, it's not pretty, gazing too closely at one's mis-spent youth. However, through the lens of middle age I see my rebellion with humor and fondness (and maybe I can do the same when I look at the teenagers I am raising).

It helps that Jonathan Larson wrote an anthem for my generation (at least for the under-employed, lost, creative people in my immediate circle). With his last breath, Mr. Larson opened RENT in New York and gave voice to my fears, disappointments, and atavistic urge to dress like an asshole. I wept and cheered in the front row on Broadway, along with my bohemian, twenty-something comrades. Together, we raised a giant, cynical, vulnerable, hopeful-despite-ourselves middle finger to convention. And on that stage, they harmonized it in big, beautiful voices to stir our souls.

Tonight, I listened to the cast recording and was struck once again by how specifically it spoke to my late adolescence. La Vie Boheme was our very own, celebratory, F-You to the world. More than two decades later, I am considerably less arrogant, slightly more resilient, perhaps even a bit wiser. But those lyrics are a litany of my personal formation, and for that I cherish them. Here is the labyrinth of influences, instincts and indulgences I navigated in my rather ill-conceived quest to become My Own Person. Put to music, with a snazzy dance number!

Remembering my own pathological need to practice Shock and Awe on society (and on my parents) helps me see teenaged rebellion with kinder eyes.

It even helps me make more sense of (and rant less about) the likes of Nicki Minaj and Kanye West and those Trailer Park Boys and that Honey Boo-Boo and any other number of infuriating things going on up in my house. But that's another story for another post.

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"The Garden of Earthly Delights," Hieronymus Bosch c. 1500 AD

For now, play the anthems of YOUR youth; they go a long way toward helping forgive the younger generation for their unrelenting, vulgar attempts to cut those apron strings. Meanwhile, enjoy this disgruntled canticle of my salad days. (Good times, but you couldn't pay me to go  back.) 

The middle lyrics (and my personal creed, c. 1994) from "La Vie Boheme" by Jonathan Larson:

To days of inspiration, playing hooky, making something out of nothing,

The need to express, to communicate,

To going against the grain, going insane, going mad!

To loving tension, no pension, to more than one dimension,

To starving for attention, hating convention, hating pretension,

Not to mention, of course, hating dear old Mom and Dad!

To riding your bike midday past the three-piece suits,

To fruits, to no absolutes, to Absolut,

To choice, to the Village Voice, to any passing fad!

To being an Us for once, instead of a Them,

La vie Boheme!

 To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries,

To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese,

To leather, to dildos, to curry vindaloo,

To huevos rancheros and Maya Angelou.

Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion,

Creation, vacation, mucho masturbation.

Compassion, to fashion, to passion when it's new,

To Sontag, to Sondheim, to anything taboo.

Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunigham and Cage,

Lenny Bruce! Langston Hughes! To the stage!

To Uta, to Buddha, Pablo Neruda, too.

Why Dorothy and Toto went over the rainbow

To blow off Auntie Em,

La vie Boheme!

 Bisexuals, trisexuals, homo sapiens,

Carcinogens, hallucinogens, men, Pee Wee Herman.

German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein,

Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa, Carmina Burana!

To apathy, to entropy, to empathy, ecstasy,

Vaclav Havel! The Sex Pistols! 8BC!

To no shame, never playing the Fame Game, to marijuana!

To sodomy, it's between God and me, to S & M

La vie Boheme!

Eight Minutes Too Late: The Beautiful Agony of Natural Consequences

I continue to be a big fan of the good doctors at Love and Logic, who preach the power of natural consequences. Their wisdom resonates identically with parents of toddlers and parents of teens. It is agonizing, watching our kids suffer the results of their actions, but it is worth it. Every single time, they grow and learn and take one giant leap toward responsible adulthood.

A Cautionary Tale of Consequences: Here's a Good One for You.

A young man in Denver, Colorado rushed home one afternoon to put the final touches on a scholarship application, due that very day. This high school junior is mature, well-spoken, bright. He does well in school, plays sports, works a steady job. He knows a lot of things about the great big world, but he didn't know (until this particular afternoon) about the importance of time zones. 

This intrepid boy submitted his online application at 2:08 PM, happily in advance of his 4:00 deadline. His email was immediately rejected; the application process was closed; the website went blank. The deadline, of course, was 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (whereas our unwitting hero lives in the  Mountain Time Zone). He missed out on the promise of a dream by eight minutes.

His mama might have lectured or blown her top. You can bet she envisioned thousands of dollars circling right down the drain; I am certain she has repeated, "eight lousy minutes" in varying tones of dismay to all her friends.

Instead, she recognized the shock and disappointment in her baby's eyes. She saw the resignation and regret--familiar to cynical adults--which fester when doors slam shut. She knew no one was more sorry than her son about the opportunity he had just missed. Instead of chiding him, instead of frantically emailing powerful people to finagle an extension, she took a deep breath along with him and carried on.

The lessons he learned were many, in that moment and in the following days. Natural consequences are a bitch. He will probably be more careful about deadlines hereafter. He is practicing the art of handling disappointment. Because he is young and gifted--and because the world is bountiful--he will have countless other opportunities. He faced frustration, panic and anger at himself and survived. He learned these feelings--like all feelings--are temporary.

To my way of thinking, there are few lessons more valuable for adolescents to learn. Feelings are temporary.

Agonize Less When Teens Falter. Enjoy More. They're Learning!

Love and Logic parents try to enjoy watching their toddlers make stupid mistakes. The natural consequences of these actions (repeat the parents to themselves behind clenched smiles) produce exactly the results we desire. Kids will only remember their coats if they have felt the chill of forgetting them, or their lunches if they have felt hunger pangs at noon. 

Parents of teenagers, let's try to look at it the same way. One of the teenagers in my very own home accuses me of "loving it when kids get in trouble." He may have a point. I do enjoy watching teenagers face the music, be responsible, suffer the consequences of their idiotic actions. Nothing less will save them from themselves. 

When we parents rush to solve their problems and rescue them from natural consequences, we deny our children the gift of learning how to fail.

“We are all faced with a series of opportunities—brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
-John Gardner”

We Are Too Old to Suffer Fools. When Teens Talk Nonsense, Step Away.

When problems with teenagers seem most complicated, the answers are most simple. There is one answer, in fact, when the question, "What the hell is wrong with them?" reaches a deafening pitch. Indeed, there is one word. 

Hormones.

Oh, teenagers are tricky. They will lure you into their conversations, their problems, their worries and you will follow, because talking with them is such a rare treat. They may even ask for your advice--intoxicating! Before you know it, you take the bait and find yourself caught in their labyrinthine logic, their perceived injustices, their utterly insane value systems. When teenaged drama revs into high gear, everything seems so bloody complicated. Step back, parents. I beg you. It really is so simple.

“Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

— Mark Twain

We all know those endless, emotional conversations with our teenagers. Especially if bedtime or homework deadlines loom, those kids will talk and talk and talk. They contradict themselves with tearful passion. They make wild, painful, inaccurate claims about their lives and about us. Their ability to reason seems to have flown out the window.

And so it has. Emotional teenagers are ruled not by logic but by the unholy chemical reactions invading their brains and bodies. A brilliant middle-school teacher I know calls it "testosterone poisoning." Robert Sapolsky, in this instructive article, asks the perfect question: "Dude, Where's My Frontal Cortex?" 

To KNOW, PROTECT and HONOR teenagers, we must recognize when they have stopped making sense. Be on your guard; it's alarming. One minute, your child might demonstrate mature, critical thinking; the next, she's throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum.

It's good to be the grown-ups. Step back, see your teenagers for who and what they are, and hang out with people whose grey matter is fully formed. Hug your kids; let their frantic rambling in one ear and out the other. Reassure them; feed them good food and send them to bed. They need rest. Raise your adult glass to biology's comical promise: this, too, shall pass, right along with puberty.

Simple, right?

A perennial favorite, chez Filholm - Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense, 1984