Dear 21st Century Dad, for the last couple of years, when we tell our daughter what she can and cannot do, she flips on a disconnect switch. What we tell her doesn’t register. She’s fifteen now. She’s got a group of boys and girls that she hangs out with. She gets permission for how she lives her life from them, not us. It’s not like they are a gang wearing colours or keeping weapons, a few of them are nice kids. As for our parental connections and authority, I almost think it stops at being a wallet, a fridge and a warm, dry roof. This bunch of kids she hangs out with is her real parent. I feel like I’m just pocket change to her.
Dear Mr. Moneypants
Can you answer these questions? How do the sale’s figures for Gap clothes reflect youth’s disinterest in their product? Who are the last five season finalists on American Idol? Do you know seven friends you can text message to watch ‘Teenage Exorcist’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ this Friday night? Can you talk in pictures and symbols to communicate? Would you consider layering a sweater over your suit jacket? Who is Beyonce? Is stopping at your local shopping centre after work so important to you that you’ll die if you don’t? Do you underdress for the cold? Can you sleep thirteen hours straight? Are you listening to music or watching sport tonight?
These questions illuminate a few of the many differences between how our teenagers and we live our lives. We need to upload ourselves into modernity. Our daughter lives in a multimedia culture that pursues individuation, asserts one’s independence and autonomy from not only past models of behaviour (our family’s rules and habits), but even against other peer groups. The one perspective that all peer groups share is their mimicry of celebrity behaviour and product identification. What celebrities wear and do becomes an instant accessible message on YouTube and the television celebrity gossip/entertainment franchises.
Our daughter’s peer group is necessary to her. She can watch others in her group make social mistakes, learn the consequences and adjust her own behaviour. She can intermingle with personality types that are unavailable in our own family structure. She can use her peer group to experience both criticism and praise of her identity without excessive negative fallout. She will change peer groups as she matures. Her peer group is a bridge that leads away from our own expectations of how she should live her life and ultimately, one that she will design herself.
We can comfort ourselves that she will have been thoroughly conditioned, good or bad, by many of our beliefs, now that she is fifteen. The central question we can ask ourselves is how can we foster a family atmosphere that will nurture her continued healthy growth? She needs a format to explore who she wants to be without heaps of our biased judgments.
Can we make friends with beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that are different from our own, and not be fearful? Can we be unconcerned by minor annoyances, pick our points of difference and conflict carefully, and encourage our daughter’s pursuit of her individuality?
We can take some practical steps.
1. Open up our house to the peer group with some preagreements, set in stone, about restricted activities. Get ready. These kids may have been in a restricted noise environment at school all day. Peer groups make noise. We can turn up the volume on our IPOD.
2. We can set aside some food money for treats and load up the eating trough with some healthy inexpensive food snacks, cut carrots and the like.
3. We can blow the activity budget occasionally and take as many as we can afford to the skating rink, the pool, the movies, whatever activity that would make other parents appreciate our generosity, they little knowing that we extend our generosity to corral our daughter without her resistance.
Google:
1. IYD: For Parents - Power of Peers
Key into YouTube:
1. Peer Pressure and Bleached Hair
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