Teenagers who mutate into strange beings? A challenge not only in corona times. Nevertheless, our author Till Raether thinks: Don't be afraid of adolescents, let's learn from them.
There is a very strange fear that lurks in the back of the head of parents of smaller children. So, I had it, some others I know have it. Such an urgent fear, which is expressed old-fashionedly in the saying: "Small children, small worries – big children, big worries." And new in fashion in an entire branch of the entertainment industry that thrives on demonizing older children who are no longer really funny characters. Or to joke as the devil. And to call them "adolescents" or "adolescents". As if puberty were the phase on the way to becoming human in which you are least human and more like an animal or a terrorist. Adolescents are particularly delightful people, the time with them is particularly beautiful and precious, and you can only learn from them and their wonderful insanity, their absence of mind, their thoughtlessness, their emotional fullness.
Adolescents teach acceptance
In the past weeks I have had to spend a lot of time with two pubescent children, so: allowed to. This is the opposite of what you normally do with pubescent children because they like to withdraw: they sit in their rooms, think, listen to music, are sad or happy and don't want to be disturbed. Under normal circumstances, this is a great advantage for adolescents. They don't stand next to you every five minutes and want you to get Lego blocks out of their noses or play a wellness oasis with the soft toys.
There may be new problems that need to be addressed every now and then (property damage, rest disturbance, alcohol abuse, and so on), and I don't want to downplay these problems. However, they can usually be settled in less time than the problems of smaller children. Because the problems of smaller children repeat themselves at short intervals: bagging, not falling asleep, not sleeping through the night, waking up early, getting a cold and so on. That takes a lot of time and does little. With the big children, you have big conversations, you face big consequences and you think big, but all of this is somewhat limited in time, because you can do less from week to week. Adolescents teach acceptance.
On the one hand, I like something about the adolescents that I never knew before that it was waiting for me in my future: to have more time for me. Unless they arrive very suddenly and are IMMEDIATELY hungry and you have to take care of them on the spot, but I have a lot of understanding for that, because, to be honest, it is about the way I eat: impatient, countercyclical and in batches.
Big children – enthusiastic and sensitive
But now, in the past few weeks, the two big children, almost 13, almost 16, have had no opportunity to withdraw permanently. And for a change, I have experienced around the clock what is wonderful about adolescents. They are often very funny because their behavior is sometimes so bizarre that they have no other option than to laugh about it themselves. They overlook and forget so many things that on the one hand I have a lot to do with reminding them or doing things myself. On the other hand, I have been watching it with a certain awe for weeks two or three that we have been sitting together, and from week four onwards I start to take it as an example. Perhaps not to leave the dishes and not to bring out the garbage, but to be so absorbed in something that you forget the everyday.
I admire how immersed they are in small screens, maybe even in a book, doodles, any projects, DIYs, or just sitting there. Every now and then they are so deeply immersed that they can be kissed on the neck as they walk by. When I dared to do that with the six or nine year olds, I was immediately involved in a game that I knew nothing about, except that I would lose it.
Above all, I let myself be carried away by how enthusiastic and how sensitive the big children are: being with them teaches me how nice it is to let things go and not to run away or seal off like I always do. And, a variation of it: how they get very small for a few minutes in between and are amazed by it themselves, and then someone who is already seventy-five throws himself on the sofa and on me and clings to me until I can breathe, and a thirteen-year-old who no longer goes to the cinema with me at normal times suddenly wants to fight with me as if we were seven again.
Looking forward to puberty
All of these are the things that, in my experience, puberty mainly consists of. You can really look forward to it when your kids are younger. Unless you were such a terrible adolescent yourself that you can't really imagine it any other way than that your children will become like you were then. But even then I have to say: I was a gruesome stink boot when I was the age of my children, I don't think I talked to anyone in my family for three years, stole my mother's cigarettes and cut my sister in the school yard, I put dirty dishes under my bed, explained the world to my German teacher with arrogant arrogance and howled with rage when my favorite jeans weren't dry – and even I was given puberty. So why not you too.
Till Raether also writes in his book "I will then … news from the middle of life" about being a parent. It contains texts from the MOM as well as news about family life. (12 euros, rororo)
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