My God, how I love her: Dr. Jean Milburn. In the "Sex Education" series, the sex educator wonderfully embarrassed embarrasses her son at every occasion, remains so wonderfully in the midst of her son's hormone chaos and speaks straightforward what every teen mother thinks sometimes. Without regard to losses.
Yes, it is really embarrassing
Do not get me wrong. I am (hopefully) not so embarrassed. The series is designed in such a way that even as an adult viewer, you clearly take the side of your teenage son Otis. A mother like her would have been our nightmare come alive. But apart from all the embarrassments, it is really healing to see how the mechanisms that previously formed their mother-child relationship between Jean and Otis slowly but surely dissolve. How an open, talkative child becomes a buttoned-up teenager with secrets. As in a team that is actually well-rehearsed, suddenly suddenly offends one another in order to be able to develop further. It's like someone put a camera in our living room. Only that we have no vagina pictures on the wall and no wooden penises on the shelf … to mention that.
Set up your own life
I find the really most interesting aspect of the relationship between Otis and Jean that especially in the second season – I try to spoil as little as possible – Jean's life is shaken almost as much by the change of her son as his. He resists being "everything and everything", so that suddenly there is a huge gap in her life. The Danish family therapist Jesper Juul once said that young people around the world at this stage would advise their parents to look for a hobby other than the "child" and that they should concentrate on their own lives again. All well and good. And nothing else does Jean, but you can see how difficult it is to redefine the mother role and find it completely "to yourself" again.
We all make mistakes
What do I take from sex education? I'm not alone! I don't think any parent will be able to get away from their child without crossing borders or injuries anyway. The scraps fly everywhere in between and not only our children sometimes feel dog misery with all the friction that this age brings with it. I'm just going to try to stay with myself in all the chaos, and maybe even become a little more "me" than I could be as a mother of a younger child. Because the really comforting message of this really brilliant series is: there is no wrong. And we are all responsible for our own happiness. As soon as our children have internalized this for themselves, they can come closer to us again. We'll have to let go of them first and keep going a little further to get to that point.
!!! ATTENTION SPOILER FOR SEASON 2 !!!
And let me put it this way: If even Otis manages to stand by Jean in the end, however crazy she may be, it will be the same with us someday. Because it is estimated that none of us is as embarrassing as Jean … I only say: zucchini.