When my daughter became a teenager it seemed as if she was possessed with a new internal structure. Gone was the sweet, mostly compliant, cuddly, good girl, and replacing her was a person with much more cunning. Not a bad girl by any means, but a different temperament and a more personal agenda.
Her friends seemed to matter more than ever and our relationship went through a definite change. I began to be somewhat excluded from her plans, and instead of being the director, I morphed into being her personal chauffeur, driving her back and forth from our house to her various friends and hangouts.
It’s odd how that change from 12 to 13 really changes so much. There were certain friends of hers that stayed sweet and obedient, but not many. Most of them turned into typical teen “club members.” They dressed alike and often moved in a pack wherever they could congregate. It’s not easy to find places to “hang out,” especially in the winter, and since teens seldom wear sensible things like hats and gloves, they were usually freezing and coming down with colds.
What happens when that magic birthday is reached? What force reaches inside of them and alters their inherent nature and turns them into teens?
Is it hormones? Does it happen in other cultures too, or only in ours? I have often wondered, but I have the answer.
In cultures where childhood ends early and adult responsibilities like work and children take over, there is no opportunity for the teen phenomenon that seems to have largely begun here in the US in the 20th Century, as our society formed protective labor laws and unions. With no demanding need to send our children out to work, they were free to develop in other social ways and to become this newly named teenage demographic.
Me too, I was the same. I wore club jackets and followed the boys in a pack with my girlfriends, and whereas todays teens text each other, in my day we “hung” on the corner or talked on the phone for hours. The boy thing hits almost all girls at the same time and puberty’s an amazingly scary experience sometimes.
In this October Issue we do a focus on teens and there is ample reason why. Teens present very real problems and struggles, both for themselves and for their parents too. Sex, smoking, drugs, cutting classes, lying, eating disorders, and a possible drop in grades are some of the new issues that parents may have to deal with. It’s a foolish parent who doesn’t think their kid is possibly going to need some special attention.
I hope these articles will be interesting and helpful. Thanks for reading.
