A few days ago, I dragged two large plastic tubs from the closet and dumped hundreds of photos on the bedroom floor.
These were old-school photos, processed from film, taken with a camera that you couldn’t use to Google or text. We had documented both of my kids’ earliest years with these archaic devices. I didn’t get a smartphone until my youngest was 5 1/2. Now he’s 13. His older sister recently got her learner’s permit.
We have officially transitioned into the parents of teenagers.
My phone has nearly 16,000 photos on it, having captured most of their moments since those early years. But that’s a digital task for another day. This time, I felt the urge to finally organize the contents of those two boxes. As I sifted through their newborn and toddler years, I heard the words a colleague had offered when they were babies.
“Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems,” he had said. He was closer to my parents’ age and had already run these gauntlets. Intellectually, I believed him. But in my heart, I kind of doubted it. I was trying to keep these two completely dependent human beings alive! What could be more stressful and demanding than that?
They say you don’t know what you don’t know, and they would be right.
I had no clue what my future worries would be because many of them hadn’t been invented yet! I had never tweeted or posted on Facebook or seen a YouTube video. Any concerns about “screen time” were just about a television screen.
Quaint, isn’t it?
I had worried about their eating and sleep habits back then, and I still worry about those. We kept an eye out for each developmental milestone and tried to protect them from physical dangers.
But now, I also worry about the things you can’t easily measure or see -- their emotional health, their inner lives. When they enter these vulnerable teenage years, you worry about their exposure to drugs and alcohol, cyberbullying, anxiety, depression, social media mistakes and digital addictions. You also feel like you have far less control over the problems your children will encounter. In some ways, they seem like toddlers again in much larger bodies -- risk-taking, defiant, moody and emotional. It makes sense. These are both times of rapid development and growth.
I wish I had been better prepared to understand what was driving my child’s changes in behavior and personality before we entered these turbulent years. Specifically, I wish I had read “The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults” when my daughter was 10 instead of when she was 15. It would have saved me some grief in years 11, 12 and 13. The book, by neurologist Dr. Frances E. Jensen and journalist Amy Ellis Nutt, helps explains why teenagers can seem so smart and so irrational at the same time.
The most startling part of becoming the parent of teenagers was my own confusion about whether their behavior was “normal,” and figuring out how to effectively respond to it -- how to protect them during these perilous years while still teaching them independence and resiliency. Teenagers are funny and insightful, and have moments when they can be incredibly sweet. They are just as often frustrating and immature, and have moments when they can be incredibly thoughtless.
You can’t help but wonder at times: Shouldn’t they know better by now? Why do I have to keep repeating myself?
That’s why books and articles about teen brain development are so reassuring and helpful. They explain, through biochemistry and biology, much of teens’ seemingly inexplicable behavior. And the science reinforces that parents should err on the side of caution when they sense problems. Teens are so susceptible to risks and dangers, and it’s best to intervene or reach out for help when they might be struggling. It’s impossible to shield adolescents from the mistakes they will inevitably make and traumas they will endure, but you can try to teach them coping skills to blunt the impact.
The physical demands of raising toddlers are relentless, and the mental demands of teens will test one’s sanity and patience. Now, I worry about having enough time to teach them everything we want them to know before they leave for college. Time moves so much faster.
It was reassuring to sit with their old pictures, the physical reminders of fleeting childhood, all around me. I separated their photos into piles and labeled the backs of envelopes. I discovered an empty baby book and album from when my son had been born. Filling those pages didn’t seem possible back in those sleep-deprived, exhausting days when I was caring for a newborn and a 2-year-old. A daily shower seemed ambitious enough then.
A week before he turned 13, I put together the story of my son’s first year. Granted, it was easier because he had far fewer photos than the first child. It was a chance to remind myself that we survived the “little problems” of his little years, and that we’ll weather the “big problems” yet to come.
Right before his teenage years, I finished my son’s baby book.
Just in time for the next chapter.