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Guestblog: Teens today – How do you cope?

Posted by Sarah Arrow on March 6, 2010 · View Comments 

Trust me, I’m no parenting expert, but at the moment, it’s parenting issues which are particularly pressing on me. Today, my chosen topic is my niece. Well, not really – I’m going to talk about teenage life in general, as lived by my niece.

My 14 year old niece spends her life on Facebook. As I’m her Facebook friend, I see it all, and it is really hard knowing how to deal with this, given that I’m also her aunt. I’ve decided, though, that it’s better to be there as a friend, observing from the sidelines, rather than being unaware of what is going on.

She accepts all and sundry as her friends – she’s got well over 500 at the moment, the vast majority of whom she cannot possibly know in real life. She also joins groups with lovely titles like “I tell you to suck my dick, even though I don’t have one”, although she admits there is no activity on such groups except the intention to collect as many members as possible. When I last looked, she was a member of 1,261 groups.

She also has over 750 photos on Facebook, and in many of these she looks – frankly – like jailbait. I showed a few to my boyfriend, who whistled in appreciation (obviously, I then smacked him!). I don’t understand the (I think female) teenage obsession with taking as many photos of yourself and your friends as possible. They are all dressed similarly, with makeup that even Katie Price would envy in its quantity.

Honey! I Cloned the Kid!!
Image by Patrick Powers via Flickr

I won’t lie. It worries me to death. The other week, she nearly killed herself trying to climb out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night, because the front door was locked. She clearly had no plans for getting back inside, assuming that getting out was all that was needed. I assume she was planning to get together with either her boyfriend or some of her female friends. I’m not sure which would be worse.

I have emailed her to say she can always talk to me about sex or relationships if she needs to. I hope she knows that I will help without being judgmental. She spends every summer with us during the holidays, and we have a good relationship in general.

Despite the picture I have painted, I believe she is not a bad girl at heart. She is usually polite (except to her mother) and gets good grades at school. She’s just going a bit off the rails, in my opinion. But if she is, so are all her friends.

You may be wondering about her parents. Well, she has no father (never has) and her mother seems to be too busy trying to be her friend to be her mother. When I pointed this out to my older sister, she didn’t even understand what I was saying. So in a way, I become ersatz-mother at times.

I’m only offloading my only fears about the pseudo-life our teenage children seem to have, and worrying about how it will all turn out. My niece seems unaware that sexually suggestive clothing and provocative pictures could have a bad effect on her male friends that view them, who themselves are in the middle of their own hormonal meltdown.

I have two children, and they are both boys, neither of them yet being teenagers. They are oblivious to all this Facebook-style life, and long may it continue.

Is this all about lack of parental control or just a natural development of life in the 21st century? How are we as adults supposed to cope with something that is so different from the teenage years most of us spent?

Do you have teenage or pre-teenage children living in a similar way – and if they aren’t, how have you managed it?

Morag Gaherty

Morag is the owner of the Nappy Lady, where parents can get recyclable nappies.

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  • I have a similar situation with my older nieces Morag - and it is difficult to stand by and watch behaviour that you feel needs to be addressed. But I think Suzan is right about their circle of friends and how much they protect each other.

    My older niece is 17 and the boys, booze and bad behaviour issues are where she is at right now. She knows she can talk to me when she wants to - but I neither lecture not admonish, just offer gently delivered advice because I don't want to stop her telling me what she is up to. If she thinks I will automatically tell her Mother or give her a hard time about it, she won't talk to me about what's happening. What I think is important, is that I know the places she goes and about her social life, so if it should be necessary to find her or address what she's doing, then I can do that. At the moment, thankfully, there's nothing so serious that I feel the need to step in.

    Being a teenager is as much about learning as any other stage of life, but at this point they are learning how to manage more adult (and more scary) issues, like alchohol, sex and so on. Just like at any other time, there's a certain amount of learning by your mistakes. I reckon you've got it right; stay on the sidelines and only step in if you need to. But then I might just be a baaaaad aunty;)
  • Morag
    Elaine, we can start the bad aunties club! The advert on TV which really brings it home to me is the one with a series of approx 9 year old children saying "in the next four years..." Anyone who imagines their kids live in an age of innocence these days needs to take a long hard look at the world. We may not like it, but it's the world we live in.
  • Hehehe I like it! Agree re that campaign on the BBC Morag, it really is a powerful message about the realities facing young teenagers.
  • I've this yet to come, Morag, as you know - with my girl nearly 7 and my 9 year old boy who seems to be following the oblivious way of such things. For now I figure that by being honest and sensible with them about what goes on in this world of ours these days, by keeping aware of the real way of things (and not by the media hype that tends to make more of situations than is helpful), I will keep calm and feel able to trust that they'll be just fine.

    Not having good role models in my parents means that I look to my friends more, perhaps, and I read what I can while also listening to my gut feeling about things. But when it comes down to it, they'll do what they're going to do. I just hope that by knowing they are loved and always have me here for them, by feeling confident in themselves and their opinions on life, love and the universe, they'll turn out just fine. The thing is - they'll turn out how they're going to turn out and there's not that much I can do about it. My parents tried hard to mould me and it didn't work - indeed I went off the rails (not in the worst way, thankfully) and it then took me a generation to build confidence in me. I know my kids are good people and that the best way I can guide them is by being true to myself.
  • I have a 9 year old who is beginning to start to show an interest in "older girl stuff" There is lots of copied behaviour which is interesting as she "plays" at being older. Examples of this include wandering around with my wifes or my mobile phone pretending to chat with her best friend Livvy and there is lots of clothes stuff. She has a club penguin account which she and her friends crowd around the laptop to play on and she is super envious of our friends 13 year old daughter who has a facebook account, a mobile phone and who wears a bra. But whilst I weep internally as I think about my precious little girl getting big I recognise that she does have lots of support to train her in preperation for those angst ridden teenage years to come. School is actually a very supportive environment. One of this weeks peices of homework is about being safe on social network sites. She and her friend discussed it very intelligently.
    I hope we provide her a very loving environment that she feels safe and secure and confident enough to ask us questions (please ask your mum first lol) about anything and then...there is nothing else you can really do.
    A friend of ours has just come out the otherside of a difficult spell with her 17 year old daughter. 12 months of hell from what I could see and with this young women seemingly mixing with the wrong everything. It's getting calmer now and as the real detail (not the facebook version) starts to come to light it appears she had been sufficiently "life coached" by her parents to come through it unscathed but definitely wiser. I seem to remember a similar experience myself, just oh so very long ago:)
    Cool Bananas
    Martin
  • I do feel sorry for children growing up today mostly because from where I am seated the challenges they face day to day are huge.

    I take the same approach with one of my nieces on facebook, just sit on the sidelines and watch. Her language is foul but face to face she is one of the friendliest young ladies I know.
  • Sarah Arrow
    My eldest daughter is a nightmare, she has in the past got so annoyed with adults trying to be her friend when she felt she didnt need one that she admits that she has invented things so they would go away!
    She stayed with my dad for a week once and came back furious with him as kept on asking her if she had any problems and saying she could talk to him. She felt he had no respect for her at all so she then told him a pack of lies just to get rid of him (which I then heard from him on the phone).
    I have a friend who is thrilled she lent my daughter a book, despite having 3000 various books in the house, my daughter asked for a book from her as she had nothing to read. Then said daughter says to me "Why are adults so needy and desperate to be my friend? Why don't they just stop for a minute to think?"
    I shrug, being a parent is different from being a friend and my friends fall for my daughters wind ups all the time, I guess thats their need to feel they are doing something right, and being helpful, my daughter sees it as a hindrance and interference and likes to stir it up a bit.

    As Suze says, they come through it with their friends and we just have to stand back and steer rather than be actively involved in 'being their friend'
  • Unfortunately I think the friendship between parents and kids doesn't come until quite a bit later on - often only when your kids have kids of their own. In the meantime they need you to be a parent, not a friend, because a friend doesn't offer the same sort of security.

    The girlfriend of one my son's mates - they stay here with us quite a lot - was talking the other day about her mum who is very young, loves to go out clubbing with her daughter and being "friends."

    It was quite a revealing moment when she said "my mum's my best friend, but she's not a proper mum like you, you know, cooking dinners for everyone and stuff..."

    I guess I know my place!
  • Morag
    I can relate to this, Suze. My sister is too busy trying to be friends with her daughter and thereby failing as her mother. I am relatively lucky in that I am NOT her mother, and she has no difficulty in being my niece. I certainly ban her from wearing inappropriate clothing when she is staying with me, and she concedes without complaint - no doubt because her friends aren't there to comment! At the same time, however, we do have a good (if distant) friends relationship. I've told her once that she can ask me anything, and now it is up to her if she does so. It is not for me to nag her to open up.
  • Although of course I understand your concerns, Morag, is it possible that you could be worrying about your niece for the wrong reasons?

    I have a son aged 18 and so am far more au fait with the way boys deal with teenage issues, but I do meet a number of their girlfriends and also girl friends, if you see the difference. Yes, of course the way things are for that age group is hugely different from when you and I were that age. But I suspect that's just the way things work - it's social evolution.

    Looking back, they way things were for me as a teenager were very different from the way they were for my parents, and so-on back down the generations - although in fairness things from the second half of the 20th century onwards have been changing a lot faster than they did over the previous hundred years or so.

    Anyway, despite natural maternal concerns about all the usual drinking, drugs, unsafe sex, unhealthy online prowlers and more, I have a funny feeling that as long as your niece - and my son - keep well in the mainstream of their social groups and their peers, there isn't too much to worry about.

    It's amazing how these kids look out for one another. Their friends are terribly important to them and for good reason, because they provide an insulating form of protection that they as individuals can count on.

    Where I would get worried - and I'm speaking as an involved mum here, not as an observer, as you know - is if a particular girl or boy were to fall out of that mainstream culture ... NOT to be one of the girls or one of the boys, but be a loner either through choice or through circumstances. These are the kids I fear are more prone to being taken advantage of by paedophiles and other weirdos, as well as more conventional sexual predators.

    That's what I mean by saying you may be worrying for the wrong reasons - I sure hope I'm right! But I suspect that as long as your niece is one of a strong, supportive crowd she is far less likely to come to any harm on Facebook or anywhere else, than if she were to be different from all those overly made-up, doe-eyed girlies.

    (And what really gets to me is that those girls look so much more attractive without all the silly clothes and heavy make-up ... but then I remember my mum saying that to me when I was that age and I thought she was nuts....!)
  • Morag
    Thank you for your reassuring words, Suze! I do hope you're right about friends looking out for each other, and maybe that's the way I should think about it. Mind you, as one of my sons is a loner, maybe you've just given me something new to worry about LOL!

    I don't know who chose the picture to go with this blog, but that identikit look is SO familiar with niece and her friends! They all think they look so original, but actually all look the same.
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