My friend, B, who just finished her Phd in Childhood Development and Education, asked me to consider the story of a teenager at a local boarding school for gifted and talented teen scholars. This kid intentionally dumped a bucket of dry ice over on the table where a bunch of people were working to make ice cream as a fun end of year science project. We know the bucket tipping wasn't an accident. It might have been intended to hurt other students or the teacher, or it might have been done for other reasons.
Is this normal behavior? Here are the things we can say are true about teenagers in our society. They've been in school their whole lives. They are expected to be periodically defiant, unpredictable and to have a certain amount of poor judgment. Science tells us teenagers are wired differently, their brains are under developed, and they won't have reliable judgment until they are approximately 25 years old, neurologically. Society generally does not hold kids, and especially teenagers, in high regard and our expectations of them are quite low.
My son is gifted and talented and very creative. He would no more dump out a bucket of dry ice on a table, on purpose, than my goats are going to sprout wings and fly to town for treats. He would never do such a thing. Because that is sociopathic behavior. And I am confident that none of his peers who have been homeschooled their whole lives would do it, either.
To write off the dry ice incident as behavior periodically typical of highly intelligent creative teenagers, we fail all children in a horrible way. If we imagine an adult doing such a thing we get a clear idea of how inappropriate it was. If my husband did that we would say he is either crazy or mean. If we shrug and say, in affect, teenagers are sometimes assholes or unpredictable, or creatively gifted in a way that might be excused as impulsive we are making a huge mistake.
In many places in the world the idea of being a teenager does not exist. There are babies, children, and adults. Somewhere around puberty is the traditional dividing line. Homeschooling mothers are discovering this is true and everything our society teaches about teenagers is wrong. Teenagers are simply adults without much life experience. Fully reliable, sane, kind, and as willing as the rest of their community.
The kid who dumped out the bucket of dry ice is obviously suffering. He's either angry or chronically frustrated or mildly brain damaged from too many years in school. We should try to see him clearly and begin to fix what is broken in his life. School is a huge component of what is been broken in the lives of American teenagers. The damage is often mitigated by really super great parenting. But it would better for everyone to just stop damaging children in the first place.
Deschooling allows you to begin to see what is normal and what is broken. And its heartbreaking.
I saw a horse on-line in a video, a beautiful horse, being ridden by a man who sat him perfectly. The two were in unison, dancing, doing remarkable, record-breaking feats. Tears fell as I watched. I knew I was watching partnership. Discipline? Yes. Training? Yes. But what many call bondage I saw as freedom for both to create physical art. I looked for more on the horse. The next installment was three years later. The horse had a new rider. The horse looked stiff, resistant and...yes, in bondage. I found a video of two men commenting on the life of the horse: what has happened to him? Many are asking. These two men say it's the rider. The new rider is abusing the horse, they basically say, with poor technique. The glory of the animal is clearly lost. Ironically, the horse's name sounds like "total loss". Totilas is his name. No one has pointed out the irony. Maybe no one wants to say it, or give that thought any energy. I saw myself. I thought of the screaming that has happened over the last few days, my son yelling at me for the math that is hard for him to complete. I heard loud and clear: When you are angry with your son, when he hooks you, and when you force him to work, you damage him. The work must be uplifting for both of you - good work is happy. Find a peaceful and happy solution, one that is kind, gentle, guiding and disciplined. You must find a way to sit tall, with gentle hands and guide him to glorious results.
ReplyDeletein other words, as you said, we must open our yes to the true nature of the other; we must honor and work with who they are, " what they actually need, and what we might reasonably expect from them"....
ReplyDeletethis is core Truth.