MORE ABOUT TEEN ANGST

A couple of posts back I posted about my daughter's teenage angst. I haven't been able to get that out of my mind because it reminded me of a book of illustrations I found in the library a few years ago by Greg Hildebrandt, the well-known Tolkien illustrator. 

He said he painted a portrait of each of kids every three years of their childhood. I was shocked to see the pictures of his son Gregory. That's Gregory above at age...I'm guessing...nine or ten. He looks like an all American kid of his time, a cross between Tom Sawyer and the young Ray Bradbury.

A few years later, maybe at age 13 or 14 (I'm not sure) he painted his son again and look (above) how the picture turned out! Wow, what a difference! The teen Gregory looks full of self doubt and unfocused anger. Not only that but his face has morphed into something puffy and awkward...just like mine did at his age. Yikes! Just at the time of life when you're most concerned about your looks, nature deals you a bad hand.

Fortunately that look doesn't last long. Here he is as an adult and he looks fine again, even handsome. I'm sure he has no trouble getting women. The girls in the photo are his sisters.

Teenage years are full of depression and trauma and teens aren't generally fun to be around unless you're a teen yourself. In spite of that I sometimes think that if I were a full time teacher I'd still rather teach teens than anyone else. Maybe that's because teens are idealistic and philosophical and so am I, and I've discovered a couple of odd facts about teens that I've never seen in books.

The first fact is that teens don't snub all adults, just their parents. They're actually somewhat deferential to other adults they don't have a reason to dislike.

The second fact is that that teens are often listening in class when you don't think they're listening. They can be passing notes, watching videos on their laptops or even sleeping but if what you say interests them, they'll remember it...or at least be interested in hearing it again.

Okay, I'm sure the young Charles Manson was more difficult to handle than this, but this has been my experience with normal types.

MY KID'S TEENAGE ANGST

I'm a longtime fan of my daughter's caricatures of me. The earliest ones, like the one above, had a particularly sunny and happy quality, and she liked to try different techniques with each one.  Here she gave the whole face beard stubble, including the nose. "Yeah," I think to myself, "why shouldn't a nose have stubble?"

As the years went by she got more polish. Here's (above) one she did in a fast food restaurant. I asked her to draw me looking dignified and intellectual and that's exactly what she did. Haw! 

But...uh oh!...dark clouds were on the horizon. Another year passed and this time (above) I found myself depicted as old and hideous...the personification of a rigid and oppressive authority figure. It was the onset of my kid's teenage angst.

Haw! The sketch wasn't without interest, though. I like the thinning hair at the top being represented by little pubic wire worms. Interesting, eh?

I did this (above) one. It's not a very good drawing but I include it because it captures my kid in the  3 or 4 rebellious years when she stopped drawing and took herself very seriously. She read only the great Russian novels...read them in her room with the door closed, I should add.

I was despairing that I'd lost my caricature buddy when one day she asked if she could draw me. I was ecstatic when I saw the result (above). The hormones had obviously receded and my kid's charm and enthusiasm were back. She did another thinking pose, this time using a tiny little hand to convey the intention. Nice. Very nice.

WHY ARE KIDS SO SURLY?

Boy, teenagers are a surly lot! I should know, I was a surly teen myself.

I grew up with my grandparents who in many ways resembled Archie and Edith Bunker from the famous TV series. My grandad was a lot bigger and meaner than Archie but he had a similar attitude about life. During the whole time I was growing up he never said a kind word to me. He either yelled or maintained an icy silence. My grandmother was kind-hearted, sentimental and a little bit ditsy, just like Edith. She did like kids and lavished loving attention on me even when I was a surly teen and probably didn't deserve it.

Now I was a cute, obedient kid when I was young but somehow I turned into a surly teenager. I communicated with my grandparents through an inch-wide crack in my bedroom door and showed signs of being insufferably bored and restless whenever they tried to talk to me. I ascribe it to hormones but who knows what the real reasons were? Maybe I felt justified for being rebelious because my grandfather was such a Type-A and my grandmother was so suffocating.

Fast forward to the the present. I have college-age kids of my own who were in their turn surly to me (the kids in the photos aren't mine, I got the pictures from the internet). Don't get me wrong, they're not like that now, and they were never as bad as I was, but when they were 16 I only knew them as eyes who appeared through a crack in their bedroom doors and said, "Whaddaya want?" It's a shocking example of karma. I snubbed others and later became the snubbed.

Anyway, here's the really interesting part. When I grew up and my grandparents had passed away I found out the truth about my grouchy grandfather. It turns out that he was all worn out from working a lifelong job that he hated in order to provide a home for my Dad and his brothers and sisters. He just wanted a quiet retirement. He was always grouchy even when he was young, but he raised his family well and they all became effective adults. When I was dumped in his arms as a baby he was crest-fallen. He could have sent me to an orphanage, I'm sure he thought about it, but he didn't. Out of a sense of duty he kept me and it made all the difference.

Now my grandfather didn't like kids, not even cute ones like me, but he really didn't like surly teenagers. It must have really grated on him that I did minimal chores, resisted any kind of responsibility, kept all the money I made from kid jobs, ate his food, wore the clothes he bought, hogged the TV, snubbed him at every opportunity, and never once thanked him. He didn't like me but he persevered through this abuse every day because he thought it was the right thing to do.

As a consequence I grew up in a nice neighborhood, went to a nice school and had nice friends. It could easily have been otherwise. The grouchy, icy-kid hater I grew up resenting turned out to be a massive benefactor. Sounds like the kid and the convict in "Great Expectations" doesn't it?

So there it is: I owe everything to an irritable grouch who didn't like me, and he died before I could acknowledge it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep for worrying about it. My message to surly teenagers and ex-teenagers is....buy sleep insurance by forgiving your parents their faults. Forgive them 100%, meaning that you'll never again even think of their past mistakes. You can get mad at them for what they do next week but never again for anything they did in the past. You simply don't have the perspective to see those past events objectively. Forgive them, thank them, help them if they need it, then carry on with your life unburdened with surliness.