sandwich

on parenting a teenager

I’d like to thank all of you for sticking with me—and to thank my paid subscribers for their financial support—even though I have not posted as regularly as I would prefer. The good news is that this is partly due to my, at long last, working on a writing project outside of Substack. I am as yet uncertain as to the exact shape of what I’m crafting, but I think it’s safe to say it will be my next book. Send me good vibes if you can spare them! xoxo

Listen to me read this post:

When my daughter turned thirteen, my mother gave me a button that a friend had gifted her back when *I* turned thirteen; it says “Be kind. I have a teenager.”

as seen on the bulletin board above my desk

I spent my professional life teaching teens and pre-teens, which means I have heard “Oh my God, I could never do that!” approximately a zillion times. Teenagers get a bad rap, and I have, and will continue to, defend them vehemently. I even parented-ish a student who came to live with my family, eventually becoming part of my family, when he was sixteen years old (he turned twenty-three (!) just a few days ago). But the experience of raising a child from birth to teenagerhood is another thing altogether - a sea change, a planetary shift.

There is some known territory—a former boss once told me: “However your kid is as a three-year-old, that’s how they’ll be as a teenager, just in a bigger body.” And this is largely true: my teen is hungry, fiercely independent, unbelievably loud, theatrical, social, wildly generous, empathetic, prone to bursts of feelings that she struggles to make sense of, and at the end of each day and first thing in the morning, she yells out “Mama! Snuggle!” like a command.

It is a command I obey every time, even when I am exhausted, grumpy, in a rush, nursing a migraine, and/or appalled by the state of her bedroom. (Can someone please explain to me why it is so damn hard to hang a towel up on a hook versus flinging it on the floor in a damp pile???) I am insanely grateful that this girl still wants to snuggle with me, acutely aware that she is less than six months away from turning fourteen, FOURTEEN!, and mindful that her literal developmental job at present is to differentiate from me, to separate and live as her own person with her own dreams, desires, interests, proclivities, and motivations.

This is a grief experience I did not anticipate. I mean, you know that your kid is going to grow up, at least intellectually, but you’re rather occupied with actually parenting them for such a continuous stretch that, by the time you come up for air, you find that you are living with a human who blares (and knows all the words to) “No Scrubs” while getting dressed for school, uses the word “condone” casually in a sentence, and checks in with you to make sure that the doorbell camera isn’t a Ring one, “Because, Mom, they cooperate with ICE.” You are amazed by her, this human you once fed from your body who is now taller than you and can pick you all the way up off of the ground. She is legitimately hilarious and knows how to push your buttons better than even your mom—which is saying something—and you really like her in addition to loving her beyond language, beyond breath, beyond reason.

taken at Meow Wolf Houston

You know that they are going to grow up, but you don’t quite actually believe it, because honestly, the whole set-up is a rotten one. Parenting is the only job where you’re tasked with phasing yourself out over time, rendering yourself less and less necessary. When I taught high school, I came to know a bit of this ache each year when the seniors geared up for graduation. “They Grow Up and Then They Leave” is the name I gave a playlist made in honor of two students I was especially close to; I’ll be attending the wedding of one of those students next month.

Yes, I know, this post is essentially me singing “Sunrise, Sunset,” while confessing that I always thought my own mother sentimental for loving that song. Sorry Amma. I get it now.

I’ve long said that parenting is not for the faint of heart; parenting a teenager is not for the faint of spirit. So much of what my daughter is experiencing right now is not about me at all, though I am often on the receiving end of whatever emotional detritus needs a place to land. She spends most of her time in the world without me—at school, at dance practice, in her room. Unlike the thirteen-month-old I nanny for, my daughter can fix her own hair, put on her own socks, brush her own teeth. What she needs me for now is mostly to listen and to witness, rather than to solve her problems or interfere. This is, as parenting has always been, deeply humbling.

People speak about the teen years as ones you just have to get through, endure, and tolerate, but this stage is teaching me so much. Between the thirteen year old and the thirteen month old, my days are masterclasses in letting go of control, going with the flow, and staying present. Don’t get me wrong - waking the teenager up in the morning is an elaborate, multi-step process that requires every ounce of my cheerfulness and changing the diaper of a wiggly toddler should be an Olympic sport (it’s all in the elbows). But I wouldn’t trade it.

If, like me, you are in this stage of life; or, if you’ve experienced it already, I highly recommend Sandwich by Catherine Newman. Recommended to me by a dear friend and fellow mom-of-a-teen, this book captures, more so for me than any other, the wild and woolly experience of parenting (while also being the adult child of aging parents, hence the book’s title). I could quote reams from this hilarious and poignant novel, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll leave you with this one:

“Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding. I don’t know. I just know you can’t create loss to preempt loss because it doesn’t work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can. And as recklessly. Like it’s your last resort, because it is.”

xoxo

Nishta