A Letter to Students about Parents
Dear know-it-all teenagers,
What the “old people” want you to know is this: we are not your enemy. Mommy and Daddy really love you, to a depth that you will not understand until you raise your own children. However, we are sick and tired of being your parents. We’ve been waking you up in the morning, keeping you on time, feeding you, clothing you, cleaning your messes, transporting you everywhere, protecting you, teaching you, and paying for everything in your lives.
We want OUR lives back.
It starts by your understanding our position and respecting our efforts. You already know that “nobody is perfect,” but you don’t know how hard parenting is. Quite literally, it is impossible to be a perfect parent.
To be a perfect parent, one must know everything about child development and human growth from the moment of birth (and before) through age 18 (when we are no longer legally responsible for you). Nobody knows all that, but assuming that one could be omniscient, a problem arises when we send you to day care and school and group activities. We don’t get to see you in those places, so we don’t get to know how you are influenced by those people and environments. However, if somehow we could be all-knowing and all-seeing, and if we could also be perfect communicators, a problem would still remain.
You are immature. As unfinished biological beings, you are not perfect receptors of our admittedly imperfect lessons.
Nevertheless, it is our job to parent you as well as we can, and if you have turned out ok, we deserve some credit. Whether it’s your nature (our genes) or nurturing (our parenting), we have been the most significant influences on your growth.
But we don’t really care about getting credit. We just want to stop the insanity. Parenting was fun for a while, but now it’s just endless work. We don’t want to chase you. We want you to chase us. If you seek us out instead of running away, we don’t feel that we have to hunt you down just to be sure you’re safe and sound. The truth is this: what we really want is for you to grow up so that we can just talk to you like we are equals.
Here is an important lesson we need you to learn immediately. There will be times when things go wrong. Unfortunately, you have been convinced that it is your job to fix your problems. That’s not exactly correct. Although you are responsible for making sure that your problems get fixed, it is not necessary for you to be the fixer. When things start to slip, you are undoubtedly part of the cause, so why should the person causing the problem be the only person who can fix the problem?
A significant difference between adults and children is that adults have learned to ask for help. You should, too. This is your first try at life, and you don’t have much experience yet. Our experience can help you, and it’s free. Take it.
Because you have been growing up, we have had to treat you like children, which unfortunately means that we have made you feel inferior. Sorry about that; it’s the job. Parents are more powerful than children. Teachers are more authoritative than students. Adults have more resources than youths. Yet it is time for us to stop treating you as subordinates, but to do this, we need your help. Stop fighting us.
You are right: we don’t understand you very well. We didn’t grow up with the internet and mobile phones. But we’re trying to help, and we want you to take control of your lives. As parents, around the time you get into 10th grade, we need to give you more room to try things and occasionally make mistakes. It is better to allow you to fall while we’re here to catch you or give advice about catching yourselves. When you leave home, we won’t be around to help.
More than anything, what we want is your success. Please remember that we are not your enemy. We are your resource and support group. Let’s work together.