Sunday Reflections: What Does the World Look Like for Teens?
They say that 2016 is the worst year ever. It’s easy to think that, we’ve already had more mass shootings then I could ever imagine, bombings, and now political coups. When you think about the statistics that are out there, it can be overwhelming for adults. But I want us to step into the mind of a teen for a moment and see the world from their perspective.
For the purposes of this post, I will use my teen as an example, but you have to remember that in many ways, she comes from a place of privilege. She is female, which comes with its own challenges and baggage, but she is a white female. She has an intact nuclear family and though we struggle financially, she still technically lives in a middle class family. She has a home with her own room, we eat three meals a day, and she participates in some extra curricular activities.
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She is 14.
She was born in 2002, which means that she has never lived in a time when the U.S. was not engaged in war.
She wakes up weekly to news of another mass shooting or a bombing.
We live 20 minutes from Dallas so one of the most recent events hit particularly close to home. Two people we know personally were police officers during that event, though both are safe.
She has done active shooter drills in school since she was in Kindergarten, age 5.
Her school has been on lock down at least once every year of her life.
When she was in 2nd grade, a Kindergarten student in their school was beat to death by his father. The school planted a tree on school grounds in his memory.
Every time we go into Dallas for something, she sees no less than 10 homeless people. She cries every time.
She goes to church every weekend where they tell her that GLBTQ people are sinners, but 3 of her friends that she loves are openly out teens. Another is an elementary school age person who we know wants to eventually transition but currently won’t because of lack of parental support. She struggles intellectually and emotionally to reconcile her faith and her real world experiences.
We know 4 people who have taken their own lives.
She has 11 cousins and 5 step-cousins. 3 of them are on the Autism spectrum, 1 of them is diagnosed with ADHD and behavioral issues.
She has 1 sister, she has severe food allergies.
She is 1 of 3 teens that she knows that have intact nuclear families, everyone else has parents that are divorced.
She has already lost 1 childhood home, first to flooding and then to foreclosure. In fact, she has now lived through 3 extreme weather events in two different homes.
She has a 1 in 4 chance of having a mental health issue. However, mental health issues have already affected her life as I spent a part of last summer in bed trying waiting for stabilization after a severe depressive episode and panic attacks left me struggling with suicidal ideation.
Although both of her parents work, her father works weekend nights which means she only sees him on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. That’s if mandatory overtime isn’t called, which it often is.
I, her mother, work in another state which means I fly out of town about every other week for a week.
She has already had to move once and start her life over again because of job situations. She may have to again. She knows many other kids who have come into and then back out of her life again for the same reason.
There are times when we have struggled to make ends meets; times when my kids have eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for days.
In our previous neighborhood, we had to walk through parks with needles on the ground.
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A week ago Friday as we were turning onto our street, someone shot out the window of our car with a BB gun. It was in the rear passenger’s seat. The seat where she was sitting. It shattered in her face; Though she was uninjured, she is now afraid to drive down that street.
Since she is female, she has a 1 in 3 chance of making it out of her adolescence without being the victim of sexual violence. Four of her friends have already been the victims of sexual violence.
She has already been catcalled.
If we drive anywhere on the freeway to go to the next town to do any shopping, we drive by no less then 7 billboards that sexualize and objectify women as they advertise strip clubs and we pass by 1 XXX store.
She has already been told she is fat. She is not, but I can tell it has affected her.
Someone has stolen something from us at least once every year of her life.
As I mentioned above, she has a lot going in her favor, but this is her life so far. And many of the teens that I have worked with over the years have struggled with so much more than she has. So every time this past week I saw an adult post about how garbage 2016 is – and it very much is – all I could think was, what is this doing to our children? We have to do better. And the time is now.
Filed under: Sunday Reflections
About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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2016 is a trying time. Karen’s blog makes this point so well. But I think her beautiful and heartbreaking list is actually “What the World Looks Like for the Mothers of Teens.”
It does require perspective. I am a white woman who grew up in a small town in New York State in the ‘60’s. I had both my parents. My father worked all the time. My mother worked nights and evenings. When the children were older, she got a 9-5 job.
I remember my childhood as happy. I know my parents saw things differently. I came home from school one day I may have been in eighth grade, to find my mother crying. When I asked her why, she said her friend had asked her how she could bring children into this world during these times.
But from my point of view as I child, although I was aware of the big picture, the details of daily life were what sparked my joy. I got to swim at the town pool in the summer and ice skate on the pond in winter. On special occasions we had soda. We had woods behind our house with a brook and trees to climb. By April every year we had holes in our shoes but enough money to buy new pads of paper for school. We got together with our cousins and saw our grandparents on their farm.
But to my mom our childhoods were a mess. We were hiding under our desks in fear of nuclear attack. We listened to the news wondering if this was the time the president would press “the button.” Then our president was shot. Later, there was rioting in the streets and fear ran high during the civil rights movement. Then Martin Luther King was killed and shortly after Robert Kennedy. Vietnam was going on at the same time, boys were dodging the draft, others were sent to Vietnam. The number of dead killed in Vietnam was on the evening news daily. There were peace protests and college students were shot and beaten by police. Kids were trying out drugs and there was “free love.”
By the day I found my mom crying, I had learned a little history. My mom was born four years after WWI ended and from the time she was 8 or 10 years old, huge numbers of people were waiting on line at soup kitchens and at times in the 1930s, 25% of the U.S. population was unemployed. Then in 1941 our country joined WWII and all the boys went off to war and a lot of girls too. The girls who stayed home ran everything. They even created women’s major league baseball teams so that baseball could continue.
For some reason, I had the presence of mind to say the right thing, which usually never happens. I reminded her of her own childhood and what a horrible time in our history it was, but didn’t she love a lot of things about her growing up? She agreed that she had happy memories. I know she did as well because both my parents would tell us both hilarious and moving stories about their childhoods. I reminded her how much I loved my life and what was good about it. She stopped crying so that was good.
Our children will remember the trying times but they will also remember the little things that make life special. So moms, it is time for all of us to make ourselves another list. Include all the things about our lives and theirs that thrill us, that delight us, that make us catch our breath in amazement. Include the simple things, a cool breeze on a hot day, dry socks, sharing ice cream.
Remind the children to be grateful for each little wonderful thing. Remind them to have compassion for those involved in the many tragic events. It is their time and it is good for them to be aware.
But life is a balance and for now, let us do the worrying for them. They will grow the emotional muscle to bear these sorrows but meantime, remind them to notice the special things in their own lives and be grateful.
Thank you Karen for your blog!
Although I like a lot of what you have to say, I feel like it’s not true for many teens to say this is a mom’s list of worries and not theirs. Many of my teens are very much engaged in the world around them; in fact, I feel like they are more engaged than previous generations in part because of their access to technology and social media, things that my generation did not have access to. Also, it is important for us to remember that it is privilege to be able to take a step back from the trials of the world and make those lists of positives. Some of my teens do not have that privilege. One teen was recently shipped off to another state because both of her parents are in jail. Are there some positives in her life that she could list or concentrate on? Probably, but it was be invalidating of the very real trauma in her life for me to suggest that she do so. Some of my teens are LatinX, black and Muslim, they are very much aware of the things that are being said about them in the media and they are afraid; they talk about the current election and what their life will be like if the current rhetoric doesn’t change. And finally, it is important that we remember that the teens in our lives all have different knowledge and approaches to life. My teen, for example, is a very intelligent and highly sensitive child. She is well read, engaged, and emotional. She is very much aware of what is happening in her life and around her, she comes to me and she talks to me about it. Yes, she worries about it, because that is her nature. Not all kids/teens share that nature, but many of them do and I think it important for those of us that work with and mother children/teens to be aware of this. Also, I think as children do the work of growing and learning and becoming independent, it is important that we allow them to become increasingly aware of the real world around them and to do the hard emotional and intellectual work of thinking about the world, their place in it, and how to be active citizens. She is 14 now, only 4 years away from being a legal adult who we will ask to be engaged in the political process, a right that many before her fought hard for her to have. I’m glad she is aware and thinking about things like racism, sexism, and classism so that when she is asked to be an active citizen, she does so thoughtfully and with insight and compassion. I think life requires a balance of positivism and hope AND a realistic acknowledgment of who you are and what is happening in the world around you. I can’t do the worrying for her now and expect her to suddenly carry the emotional load one day; instead I try to teach her to think and to feel and to live now in meaningful ways. And finally, I often worry that those of us who say that kids/teens don’t know what is happening around them – or that may be aware but aren’t really effected by them – discount the ways that environment can influence kids and underestimate both their awareness/intelligence of the world around them and the effect that it has on them.
I remember being a senior in high school when the war in Iraq was declared and worrying that my baby brother might one day be drafted to fight in a war and what impact that would have on him. I remember the constant threat of nuclear war and the movie The Day After. Yes, I still went to the movies and flirted with boys and all of those fun things, but I also have a clear understanding of what was happening around me and how those years of constant threat of nuclear war impacted me because I didn’t feel safe.
My intended point of this post is this: My daughter by all accounts has a wonderful, privileged life. But this is what her world is like. If she with so much privilege has already experienced this, what are other kids her age experiencing and what kind of impact is this type of environment having on their perception of self and safety in the world? I think we are failing our children and need to do the hard work of changing the environment, because it can and does affect them.
I in no way meant to minimize the difficulties that our children and teens are facing. I do believe these are awfully difficult times and my worry is growing.
I probably have no business responding to this blog because my students are in middle school and although I believe they must be informed and aware, my instinct is to protect them from a deluge of despair.
Awful things are happening to them with parents being deported and students’ entire lives thrown into a tailspin. How can we help them maintain hope? How can we shore up their strength?
I too feel like we are failing our children and must change the environment.
Thank you for your comments.
I definitely understand wanting to protect your students, especially since they are in middle school. I definitely talk to my teenager about things that I work to protect my 7-year-old from. And I remind her not to talk about certain things in front of her younger sister.
I think middle school is a tricky age, because I think teens have more awareness then many adults want to give them credit for.
Please don’t think you shouldn’t read or shouldn’t respond to posts here. Dialogue is always helpful, it helps us process and refine our thoughts.
Karen