Cindy La Ferle’s Home Officea window on the writing life

Barbarian Mom

Cindy on October 31st, 2009

Children are a great comfort in old age, and they help you reach it much faster, too.” — Lionel M. Kaufman

Take it from a seasoned parent. There comes a time in every mother’s life when she realizes parts of her wardrobe shouldn’t be flaunted in front of teenage boys. And I’m not talking about thong underwear.

This hit me several years ago while the family and I were getting ready to visit my favorite art fair in Royal Oak — an annual summer event that typically draws crowds of creative types, including some neighbors we haven’t seen all winter.  I wanted to dress for the occasion. Scouring my closet, I chose a nice black T-shirt and an ankle-length peasant skirt. It was a departure from my traditional blazer-with-jeans uniform, but still within the bounds of good taste.

Or so I thought.  The silver bracelet is what got me in trouble. Rescued from a flea-market, the vintage cuff was two inches wide and etched with a subtle ethnic design. Not all that remarkable — unless, of course, you were looking at it through the discerning eyes of an adolescent boy.

“You’re not wearing that giant bracelet in public, are you?” asked Nate, glaring at my wrist.

“Why not?” I shot back.

“You look like a Babylonian… Or maybe a barbarian,” the kid said, choosing his words carefully. A week earlier he announced that my feet looked “Cro-Magnon” in sandals. Apparently I’d morphed into a badly dressed savage.

What could I do?  When the same kid was a cranky infant, I couldn’t treat his diaper rash without consulting a stack of childcare guides. Soon enough, though, Doug and I were navigating the choppy waters of parenthood without much advice from Penelope Leach or T. Berry Brazelton, the most respected parenting experts of our era. Living by our wits, we maneuvered through mealtime face-offs and nerve-racking episodes with the neighborhood bully. We even managed to steer a fairly civilized carpool. But things changed when our little boy began slouching toward adolescence. We needed more help from the experts.

Just in time, Doug found a copy of Anthony Wolf’s aptly titled guide, Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? (Noonday Press). As the author notes, today’s youth “are vastly different” from kids forty years ago. Just for starters, their social and academic pressures are more complicated, more intense.

“Teenagers treat adults in their lives in a manner that is less automatically obedient, much more fearless, and definitely more outspoken than that of previous generations,” writes Wolf, who happens to be a parent as well as a clinical psychologist. Many adolescents, he says, feel trapped between the growing need for independence and the secret wish to cling to childhood — an agonizing conflict if ever there was one.

“The two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the mandate that demands that teenagers turn away from childhood and parents,” Wolf writes.  Not only do teenagers see their parents as grossly flawed, he adds, “they also find them outright embarrassing, especially if seen with them anywhere outside the home.”

This explains why your teenager will hug you in the kitchen when nobody is looking but never, ever, in the school parking lot. Or why he ridicules your impeccable fashion sense and mostly wishes you were invisible.

Let me assure you that this too shall pass. Even the mouthiest teens can grow up to be agreeable, well-adjusted human beings. In the meantime they need our patience, love, and a healthy dose of discipline. But patience can be the hardest part, especially for barbarians. – Cindy La Ferle

A slightly different version of this essay is reprinted in my book, Writing Home.

Tags: Anthony Wolf, art fair, home and family, MI), Michigan writer, midlife issues, motherhood, Noonday Press, parenting, parenting advice, parenting teenagers, Royal Oak, teens
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