Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

From what are we trying to spare our children?

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Yesterday we talked about why adolescents despise adults. Why do I think I'm an authority the issue? Not because I've ever been an adult, but because I am still an adolescent.

But I am a parent, and I have found myself—more and more—wanting to protect the eight-year-old Scout from things that she must inevitably go through as a person. Things that make people people.

"I just don't want you to make the same mistakes I made," says a parent.

"You lived through the mistakes you made," the kid should reply. "You want me to take my chances with other mistakes?"

But it's not just negotiable risk-taking behavior. It's inevitabilities: Scout, if she is to live a full human life as her own father defines it, will: Have her heart broken violently at least once (so she knows what love is like), work in at least one job she despises (so she knows what agreeable work feels like), know and be plagued by some terrible human beings (so she appreciates good ones), and fail spectacularly or routinely in a heartfelt endeavor (so she knows what courage is).

And listen to me, trying to limit these traumas and tuck them into a nifty Emotional Education Kit that will fit into her school backpack.

Is there a more universal folly than parents trying to guide their kids toward a tidy, untroubled life?

Mantra: My job is not to protect her from life, it's to maintain her physical health long enough and help build her heart strong enough and her brain thirsty enough to take in all available joy and endure the rest with good humor.

And that's all.

And to the extent I try to achieve more than that, I'll fail—and earn the pity of a wise young girl.

I gotta cut that mantra down, it's too long.

My late paramedic pal Ed Reardon said there is no such thing as parenting. "For 18 years, your kid gets you. If you're good, that's good. If you're bad, that's bad."

Fingers crossed.

If your adolescent hates you, it’s probably one of these three reasons

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1. You are an asshole: An alcoholic, tight-assed, cowardly, mean, selfish and/or dishonest person who the child sensed from a very early age was bad news. Not much you can do about this.

2. Your child is a creep. Every parent knows it's not nurture vs. nature that makes a personality, it's nurture vs. nature. Children have trackable, consistent personalities from birth, and siblings are born as different from one another as Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Some kids are Messrs Hyde. Send them to military school.

3. You are a kind, smart, sensible person, and your child turned out very much the same way. And the child, now 14 and 15 and 16 and 17, can't figure out why it is that you still think you know so much more. You tell the kid, "I've forgotten more than you ever knew." The kid says, "No Dad, you've forgotten more than you ever knew." And the kid really does have about 97 percent of the knowledge, the wits, the moral clarity to required to make so-called "adult" decisions. (Even as an adult, don't big decisions feel exactly like it felt when you decided to take your first hit of grass? Equal parts thrilling and crazy?)

What you know is that the remaining three percent of knowledge acquisition is crucial intellectual and emotional sanding and fine sanding and rubbing and polish and varnish, and it takes years and years and years. You get some of it in college and more of it in your twenties and some of it in your thirties, too.

But how could an adolescent understand that? It's a really weird fact of life, and there's really no way for the kid to use the information. My dad used to say, good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from using bad judgment. But of course I had to learn it for myself, over his dead body.

And it's self-serving and mean-sounding for an adult to claim or imply (as adults usually do): Yeah, you've built quite a crackerjack mind for yourself in 15 years, squirt. I bet you think you're really clever. But it'll be another 15 years before anyone in their right mind would put you in charge of anything more complicated than a lemonade stand.

I remember laughing when my old boss Larry Ragan scrawled on a card at a company party celebrating my wedding, at 25, "Wait 40 years. Then you'll know something about love."

Seventeen years later, I'm not laughing anymore. I'm waiting impatiently for more knowledge to reveal itself.

I live in dread of the moment Scout looks at me with those contemptuous eyes that say, "I don't believe you. You're a hypocrite. You're pathetic. I'm smarter and stronger and more honest than you. How dare you tell me what to do?"

Maybe I'll sigh, and tell her to read my blog. And she'll roll her eyes. And so on.