There’s that trope that teens rebel.
As if, they do it for no reason, like they actually want to make both of us miserable.
It’s not like that.
They’re the new ones.
We, as the adults, are slowing down, partially because we want to and partially because we have to.
We’ve stripped away everything except what we think is essential. That’s our life’s work: To hack away the excess and find our way through.
But, as much as we cherish our own hard-earned discoveries in this life, all that we’ve learned and all that we know doesn’t necessarily take long to master. We’re handing our kids a cheat sheet, not an anthology.
They can get through that shit in a heartbeat. (We’re talking about kids who have already consumed half the Internet!). So they can surely handle our 15-point checklist.
And if we’ve done our job right as parents then our precious, carefully constructed teenagers should be smart enough and brave enough to question everything on that list.
Their cross-outs, their notes in the margin…
That’s something to celebrate.