Never Never Land

"If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"  Peter Pan

Although I have read it before, this excerpt stirred me when I came across it recently:

"Being a teenager is vastly overrated. We all make mistakes, we are stubborn and we couldn't give two shits what our parents think, we hate school, we cause shit, we fight, we love, we cry, we give up on believing in a higher power. We're all fucked up and that's the truth, we all come from dysfunctional families, because no family is perfect; we say things that we don't mean, we yell, we scream, we get broken hearts, we get drunk, we have sex. Grades don't mean a thing anymore, we live on quotes and music that describe our lives and most importantly we are tired. We are tired of waking up each morning and having to go to school where we see the people we hate or the people we love, we get tired of waiting for the text message that's not going to come and we get tired of pretending we're fine..."

It caused me to think in some more depth about the challenges faced by young people as they negotiate adolescence.  Change confronts us, whatever age we are, but few transitions can be compared to those that confront the individual who is somewhere between child and adult.

I feel privileged to work with young people.  They keep me connected to part of myself that might otherwise fade into the background of my unconscious, and this feels important as we all, at some level, continue to revisit the challenges that first beset us at this crucial stage of life.  I am never left in any doubt as to the resilience and resources young people have at their disposal, and am frequently humbled by the creativity they demonstrate.

Adolescence is full of challenges for any child.  The change is fast, everywhere, and hard to keep up with.  Their physical body changes in response to increasing levels of hormones; their cognitive processes develop as they begin to think more broadly and in an abstract way; their social lives change radically, and their peer group typically becomes far more significant as a catalyst and conduit of change.  And all this happens simultaneously. 

We all need 'holding' and 'containment', not least when we're facing the unknown, the unfamiliar, and the frightening.  Adolescence could be said to be all of these things.  As an adult, and a survivor of adolescence, I believe it is most helpful for me to support those going through this by respectfully making use of my life experience, maturity and resources.  Acknowledging the young person's complex and sometimes conflicting needs in a way that I am able to frame their experience within a context is one of the tools I have at my disposal and seems to me, to be a useful place to start.  After all, knowing you are not the only person who has encountered this montage of messy feelings, is perhaps itself reassuring.

Adolescence involves a re-working of older issues that have been around since infancy.  Adolescents yearn to develop a unique and independent identity, separate from their parents’.  This is often characterised in the adolescent rebellion, the significance of which should not be understated.  Yes, they love their parents, but they don’t simply want to follow their foot steps.  They challenge their parents in any way they can.  They disobey their rules; criticize their "old fashioned" values; and (publicly, at least) discard their suggestions.  Parents need to adapt in the face of these changes, to keep up with their evolving offspring.  Emotions run high in households where teenagers reside.  Emotions run high in every corner of a young person's life, which is exhausting for all concerned.  The peer group is often the young person's new 'family of choice' and it is within this environment that the individual seeks to establish themselves.  The significance of the peer group is enormous, as it is here that a young person often defines and develops their identity.

“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”  Alden Nowlan

For many young people, realising that childhood is over and the pressures of the real world are not too far down the road is enough to trigger the onset of depression.  School tasks and pressures, family issues, relationships (or lack thereof) and social pressures add to the problems teenagers already face, making teenage depression a a very real problem that is on the rise.

Young children are often heard confidently vocalising their life ambitions.  Many teens experience an erosion of these childhood dreams and find themselves feeling disillusioned and directionless.  As our experience expands with age, we lose the innocence of childhood and are confronted by frightening realities and responsibilities. 

"Growing up is never easy.  You hold on to things that were.  You wonder what's to come.  But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be.  Other days.  New days.  Days to come.  The thing is, we didn't have to hate each other for getting older.  We just had to forgive ourselves...for growing up."

The Wonder Years