What is it with teenagers and their unwavering insistence upon doing the exact opposite to all the life expectations you’ve spent years and years heaping upon them?
When I was pregnant with Char I was fairy certain she was going to grow up to save the world. I didn’t know how or when she was going to do this, I was just fanatically positive she would make it happen.
Admittedly, I may have been aiming a wee bit too high with that one. So after a few years I set her a slightly more realistic goal, with the expectation that she would simply sail through school with perfect marks, go on to uni and study something she was passionate about, have a fantastic OE then come back and land her perfect job. Maybe even one related to what she studied at uni. I also expected the Gilmore Girls relationship we maintained through her childhood would carry on flawlessly into her teenagehood, and through our regular conversations about life, lads and everything in between, she’d learn from my mistakes and therefore never have to make any of her own.
Again, there may have been one or two slightly unreasonable forecasts in that paragraph.
She did sail through primary and intermediate with perfect marks, and when she began high school this year I really thought there was a good shot of the first four on the list coming true. Sure our mother/daughter communication had come to stuttering halts here and there, but this was usually due to disputes on how tidy her room was along with the general antisocial ‘my parents don’t understand what I’m going through’ teen angst that seems to kick in at year 9.
However as this past year has progressed, she seems to have become intent on knocking every one of my hopes and dreams right off the Parental Expectation Radar.
More often when she comes home and tells me about her day, it’s to gloat about how she told her science teacher she’s a stupid bitch and ‘oops I might have an after school detention for that one’. Then she wonders why I spend the night shitty or crying.
Does she not realise that as she tells me these things, I’m remembering the sweet lovely Char I used to know - and wondering at what point she was replaced by a doppelganger? As her gloating words of “how I bummed out Mr Whoflungdung today” wash over me, I’m thinking of all the parent-teacher interviews where teachers would gush about “what a pleasure it is to have your daughter in my class”, and “I’ve heard so many great things about her” and how “she makes the whole process of getting up in the morning and coming to work each day worthwhile”.
Her school report arrived in the mail today, and I was sadly unsurprised to read that my A-average daughter (who had become a B-average by Term 2 this year) has now become a B-C average with the odd dusting of D. The main theme of teacher comments being that Char has a tendency to become distracted in class (too busy passing notes), fails to apply herself to her full potential (too busy writing poems about *insert name here* in books to actually listen to what’s being taught)
So now my expectations have been revisited and modified once more. As far as education is concerned, I’m pretty much just hanging onto the hope that she finishes school. Never mind the uni right now. Just finish school damn it. And maybe if she manages to do that, she might go on to landing a great job after all. Because I’m developing a lingering fear that she’ll drop out of school, spend half her life bumming around before finally deciding - when it’s pretty much too late - that she wants to do something with her life after all. You know, just like her mum did. And my biggest hope/expectation of all is that she’ll rise above me and become something I never was - that she’ll make the most of every positive opportunity she’s given, and becomes the happy and successful young adult I never allowed myself the fighting chance to be.
Despite all the hand-wringing, teeth-grinding I’m doing over this and sense of hopeless futility I feel struck by every now and then, I’m still reasonably optimistic that in the long run, she’ll get there in the end. Teenage years are rough. I clearly remember that. No matter how much you try to prepare your kid for the roller coaster ride that is adolescence, they’re going to sneak off when you’re not looking and find a scarier ride, just so they can say they’ve got one up on you. So I’m hoping - really hoping - she’ll make a few cautionary mistakes and learn from them quick enough to bounce back wiser than before - without getting too hurt in the process. But truth be told, I’m shit scared of what the next few years might have in store for us.