If I had a word to describe my adolescent years, it would be “unaware.” I was unaware what most couples were “doing.” I was unaware of any prep I should be doing for college. I had a college roommate nicknamed “Pete” who was the girls’ softball pitcher and who used to have “sleepovers” with the team’s catcher. Totally unaware of what was really going on there!! How can one person be so unaware?!
Easily, I think. I was happily ignorant of all of that stuff. Naive is probably a better term. Some would say “stupid”!
I was just as unaware of other things that were good. I didn’t know I’d actually scored a 31 in English on my one attempt at the ACT till I was around forty years old. I probably “knew” it, but I was unaware how impressive that was since I didn’t do any kind of studying. I was unaware I was smart, even though I was in honor classes. I just thought I was a really hard worker. The list goes on… I was a pretty unaware person!
Sometimes I find myself missing that state. It was very freeing. Being aware brings new responsibilities. Maybe that’s why so many teens avoid the news and thought-provoking discussions. It’s a whole lot easier to live in a reality created online or in a game.
So how important is it that teens be aware? I think much more today than ever for one reason: surveillance. There is a camera to catch everything one does today. An innocent shift of one’s underwear can become the next viral faux pas. Couple that with the fact that kids are under much more supervision than ever in history, and teens have a lot to lose from being unaware.
We haven’t even talked about college prep. I have parents of one-year-olds calling to see when the earliest they can get on a list for our school is. It seems to take early and consistent prep to help your teen reach the small percentage of those who make it into an Ivy League or one of the other upper echelon schools.
I think happiness lies somewhere between the two. Helping your gifted teen to know that rewards come with hard work is preferable over making him painfully aware of the fate of those who didn’t work hard. Gifted are typically tender-hearted as kids and teens, and depression over not being able to solve the problem will outweigh the drive to do better. It is important to involve your teen in solving what is solvable, of course. Helping at a food pantry is solving the solvable. Making your teen aware of a starving people group with no ability to help them is not going to help him work harder.
I think the most dangerous “unawareness” lies with parents, though. Parents today seem unaware of how much more their kids know than we did at their ages. The Internet literally teaches them anything and everything. If you don’t talk to your kid about the difficult issues, the Internet will. Parents, if you want an eye opener, watch the movie “Eighth Grade.” The writer has done a phenomenal job of letting us know the difficulties teens of today navigate. Unfortunately, they are a whole lot more aware than many of us would like.
- Michelle