When I count my blessings, among the top of the list is that I have always had work that I love. For 30 years, no matter what number of things I have done, I have been surrounded by young people. And, I have got to say, working with teens and young 20-somethings is about the best gig you can get at my age. They live in a world that would be completely foreign to me if they were not as generous as they are about providing a window for me to look through each week. Not that long ago, I was in the company of people discussing Medicare supplemental packages about which I know exactly nothing. I know that there ARE these add-on insurance riders, but, other than that, I have no idea if they are the kind of thing everyone should have, some people should have, or even how one goes about figuring out if one needs a medicare rider. At one point, someone looked at me and observed how confused I looked. The person wondered if I was lost because I wasn’t yet eligible for Medicare, which was a fair query. I admitted that I was, indeed, lost in the conversation of Medicare, that I wasn’t old enough for Medicare and I didn’t even know at what age one IS old enough for Medicare, BUT, I could take a picture of myself as a rainbow unicorn and send it via Snapchat! Also, I totally know that the eggplant and peach icons have dual (read not always appropriate) meanings and that having a “hot girl summer” is on the rise after the restrictions of summer 2020. I know that if you piss-off the right computer savvy person, you can be doxed and, last but not least, I can forward you the locations of all of the best marijuana dispensaries between Boston and South Jersey. As I said, I love my work.
I will admit that one of the perks of working with young people is that I am a neutral third party to any circumstance of their lives. I am not the parent or the teacher, I am not the boss, the grumpy co-worker, the disgruntled lover, or any other participant, and because I am not any of those people, I have more freedom to challenge their thinking. Don’t get me wrong, the freedom to challenge their thinking does not come free. I pay for that freedom with respect and humility. I go into the relationship with the assumption that the kid’s point of view is valid and it makes perfect sense, even though that is not always evident at the outset. It costs me a lot of time and energy to get into their world. I listen to everything they tell me and I ask questions until I am 100% sure that I completely understand the situation as they see it. And, then, once I am sure that THEY know that I am in their corner, that they’ve got my support, I ask them if they want my opinion. It is such a huge gift when a young person is actually interested in what you think. I think a lot of times, older people get dismissed not because they are old but because the younger person is not clear that the older person is actually in the young person’s world. Or they get dismissed because the young person has to give so much background information that it becomes too bulky to even get to the give-an-opinion-part of the conversation. Or the older person is going to say something that the younger person doesn’t want to hear, which is pretty often exactly what I end up doing. Long ago a mentor of mine taught me the art of saying something contrary and it is something like - Caveat, Caveat, Caveat, Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer, BUT [insert contrary view here]. Said another way, “Well, listen, I am not your age and I am not in your situation, and I can imagine how frustrating this all must be for sure. And, I could be wrong, goodness knows you probably have twice the IQ points I have, but, have you ever considered that your mother might actually have a point?”
Now, truth be told, my favorite part of this dance is not the part where they want my opinion, although I do love to give an opinion, but all the fascinating information you get along the way. When a young person tells you what is going on in their life, what and how they think, all the gory details, they are really inviting you to join them in their world. Take, for instance, the TikTok app! Not all that long ago, TikTok was really geared towards young people and was focused on short sound bytes of mostly lip syncing and dancing. These days people of all ages are on TikTok and you can find all kinds of topics, how-to’s, crafts, and so forth. But in the beginning, it really was mostly young tweens and teens. Kids in middle and early high school would come into my office and show me posts of their scantily dressed friends lip syncing and dancing around their rooms. The young lady who introduced me to TikTok talked me into downloading the app and, by the end of the evening, I was completely hooked. I texted her to say that I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to watch the videos and that I had been on the app for the better part of two hours! She said that was the POINT of TikTok - the dancing and watching for hours and that she was happy that I now get why she and her friends are on TikTok all night.
Before the legalization of marijuana in New Jersey, I was shocked at how easy it was to get a medical marijuana card! I have to know at least a dozen over 18 year-olds who applied for and received a state issued card. Holy smoke! (pun intended) The whirlwind of information about the contemporary world of weed took no small amount of effort to learn, but I think I have a handle on it now. In the beginning when someone would tell me about a sesh (short for session and meaning the time when they were smoking weed), I had to pay really close attention. I learned all about different strains of weed, also known as herb, bud, dank, reefer, chronic, ganja or flower, which was sold in specific quantities such as a sack, gram, a half-eighth, eighth, quarter, half, zip, or quap. The THC delivery method could be dabs, solvents, resin, concentrates, or globs and they were consumed by way of a joint, blunt, bowl, chillin, batties, rigs or torch nail. Phew!! Talk about living in an unfamiliar universe!!! And, this is all leaving aside the topic of edibles and how people are really only supposed to consume something like 5mg but they typically just pop the whole thing in their mouth thus consuming twice the amount they intend. We are a long way from the 60’s and 70’s where there was weed and hash smoked in a joint or a pipe.
I also love that I speak various dialects of teen: privilege, street, city, country, anxious, struggling, depressed, to name a few of the more popular ones. You have to be able to hear what a kid is saying because, at first pass, you could mistake I-love-you or you-are-important-to-me with I-think-you-are-an-idiot or I-have-no-respect-for-you. A few years back, I was seeing a young teen in Princeton. She was a freshman, a very white kid who came from a pretty privileged background, who attended one of the nicer private schools in the area. She was an athlete, did really well academically, and was zero trouble at school. After school, however, she hung around with one of the local hispanic cliques. They were not a group that was particularly up to trouble, they weren’t into dealing drugs or any even minor adolescent criminal activity, but suffice to say that none of the rest of them shared the same background as my kid. Her most frequent attire was her boyfriend’s sweatpants rolled down to just above the bikini line, which meant the bottoms were tattered because they dragged on the ground and she walked on them. She also wore one of his hoodies that looked like it might have been passed down from an older sibling or two before it got to him, and before he gave it to her. It just so happens that I had dropped my iphone and the screen was cracked on the very top edge. Just a tiny little crack. She sauntered in and saw the phone sitting on my desk with my wired headphones and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Is that really your fucking phone?”
“Of course it is my phone!”
“First of all, that is an iPhone 6, which is so fucking out of date that I can’t even believe it still works!!! Second of all, you can NOT be running around Princeton with wired headphones on that crappy 6! You know people see you, right?”
“People SEE me? What does that mean?”
“People!!! People!!! You are a grown ass professional with an office in Princeton!!! You can’t be walking around with a cracked iPhone 6 with wired headphones and expect other professionals to respect you!!! They would take one look at you and know you are a total loser!!!”
I burst right out laughing! I loved this kid so much! I swear! I assured her that I was getting a new phone anyway and that I would order it by the next time I saw her.
The next session she walks into the office and sees the 6 still on the desk, stops dead in her tracks, looks at the phone, then at me, and says “What happened?”
“I have the new phone! I didn’t set it up, but I have it.”
“You have it with you?”
“Yes, I just didn’t get it set up.”
“Good!” she said. “Give it to me!!! We’ll just set it up right now while we are talking!! I don’t know what you would do without me!”
So there we sat, talking about the risks of sexting while we backed up the six and charged up the new phone. What worked about that entire situation is that we both had something to offer the other because of our own unique experiences in life. I had no idea that my iphone 6 was antiquated, nor is that something about which I would actually have cared EXCEPT when I took her opinion as a valid position, she felt respected and important and that she could contribute to my life. Of course, I then leveraged that against the dangers of sexting. Eventually she had to admit that I had been around more than a couple of blocks, and had worked with a number of teens, families, schools, and law enforcement and that the exchange of naked selfies has the potential to be a disaster. And she knew that, even if she was right and I was wrong, and that the selfies never did come back to bite her, that my opinion had to be considered because I obviously loved and respected her.
When a kid lets you into their world, it’s a gift. Kids so often feel unacknowledged pressures, frequently self-imposed and even more frequently unspoken, their response to which is that they can become so secretive. And I am not even sure they mean to be secretive! Somehow, they learn to anticipate responses and to act according to the anticipated response. The result of this can be that they cut out their parents and teachers and maneuver through life unguided or guided by emotions, peers, the thoughts in their head and other contemporary influences. When an adult gets invited into a kid’s world, you are being granted a kind of Grace and, if they will let you, you can help them see themselves so that they can make different choices. It’s different from telling them about their behavior and suggesting a different choice. It’s more, as one kid says of my style, “question-y”. And, to be clear, I am most frequently saying pretty much exactly what a kid's parents and teachers are saying. It isn’t like I am brilliant or smarter than anyone else in their life, but I am certainly less attached.
I got a text the other day from a really shy and introverted kid whose parents want her to choose which colleges she wants to look at between now and when she graduates. This is a kid who has dreamed of going to college, of getting out of the house, who believes that a lot of the anxiety she experiences are a result of her “over involved parents”, her “jerky brothers” and the “stupid school” she attends. I am on record with her that 1) her parents get involved because she often drags them into her life and that she has trained them to interact with her the way they do, 2) her jerky brothers are pretty much the same flavor as most younger siblings and 3) her stupid school is a place where she had done extremely well, where she has played three sports, lettered as a sophomore and where she has made solid connections. So we have a dance that we do where I agree that her assessment is mostly correct, but then I point out the obvious. In this case the obvious is that this kid hates making a decision, that having to make a decision often comes with a lot of emotionality, with outbursts, withdrawing, tears, and total digging-in, but then ends with her “over involved parents” stepping in and “forcing” her to do something which she then either enjoys, agrees with, succeeds at or otherwise is grateful to have done. As you can imagine, this pattern is really frustrating to her parents who have the very understandable question of how on earth this kid is going to make a decision when she is away at college. They worry about how she will get along with her roommates and if they will get distress calls in the middle of the night.
The other day she sent me a text saying that her parents are planning a trip to look at colleges and that she cannot believe that they are going to ruin the end of her summer by forcing her to go with them.
“My parents suck! They are making me go on a 12 hour road trip to look at some stupid colleges that I don’t even care about.”
“Well that does suck! I hate road trips. Can you fly?”
“No.”
“Bummer. Should you go to school locally?”
“Hell no!!!! I am outta here the minute I graduate.”
“Not likely.”
“??????”
“Well, it seems to me that you only do things when push comes to shove or when you are forced to do them, and then when you do them, you are glad you did and you end up being a rock star, no?”
“I guess.”
“Well, if that is your pattern, and if you are either committed to that pattern OR it is the only way you can make a decision, what should they do? They might be as clueless as you are about colleges.”
“I guess.”
“Can you still choose which colleges to look at?”
“I guess.”
“Do you want a vote on which colleges to visit? You have said over and over that your parents really know you and they make good decisions. You can let them decide.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, I don't want them to decide.”
“Would you be willing to let them decide which ones to look at and you get the veto power? It’s hard for you to make a decision, so you let them choose the colleges, but if you don’t like any of them, you veto those. THEN, if you find a college you do want to see, you can ask them to add it. It’s the best of both worlds - you don't have the pressure of deciding, but you do have the power to veto, which is a safe way of choosing.”
“True.”
“And, PS, I hate to break it to you, but you have been making more and more decisions along the way these past few months. You might be the only kid I know for whom being isolated during the pandemic actually worked! Before the pandemic, you really made no decisions at all. I feel like during the pandemic you got so sick and tired of being home all the time, that you almost had a little internal rebellion and now you are making decisions. Little ones, but ones you wouldn’t have made before.”
“???”
“According to my texts, you decided to attend a graduation party instead of going to your grandparents house, yes?”
“Yes”
“And to do that, you had to drive, something you hate to do, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then you had to get a gift, which involved making a decision, and then drove yourself to the party in the family “jalopy” as you call it, you had to drive to an unfamiliar town, all by yourself, no friends going with you and you did it! You went, by yourself, gift in hand, all while the rest of the clan went to your grandparents’ house.”
“True.”
“The defense rests.”
“Ok.”
“Ok what?”
“Ok I will tell them I want veto power.”
“Good. And, PS, they are not asking you to decide anything! They are taking you to LOOK!”
“True.”
What happened in that exchange is Grace. Oh, it was logic and facts and all of that, but what really made the difference is the Grace that the kid granted me, so I could point to her own behavior. It is such a feeling, such a space of privilege to be granted trust by someone who is standing at the threshold of their entire future. I sometimes worry that these past few years have left me cynical and jaded, until I find myself thinking that the biggest contribution any of us can make to the future of humanity is to make a difference in the life of a child.