Growing pains
Life in the Cervantes house has been, well, emotional. Tween emotions and all their collateral damage have taken over. And just when I thought I’d gotten the hang of this parenting thing too. Ha, jk, I’ve never felt confident in my parenting two days in a row. So, I picked up Dr. Lisa Damour’s book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which had been recommended by a friend several months ago. I hadn’t gotten out of the introduction before I’d popped the lid off my pastel pink highlighter.
“Painful feelings are a natural part of life,” she writes. This is not a groundbreaking statement and yet, “uncomfortable feelings came to be seen as psychological states that ought to be prevented, failing that, banished as quickly as possible.”
Welp, I can relate to that.
The pressure I felt to care for Adelaide with a smile on my face (look for the silver linings!), the shoves I felt from folks toward healing after she died (at least…), the awkwardness I can still be met with when bringing her up in conversation.
I wanted to feel my grief, to envelope myself in the sadness like I would my favorite comforter. I took solace in and embodied the messages that ‘its ok to not be ok’ and to ‘feel all of my feelings’ – but had I taught that to Jackson?
Lord knows I have certainly modeled them…
My parents will tell you I have always been expressive. Thinking before I speak or react was not a skill that came naturally to me, but one that I continue to have to hone and be mindful of. Somehow, I created a child that will express his emotions only when he can no longer contain them.
Maybe this is because he’s a boy, or because he observed as a young child that his needs often came second to his sick sisters, or because after she died he worried about further upsetting his grieving parents, or maybe this is just how he was always wired to be.
Regardless, it is now our responsibility as his parents, to make him feel comfortable not just accepting and expressing those uncomfortable emotions but talking about them as well. After Adelaide died, I honored his wishes to not speak about his feelings with Miguel and me and instead found a therapist for him. The important thing is that he is talking to someone, I told myself. Which was true.
As I type this, though, I question if I should have pushed him harder to communicate with us about his feelings in those years surrounding Adelaide’s passing. And then I remind myself that we did the best we could in the moment. And also, you can make a kid do lots of things, talking is not one of them (also pooping, but that’s for another blog).
Processing our emotions is a skill that must be taught. Dr. Damour notes that having insight into their source provides, not just understanding, but choices. The emotions may seem so expansive that they can feel debilitating, but if we understand them then we can determine if it is something we can play through or if we are causing injury. Not unlike pushing through physical pain while exercising.
Instead of letting emotions control us, we can choose how we respond to them. And that just might be the message my independence and control-craving tween needs to hear. You can be in charge! You have the power!
It will take effort though, feeling, thinking, and talking. He’s not going to like that part. But not processing doesn’t make the shitty feelings go away – that may be something he has to figure out on his own.
Clearly, I don’t have the answers, but thankfully parenting teenagers is something a few people have done before me. With that in mind, I am open to any books, articles, or social media accounts that others have found helpful.
And then it dawns on me that in addition to holding space for Jackson’s uncomfortable emotions, I have to make room for the complicated emotions they create in me. Jackson is taking his first major steps away from us and I am grieving the little boy he’s been. My faltering confidence as we navigate a new chapter of parenthood. And the painful empathy, knowing that all of these wild, seemingly uncontrollable feelings, are a natural and unavoidable part of growing up.
I just hope he’ll let us figure it out together.
Photo ID: Jackson and Anessa are sitting on stone stairs leading up to a front stoop and red door on a grey house. Anessa sits on a higher step, wearing a green t-shirt with grey pants. She has a strawberry sticker covering her face and is holding a cup of ice cream and a spoon while making a peace sign with her fingers. Jackson is sitting on a lower step wearing a black t-shirt and a hot pink beanie while holding a milkshake and smiling at the camera.
