So Different And Yet Exactly The Same
Beyond the Book: Reflections on parenting teenagers through a pandemic
Yesterday was my younger son’s 14th birthday. As I sat at the breakfast table yesterday morning looking through old pictures (thank you Facebook memories) and wondering where the years had gone (as I now have one son out living in his own apartment and another one a tall bundle of teenage hormones), I also began thinking about how strange and difficult these last few years have been as I’ve tried to shelter my children safely through such unprecedented times - and also how it’s also everything I’ve ever done before.
My children entered very pivotal times of their lives just as the pandemic was starting. My older son moved away to college in the summer of 2020 and my younger son entered middle school and his teens. I cried a million tears as we packed my son’s car full of his belongings to head out to Indiana. It felt very much like I was having the same mom moment that countless moms have had forever - bawling ridiculously as our baby birds fly the nest (my partner still regularly comments that he’d never seen me look so sad before or since). I comforted myself as he made the long drive (his first cross-country drive, with his dad driving in a car behind him) by checking his phone location at all hours of the day to make sure he hadn’t gotten lost or in an accident, and calling him a few times a day to remind him to be extra careful about masks and hand sanitizer because he was leaving our little science-believing enclave of Seattle for very different territory of Whiting, Indiana (the name’s real).
We went into lockdown right as my older son was in the listless months between high school and college, and my younger son was finishing a really great 6th grade year. He was really coming into himself, brimming with confidence and excited for middle school the next year. But 6th grade graduation and summer camp was cancelled and like so many other children, my kiddo found himself staring at images of his teachers and classmates on a computer screen. We treated the remainder of 6th grade like an extended summer vacation, only without any of the fun. I really didn’t care if my son actually looked at the computer screen, as long as it was on. Nobody knew what they were doing; there wasn’t actually any teaching going on, half the time class was canceled because the teachers couldn’t figure out how zoom worked. We played board games together and watched comedies and tried to avoid the news.
Suddenly, it was like I was parenting toddlers again. I felt this constant need to check on my kids multiple times a day, and they actually needed the check-ins. My partner and I were constantly trying to come up with things to keep them occupied while also trying to navigate a whole new world of “where do I find toilet paper and bread yeast and do I need to wash each item after I take them out of grocery bags and how even do I do that.” And I found, just like when my kids were small, that I had no idea what I was doing.
Teenagehood in a pandemic just hits different. It’s all the emotion, all the growth spurts, all the drama, all the body odor - and the fact that you as a parent are the often the only outlet that a teen going through some of the most difficult body and brain changes of their life has. My older son could get in his car and drive around town or to an outdoor hangout with his friends. But my younger son was just stuck at home with two very “uncool” parents. Then, my older son went off to college and we really were all the younger kid had.
Having raised the older kid through his teen years as well, I noticed some small but very important differences this time around. Turns out, once the teens learned how to communicate with each other online, all of the drama of teenage social life returned, but with none of the nuance and none of the fun hangouts that make all of the drama worth it. Every child was depressed and lonely, and pretty much all that they were bonding over was how depressed and lonely they were, and it was making them even more depressed and lonely. Kid social groups were frozen in place. Even as the kids themselves changed and found new interests and hobbies, it was hard for them to meet other kids with these same interests and hobbies, so they were stuck in friend groups that didn’t suit who they actually were. They would fight, stop talking, then get back together when they couldn’t stand the solitude anymore, and then go back to their unfulfilling friendships until the next fight.
Just like with the last trip round teenagehood, my teen stopped wanting to talk to me about anything and would only come out of his room to get snacks or watch tv, but would literally growl at me if I dared sit in the livingroom of the house that I pay the mortgage on at the same time as him. But watching all of the kids get more and more anxious and depressed, I really needed him to open up. I could tell part of him still really wanted connection and comfort. But teenage boys are nothing if not awkward and I could tell he was struggling with how to be taken care of when you couldn’t crawl into your mom’s lap anymore because a) you’re 6’3” and b) you’re way too cool for that now. I started kind of stalking my son, trying to catch him late at night when I would hear the refrigerator open as he was searching for a snack, knowing that he was more likely to be in the mood to talk when the rest of the house was quiet and his friends had gone to sleep. I would get small glimpses into the friend drama, a little bit about his hopes and fears, and occasionally he would ask me questions about what he was going through physically and mentally in puberty. Sometimes he would even ask me to sit on the couch and watch tv with him. I would cling to these moments and allow that little bit of knowledge and connection to let me sleep at night.
A few weeks after college started (and one day after our house caught fire, but that’s a different story), my older son called me to say that he had tested positive for COVID-19. He was a student athlete (on a bowling scholarship - yes, that’s a thing) and the virus had swiftly worked its way through the entire team. He was halfway across the country, sick and scared, unable to go to school or compete in the sport he loved, and unable to leave his room. We were definitely still in the “don’t you dare get on an airplane” part of the pandemic so I couldn’t get to him to make soup or take temperatures or just watch him breathe to know he was okay. I decided to instead cry at random times throughout the day and try to teach him over the phone how to use the thermometer that I had packed for him in his move. It took him over a month to recover to the point that he could return to class (he still coughs whenever he laughs, a year later). Moving away from home for the first time is tough, but then suddenly finding yourself sick and isolated is pretty impossible to deal with. The weeks took their toll, and by the time he was cleared to return to school he was very behind (the school offered very little accommodations for kids who got COVID) and very depressed. We had a zoom call and he was so pale and sad. “Mom, I need to come home,” he said. So I brought him home.
The pandemic threw a wrench in pretty much every plan my family had, as it has for so many, and yet, when has parenting ever gone as planned? This could be a reflection on how very fucking hard parenting through the pandemic has been and in some ways it is, but it’s not just that. Because hasn’t parenting always been one of the most difficult and heartbreaking and amazing and beautiful things we’ve ever done, all at once?
My older son (now in an apartment literally a block away from our house) really leaned into a love of cars this year. He saved up money to pay for half of a used Honda Civic and I paid for the other half. He has spent the last year modifying it. I don’t know where this love of cars comes from - definitely not from me. And so far, it seems like his main goal is to make the car as annoying as possible. He was explaining one mod he made the other day that both makes it impossible for him to enter his apartment parking garage straight on without scraping the bottom and makes the general ride bumpier than before, and he was excited about these changes. So far he’s made the car bumpier, scrapier, harder to see out of, and louder. And he loves it. I don’t know. It really makes him happy though. I think part of it is that the car represents the one real freedom he has from these hard times, the ability to get in his car and just drive somewhere. He calls me every morning when he wakes up to go over the day before. Most of the drama now is either about his job in the bowling alley, about how hard it is to meet girls in a pandemic, and about how he is trying to come up with enough money to, I don’t know, make his car seats harder or something.
My younger son discovered music this last year and a half, and I don’t know if he would have, had it not been for the pandemic. In times of boredom he started sneaking up to my partner’s music studio in the attic (he’s a musician and radio DJ) to play on the little keyboard he had. At first I would just hear random CLANG CLANG CLANG from the keys upstairs but then he decided to teach himself the theme song to Zelda. Then his brother told him that he thought he’d like The Beatles. Then it was all over. The kiddo would anxiously wait at the door for my partner to get done with work so he could rush up and try to learn bits of a Beatles tune on the keyboard. Then he got into The Beach Boys and became obsessed with Brian Wilson. Then he got his brother’s old piano, and a guitar, and a bass, and a ukulele, and some chimes, and a penny-whistle, and a tambourine….
Now when he’s anxious in the middle of the night he gets up and plays piano. I’ll hear “Let it be,” sung out at the top of his little teenage lungs or he’ll work on one of his original compositions. His best friend moved away this year and they are staying connected by trying to learn how to play the entirety of Abbey Road together. We are, in this house in a pandemic, a captive audience to the entire process. And it’s been so amazing. Watching your kid fall in love with music is a beautiful thing. Watching him gain confidence in something so difficult at a time when the pandemic and teenage hormones had taken an axe to his self-esteem has been such a privilege. He told me yesterday that this has been the worst year of his life and the best year of his life at the same time, because he has had to go through the pandemic but he also found the thing that is hopefully going to get him through it and so much more.
These kids have been my greatest source of fear and worry this pandemic, and the very thing that has gotten me through. I’ve worried - gawd have I worried - for them this year. Just about every minute of every day. I’ve lost sleep, I’ve at times been barely able to function with the fear that whatever I’m doing just won’t be enough to keep them safe - both mentally and physically. But there’s only so much catastrophizing I can do when the kids still are demanding snacks and leaving socks all over the floor and forgetting to put on deodorant and still arguing with you over whether daily showers really are necessary when you “aren’t going anywhere anyway.” Just as I am staring at a news website convinced the world is going to actually explode my son will walk in with a video that is “so funny mom you’ve got to see” and it’s literally the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life and instead of worrying about the pandemic I’m trying to figure out at what age poop, farts, and “your mom” jokes stop being funny.
These kids, man. I don’t know how I could have gotten through the last two years without them. But I also don’t know how I could have gotten through the last twenty years without them. Who would I even be without them? I don’t want to know. But also, when this whole pandemmy is over, I’m going to take the longest vacation without them ever.
Gaah -- by the end of this, I was practically sobbing. Thanks for writing this and for articulating everything here. It's beautiful and, even though my kid is younger, rang so, so true.
How did you crawl straight up into my head and write all my thoughts!? Thank you for this. It helps to know that I am not alone in navigating this world of teenagers and a pandemic and life and all of it!