Doing the Work.

Last night in my best friend’s kitchen, our eighth grade girls were talking to us about a party that happened last weekend. Their mom and I had heard about the party, and were asking the girls what they knew. It got us talking about how naïve we both were when it came to things 14 year olds were doing.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not stupid. I was a teenager once who tried plenty of things. I just don’t have one of those teenagers, at least not yet, anyway. What came up in this conversation over and over, and again later when Lucy wanted to talk more about it, were girls who were sending photos to boys. Either on their own accord, or sometimes when they were “being blackmailed” as the girls’ put it. It led to conversation about consent. It led to talk about how what you put out on the internet could ALWAYS come back to haunt you.  But mostly it led to a conversation about self-respect. People who respect you will not “blackmail” you for a photo of your body. People who have your best interest in mind will not ask you to do ANYTHING you don’t want to do. And if you have respect for yourself? You’ll tell those kids to fuck off when they ask for things you KNOW are wrong. Lucy suggested that maybe these girls weren’t getting attention other ways. We talked at length about people’s needs, and the need some girls feel to be seen. Especially in these days of instant gratification and social media.

Mostly, when Lucy went to bed last night I sat and thought about how the girls sending these kinds of photos AND THE BOYS RECEIVING THEM were likely not having these kinds of conversations with their parents. It made me think about the college admissions scandal and about the things we parents value in this country.  Recently, I took a personality quiz and one of the questions was something along the lines of “would you rather your child be kind or incredibly successful”? Kind. Duh. I’ve known a lot of people in my life. I’ve traveled many places and I’ve worked in jobs from retail, to the service industry, to arts to education, and I’ve learned that all the success in the world means nothing if you’re an asshole. Just look at your president. Sadly, though, this isn’t how the world works most of the time. People would rather have success and fame (or being “seen”) over being kind and doing the right thing.

We’d rather pay millions of dollars to get kids into college than to expect that they might actually work hard for it, or even maybe admit that they shouldn’t go to college if that’s not what they’re cut out to do. We’d rather post photos of our smiling kids on social media and tell all our friends about how amazing they are, but then never check their phones, know who their friends are, or have conversations with them about how sexting at 14 is NOT OK. EVER. Most people don’t want to do the hard work of parenting, because it’s just that: hard. We don’t want to have conversations that make us uncomfortable because that’s hard, too. Guess what else is uncomfortable and hard? Hearing that teenage girls you’ve known their whole lives are sending photos of their bodies to young boys. Mothers and fathers: do yourselves a favor and ask the hard questions. Get to know your kids. And by all means, get to know their friends.

No one ever really had these conversations with me, at least not in the ways that I’m having them with the girls. And I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t outwardly told to be assertive or strong, or if it’s just who I was as a teenager, but I did a lot of things for the sake of being seen. Stupid and shitty things. I hung out with the wrong people because I thought it would make me popular, or worse, I didn’t want to say “no” or stand up for myself and look stupid. I listened to offensive jokes without stopping them. I allowed people to take advantage of my low self-esteem. Most days I wish I could go back and punch that Kate in the face. But other times, like now, I like to recall those days and remember why it’s important to me to talk with the girls about this kind of stuff. Times have changed, but people really haven’t.