To steffie: Yes, I didn't mean to sound predatory -- my comment does sort of read that way. I just remember how deeply kids of my generation already were convinced as teenagers that their worth was tied to their appearance. I was trying to think of some way to challenge the conventional standards, which I remember as so tyrannical, usually established by a strange mix of commercial images and peer judgements. When you get older, you look back at those standards and they seem so wrong. Youth itself is so lovely.
RP, I never had children, so that qualifies anything I can say in response. I remember being a child very clearly though. I was very close to my parents but especially my dad until I was about thirteen. Dad and I used to sit and have long conversations about just about everything -- I could tell that he really enjoyed having this little kid babbling away at him, so I babbled, eh?
And he taught me a lot, especially about being independent and not letting anyone put words in my mouth -- srsly, that was a discussion we had when I was maybe ten or eleven?
But there was always a part of me (after maybe five or six) that was thinking that adults did not know how smart I was. Now, obviously, I still needed more protection than I realized at the time, but I also still think that adults underestimate how much little kids pick up and figure out on their own. I mean, on the one hand, you're going to Sunday school and learning to be good and pure, but on the other, you're observing more and more the way the real world works, and at some point you start to think, this does not compute, eh?
And then I think it is such a common experience that junior high and high school in North America spirit teenagers off into a world where parents really can't follow much. The protection is still needed, but the kid's head is with her peers, and then probably, unfortunately, with the assault of commercial messages from all directions, even if parents have tried to armour their kids against that (and most don't).
I remember my teens as an intensely intense time. I learned so much so fast. My mind was certainly working overtime, but I have never felt better physically than when I was maybe sixteen-eighteen -- I can still remember the clothes I wore then, and I remember how wonderful they felt on my body. Splendour in the grass, glory in the flower -- every young person deserves that.
