Adolescence: Not easy, but no need to end it

Let’s End Adolescence writes Newt Gingrich in the October 30th Business Week. Adolecense, argues Gingrich, is a 19th century invention and, indeed, a “social experiment” that has largely failed. Why keep supporting a “system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives”? Why not skip the whole notion of some kind of transition stage between childhood and young adulthood and stop (as Gingrich seems to suggest)  delaying the inevitability of adulthood, and have kids “shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30″?

Well, Newt, let me tell you something.

At 11 1/2, my son Charlie’s definitely in the throes of adolescence. Almost all the clothes he wore last summer have either gone into the Goodwill pile, or been hand-me-upped to my drawers and (you’re gonna gasp) Jim’s. Every night when I look at the reflection of Charlie and me in the bathroom mirror as he’s brushing his teeth, he seems taller than the week before (the day before?). Jim’s been using the electric shaver on Charlie’s upper lip and, as noted before, the hormonal thing has hit big time. We had dinner last night with friends whose baby isn’t even 6 months old: Needless to say, a lot of memories were stirred up of what it was like to hold a long-limbed big-head boy in the crook of my left arm. Now he’s the one looking down at me.

I’m not sure adolescence can be done away with—-it’s part of the process of growing up. Gingrich proposes having children (I guess he wouldn’t say “adolescents” since he’s calling for the end of such a notion) start job-training earlier and start taking on the professional and financial responsibilities involved. But there’s a reason for “adolescence,” for extending childhood or (if you want to think of it this way) delaying adulthood.

Charlie, not even in his teenage years, just having started middle school, and the youngest in his middle school classroom, has already started pre-vocational training. Folding laundry, cooking, food prep, vacuuming—-these are “life skills” on his IEP, but they also fall under the “pre-voc” category. We continue to teach him writing, reading, simple arithmetic; we often have to really emphasize how he needs to keep studying these things: Because everything about Charlie’s learning has to, already, be “functional.”

The purpose of Charlie’s education doesn’t have to automatically be to teach him to “get a job” and “use his skills.” I continue to teach him cello and piano. Just as much as any child, Charlie needs to have all areas of his education addressed and not only those that are “functional.” For a child like Charlie—whose academic program is far different from that of his peers and who’s going to be in special education for the rest of his schooling—-there’s just as much a need to develop his abilities and his interests and to expose to the arts, to music; to provide him with what you could call as much of a liberal arts education as possible. It’s music and sports that play a role in helping Charlie to allay some of his anxieties, do something he’s good at, and develop interests that could potentially be lifelong. Sure Charlie needs to learn skills for a job that will drawn on his abilities, like that of 22-year-old Andrew Janusz, but work is one part of the big picture.

When the talk turns too much to teaching Charlie “pro-voc” skills and our requests for music lessons are greeted with “oh sure” and bland nods and suppressed rollings-of-eyes, I hear the voice of “hurry hurry hurry.” Adolescence is not turning out to be the easiest of times for Charlie, who I suspect must often be feeling like the same kid he’s always been, but in a body that’s becoming an adult’s. Charlie needs time to grow up. It’s taken him longer than most kids to learn to do so much, why push him (not to mention other children) ahead so fast? What’s the rush?