The Relative Power of Teenage Mockery

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Sometimes, the kids are possessed of misplaced ambition. Consider the time when one of my teens wanted to eat starfruit, grapefruit, and mangoes, simultaneously. Consider, as well, the occasion during which another one of my youths insisted on wearing her brother’s underwear on her head. At such moments, all a mother can do is smile and nod.

Recently, a homefront debacle, between a brother and a sister, focused on visual representations of reality. One of my valuable little people decided that she would become an artist, despite the fact that her brother had just, the week before, “proven indubitably,” that painters and sculptors are of little utility to the race.
 
Socks were hurled. Insults were launched. In short notice, our salon resembled a kindergarten, post-holiday party, instead of an entertainment space ordinarily used by a family of teens.

I sat each assailant down in their respective corners and read them their rights. They had the right to sweep the porch, to empty the dishwasher, and to praise their mother’s writing. On the other hand, they lacked the right to criticize each other’s efforts or to shower each other with disparaging remarks.

After that session, I naively hoped for a measure of civility between them. I even fantasized what our family life would be like if they quickly ascended to the level where other people’s feelings mattered.  Dreams are entertaining, but not substantive.

In point of fact, my son failed to cease his dismal forecasts of my daughter’s future, in general, and of her proclivity to create wonderful products, specifically. No renewed friendship arose between the two of them. Rather, my daughter began to use her sniping skills on her brother. His haircut was goofy and his socks were, suddenly, all the wrong color.

When adolescents’ talents are propagated in an atmosphere of spite, emotional incommensurabilities bite at family members, at best, or kills their self-esteem, at worst. My son began raiding my husband’s socks drawer and my daughter tore up several weeks’ worth of artistic effort. Their familial experience had to be altered, and I had to be the one to instigate the changes.

In order to restore a semblance of peace in the precious space of our home, and to booster my kids’ self-belief, I spoke to each one of them out of earshot of the other. To my assailed daughter, I said that other points of validation, beyond those of her brother’s, consistently framed her as a budding creative sort. If she insisted on relying on external reality checks, she needed to include those that were positive alongside of those that were mean-spirited.

As for her brother, I agreed with him that his days were long, were full of school, homework, and chores, and that it would be lovely if he had more time, regularly, to play his guitar, to throw around a football and just to chill. I also pointed out that his words, especially to a younger sibling, even if said in jest, even if spoken as part of a larger, ongoing “connection,” must be more carefully guarded.
 
I wish I could tell you that my strategy, which combined acknowledgement and boundaries, worked fully. I also wish that the kids would be interested in picking up the laundry from their floors and in wiping the dining room table after they eat.

What I can relay is that this particular type of teasing occurs less often in our home and that when it happens, it happens with less intensity. Also, when it happens, offenders are much quicker to own their share in the problem. I can share with you, as well, that my daughter made a gorgeous pencil holder for my son, for his birthday, and that my son invited her to play catch with him when none of his friends were looking.

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