Our adolescent's feelings

By true regard for the FEELINGS WE HAD IN OUR OWN ADOLESCENCE we gain truer regard for OUR ADOLESCENT'S FEELINGS right now.

It is not easy to recapture exactly how we felt. We can get at memories, perhaps, of being too fat, too thin, too tall, too short. Memories, perhaps, of various uncomfortable moments. Of being unable to be convincing when we wanted most to convince. Of being unable to be attractive when we wanted most to attract. Too eager, perhaps. Or too bungling. Dreaming about things to come and shamefaced about our dreaming. Wondering about life and trying not to wonder. Feeling old, terribly old.

"Like our children now! And being treated terribly young!"

"Why do we smile when we think of ourselves as adolescents?" a group of parents asked themselves.

"Perhaps out of charity."

"To tell ourselves that feelings we had then were nonexistent, especially the sex feelings, because we thought them so bad."

"Or we smile to pass over the memory of having wanted to flaunt those feelings . . ."

"And to forget that we had the revolt feelings too . . ."

"What do you mean, the revolt feelings?"

"The hostile feelings against our parents when we felt they were old-fashioned and foolish and didn't know anything."

"You mean, when we thought that we knew it all . . ."

"We didn't like to see certain feelings in ourselves then. We don't like to see them in our adolescents now. The sex feelings and the hostile feelings, those were the worst. They still are."

Ask yourself: Do you remember your feelings toward your parents? Your struggles to break loose? Your worried resentments when you felt they were holding the reins too tight? Your sorry anger when you felt what to you spelled a lack of support?

Do you remember your feelings toward your bodies? Your feelings toward girls if you were a boy and toward boys if you were a girl? Your feelings about love and marriage? Your wonderings about sex and sex contact and birth?

As you read this book you will be reminded of these questions again and again. If you remember little, perhaps as you read you will remember more. You may come upon things that will make you exclaim, "I'd forgotten about that!" Or "Oh, I see! I, too, must have felt that way without realizing it then."

We have buried so much. Sometimes even while an event was happening, we shoveled its most important meanings under the soil of consciousness, because inside of us it touched old feelings of fear or hesitance, guilt or shame. Even so, it still can propel us to meet our children's feelings with unnecessary fear and hesitance, with uncalled-for guilt and shame.

The more we can recapture those young feelings of ours with clarity, with honesty and without too great a sense of apology, the more shall we grow in acceptance and understanding of our children. The more shall we be able to know and learn about them. The better able shall we be to help them grow and mature.