The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon explains why I'm suddenly seeing teens everywhere. After reading an article by a professor who insists that when a teenager makes "the stupid choice", their brain is actually "working exactly as designed", I can't escape them. Not just literally, because it's the school holidays – hanging about in groups, being scarily tall and all dressed identically – but also in news stories, adverts for adolescent skincare, and old clips of Harry Enfield's Kevin and Perry sketches. Unrelatedly, my son's 12th birthday is fast approaching. This is the very last year my little boy will be nice and preteen, and algorithms remind me from all angles: soak up every second while there's still time. Tick tock, tick tock.
The Science of Teenage Brains
Dr Evelyn Svingen, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Birmingham, says teenage minds function "in a way that has been shaped by evolution for a unique and uniquely challenging time of life." This is both reassuring and concerning – in the future my son will make dumb decisions, but it's okay because that's what he's meant to do. Sheesh.
A Mother's Reckoning
The most awful part of preparing to parent a teen is the certainty that karma is coming for me. My mother physically rubs her hands together with glee whenever the subject arises, already snuggling into her front row seat. I was the most terrible teenager who has ever stomped across the earth, then slammed the door while screaming "I hate you!" My mum tells it – decades later – that I went up to bed on the eve of my 13th birthday a delightful angel, and the next morning transformed into the princess of darkness. Over the next few years I made every stupid choice going, though as my mother notes, my brain was working exactly as designed.
What haunts me most now isn't the risks or dangerous situations, but how embarrassed I was by my parents simply because they existed. I remember walking behind my dad in town, purposely dawdling to stay five paces behind so no one would see us together. Some of it was his unfashionable anorak, but mostly being out in public with either parent was horrific. I didn't consider what that experience was like for him. Now, 14 years after his death, I would give almost anything to walk down a road with him.
The Dawning of Teenagerdom
My son's descent has already started. Driving with him last week, I needed to pop into a supermarket and he was mortified in case any schoolfriends were around. I suggested he stay in the car, but waiting in the car for your mum is apparently a fate worse than being seen in Sainsbury's with her. This is an essential stage of growing up. We have to try to understand, not take it too personally, and let him go – but not too far, hopefully. Tick tock, tick tock.
