>Indulge Me

I’m reading The Little Locksmith right now, by Katharine Butler Hathaway. It’s an obscure little book that I put on my ‘to read’ list years ago, received for Christmas, and didn’t think about again (much) until I spied Rory carrying it on Season Two of Gilmore Girls.

If you want details on the book, go here and read about it. For the purposes of this post, though, I just want to talk about the following excerpt, in which Hathaway is describing a friend’s mother who made Hathaway and her teenage friend marvelous, extravagant lunches each day in the summer time when the two girls lolled around at the seaside, talked endlessly and wrote poetry:

“We were humored and spoiled, and I thought it was very fine indeed, for the careless, absent-minded young to be sheltered during their season of absent-mindedness in such a careful chrysalis. For in too many houses the life of the mind, when it is just beginning to discover its individual existence in the young members of a family, often has to accomodate itself to the unnecessary, senseless tyranny of the domestic machinery, as if it only were the all-important thing. And in such a household any young person who instinctively tries to shelter his mind’s life with a little private margin of stillness and solitude and timelessness is likely to awaken a curious resentment and even hatred in more practical members of the household, as though they were jealous of the prestige and latitude sometimes accorded to those who indulge in meditation.”

I’ve talked about Pushover Parents a lot lately, parents who indulge their children (including their teenagers) far too often. But this passage perfectly addresses the flip side of the issue, reminding me that teens need to be indulged in some respects, far more than they will be indulged as adults. As I try to teach my teen stepdaughters responsibility, accountability, compassion and patience, it is so easy to forget that for the next few years anyway, they will imagine themselves to be tortured, poetic souls with deep thoughts and dreams and ambitions. They will look on their father and me as mundane, ordinary mortals and that is absolutely as it should be.

I remember feeling the same way when I was a teenager. I wrote volumes of poetry and aborted novels, memorized passages from Shakespeare, sang mangled arias in the shower, rented obscure foreign films and listened to The Cure’s Disintegration or Mozart’s Requiem when I was feeling particularly dark and romantic. By day I was a chatty, sociable cheerleader, but no one, I was convinced, understood the real me. I was an artist. Strike that. I was an Artiste. My parents didn’t really buy into all of this, but they did the right thing when I was in these moods and at least left me alone.

But the mother Hardaway refers to went one step further, actually nurturing these moods and participating in them appropriately. I want to remember to try and do things like this for my girls. Right now, my girls can’t really articulate it, but they want to be treated like adults while still being coddled like children. Many of us stray too far into one camp or another, either treating our teens like they’re in some sort of boot camp or giving into their every whim. I want to try and maintain a balance, teaching them independence while at the same time giving them a few last glimpses of the indulgence of childhood before they go off on their own.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.