Spending a few days with my daughter and her family, it occurred to me that one of the reasons parenting is so hard is that the adults have no frame of reference. Do other kids act like this at the dinner table? Do other parents feel so frustrated at times that they want to cry? Do they cry? One way of getting those answers is by talking to other parents. Another way is to connect with your child’s friends–the youngest consequential strangers in your convoy.
Child consequential strangers provide a window into a different world: what kids are into, how they talk, their fears. And it’s easier to listen because you don’t have the same emotional reaction when they lobby for a Wii or complain about their own parents’ insistence on a 10 o’clock curfew.
Ron Taffel grasped this reality nearly a decade ago when he began to invite teens’ peers into therapy sessions. Whether the guest was a good friend or a teammate of the client’s, his or her presence enhanced Ron’s understanding of his client’s daily habitat and the forces that weighed on him. Along similar lines–and this is a subject of some debate–teachers who connect with students on their Facebook pages see a potential for information, connection and mentoring. (An excellent discussion of these issues was sparked by Dana Boyd, an authority on teens’ online social habits, in a post on her blog.)
The truth is, even if you’re not a parent, teacher, or therapist, you probably already have child consequential strangers in your life–your cousin’s children, your friend’s grandchildren, the kids next door. And it’s a good idea to connect with them. I have a 14 year old “handy man” who waters my plants, shovels my walk when I’m gone, and helps me with gardening and heavy lifting. In our occasional conversations, I’ve heard about his track meets, his efforts to raise money for an African village, his summer plans. And when I wanted to find some “hip” music, I asked him. He naturally suggested a group I’d never heard of. Still, I’m enriched by our relationship, and I’d like to think he is, too.
Not so incidentally, such intergenerational connections might help change young people’s minds about their elders. As I report in Chapter 6 of the book, of all the unconscious attitudes that we harbor–white over black, skinny over fat, straight over gay, able-bodied over disabled–the bias against “old” is the strongest! (Test your own “implicit attitudes.”)
