Saying 2020 was tough sounds cliche. I believe that each one had their moments, losses and growths. If I could sum it up in single words, they would be: separation, sadness, learning, adolescence. The last one, adolescence, is the daughter’s. I have twins, a couple. But she got older before him.
We realize that the child is entering this phase when the bedroom door closes, the pimples appear, he or she starts to feel ugly. The nose is too big, the hair is weird. No-one-will-ever-like-me. The laughter ceases as you approach, and the company, once frequent, ceases to exist. And you feel… alone.
There is no parenting manual
I remember at the time, on a difficult day, I looked at old photos and there she was, my girl. Cry. I felt relieved and, at the same time, terrible. Clara was still my daughter, but she was changing and I didn’t know how to be her mother, starting with the person she was becoming. Where is the manual?
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Well, it doesn’t. At least not as much as there is about preparing for the baby’s first few months, potty training, dealing with nighttime nightmares. As the designer Estéfi Machado, mother of Teo, 15, and one of the people I spoke with to write this text, would say, “there are not many manuals on how to deal with a teenager (compared to childhood) nor how to welcome this mother” – I will talk about Estéfi later on, but her phrase fits too much here.
I understood that being the mother of two young people – Lucas was just a teenager – has made me learn even more about myself and, above all, knowing how to listen. So this is a text about listening, based on the phase that you and I live: adolescence.
The date with my inner teenager
The year was 1988. He was in high school (current high school), and Cazuza released the song “Vida Louca Vida”: “Vida crazy, life… short life/Since I can’t take you/I want you to take me”. She tidied up the room. She was 16 years old. Everything was too much, from joy to sadness, from excitement to frustration. I was thinking about my father and the phrase I had heard from him a moment ago: “I feel longing of my daughter”. It crossed me. She knew she was still the same, only older. It was growing, but was that a bad thing? How could he not see me?
I had to meet my girl, in the youth room, a space shared with her older sister, the chair in the corner full of piled up clothes, asking to be put away. “Look at your teenager if you want to make room for conversation with your daughter”, the invitation came from dear Diana Corso, a psychoanalyst from Rio Grande do Sul who for years was also a columnist for this publication.
Diana had just released the book Adolescence in Letter: movies and psychoanalysis to understand it (Artmed), together with her husband, also a psychoanalyst Mário Corso, who devoted years of study to understanding the young man’s way of thinking and being. I turned to her to remedy my affliction regarding Clara. Or rather, my loneliness, “missing my daughter”, repeating the same phrase I had heard from my father, decades ago.
we are really listening?
“Parents want their children to transcend, to be everything they would like to be. They think like this: ‘you have more opportunities today’. Only, deep down, the teenager remains everything he always was, feeling like a rotten potato “, said Diana, in a conversation made by video call.
Rotten potato, Diana? yes, all teenager feels ugly. At this moment, I remember Clara and Lucas. Both complain sometimes about the nose, sometimes about the height, sometimes about the hair… Me? In her youth, she hated the size of her full breasts, she was too short, too hairy, too ugly. Yes, Diana was right. She felt like a rotten potato.
At this point in the conversation, Diana calls Mário, who joins us and brings his perspective on adolescence. I ask Mário why this is a phase of so many discussions between parents and children. “Parents find it difficult to see their children fragile. Listening to them can be an abyss. Not everyone can handle it. That’s why the parents don’t even finish listening and start talking, running over, because of the anguish of listening to that little being say something that they are not realizing. And they say: you need to get up early, do gymnastics… or: you are wonderful ”, he replies.
“When you remember that you also felt that way, it’s different”, ponders Mário. And Diana continues: “When a daughter or son says they feel like crap and the mother replies ‘no, you’re beautiful’, she’s not listening. If the daughter is saying that she thinks she’s rubbish, it’s because that’s how she sees herself”. Dialogues like this, I realize, do not promote true listening, but defensive listening.
Interference of self-projection in listening
Mário explains that it is also common for us to have a self-centered reading, and he illustrates: parents who had problems with drugs are the most paranoid that the children get involved with drugs. “We are in a projection exercise all the time. Not just in relation to children, but in all relationships. We actually talk to ourselves all the time,” he adds.
I understand that the difference between true listening and defensive listening is having the ability to listen without so much self-defense. “If we realize that the conversation awakens all of this in us, there is a measly chance of listening to what the other is saying. In that way, perhaps, they will teach us something. Not that they are wiser, but their questions are interesting”, says Mário.
What is he saying?
Estéfi Machado – I promised I would talk about her again – practiced the home office long before it became a common modality. When Teo was 3, that is, 12 years ago, she worked at home as a designer. Sitting in front of the computer, she needed to be aware of the boy who curled up between her legs.
It was to interact more with the little one that he started to take what he had at hand to distract him, building toys with simple material. The hobby turned into a profession. Estéfi develops digital content from objects and accessories made mainly with paper, cardboard, plant leaves. Today he is also a columnist for our portal.
When Teo became a teenager, she also felt her partner’s withdrawal. Along with this came the first discussions. “Then, I started to put myself in his shoes, to think about what I was like in youth, which I would have liked to have heard,” he says. “Today, I count to a hundred not to be reactive. I think: let me try to accept what he is feeling, even though at that age a pimple is the end of the world. Instead of arguing how you can be worried about it (the pimple) when so many people are starving, I try to transport myself, to understand. Really having a pimple on the day of a party is bad. And so I help him to organize his emotions”, he exemplifies.
It has worked. Anyone who wants to can look at Estefi’s Instagram (@blog.estefi.machado), where Teo himself answers several questions: what should I give a teenager as a gift? How should parents talk to their children? It’s worth listening to. And I realized there a way to have true conversations not only with my children, but with my parents, siblings, friends.
yes it will hurt
Exercising this listening is a learning experience for all of us. For parents, perhaps this is more challenging, I assure you. I had a last interview with psychologist Ila Marques Porto Linares, a specialist in behavioral therapy. “When a young person cuts himself, gets hurt, has extreme attitudes, is silent in the bedroom, what is he trying to say? Suffering, anguish? Conversations demand entering more into the world of the other. It’s not always pleasant,” he says.
This difficulty in hearing and having to deal with something uncomfortable happens throughout our lives, regardless of age. I am learning to exercise this in my two extremes: with children and with parents elderly. With my children, I approach them based on their tastes and I remember the young woman who still lives
in me. Clara loves sports. I invited her to run with me, and we are planning our first road race together. With Lucas, who loves to draw, I’ve been showing my drawings and asking for help when I run into something I don’t know how to do.
With my parents, well, that’s a tougher lesson. For me. Accompanying the end of their road confronts me with my fear of losing them. I hear. With attention and openness. I welcome their speeches and difficulties without complaining or scolding them. And then I write about my pain. Ah, a good suggestion: write. This helps a lot in noticing listening problems. And it helps us to have a panoramic view of events. Finally, I must add that listening to yourself and the other is also an act of courage and love. Something that makes us grow. Listen.
By Ana Holanda – Simple Life magazine
Journalist and writer who confesses that listening to children and parents has turned into rich writing material.
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