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Illustration by Catherine Chan
I thought grad school was challenging. I remember surgically attaching a Doppler cuff to an artery of Atlantic salmon, then measuring its cardiac performance while the fish exercised in a swim tube. I worked with complicated statistical analyses that took me months to figure out. All this led to writing a paper decent enough to be accepted into a scientific journal.
Job hunting was nerve-racking. Next came marriage – having a healthy one takes loads of work. Childbirth was no picnic and raising toddlers while working full time with a frequently travelling husband? Now that was chaotic.
I would tell my teen self, one day you’ll be the out-est you can be and life turns out great
Presently, however, I’m doing my darnedest to parent teenage girls in the 21st century. There is no single word to describe it. There is a metaphor, though, that I have used a few times in the past few years years.
“I’d think twice before having kids,” I told one woman. “Being a parent is like ripping your heart out of your chest, pinning it to a clothesline and leaving it outside to be whipped and beaten by tropical storm.”
Of course there are pauses in that tropical storm. But parenting teen girls is the hardest job I’ve had yet. If I’m not learning about mental-health concerns or the lure of addictive, influential technology then I’m helping them navigate the horrendous ways teenagers treat one another, especially behind their backs and on social media. It’s left my heart weathered, at best, and tattered on the most blustery days.
It was about three years ago that I started working toward my PhD in Parenting. I didn’t plan to, but that’s how parenting works. Expect the unexpected.
A PhD in Parenting is a multidisciplinary degree and, in case you were wondering, self-adorned. I’ve earned it by spending the equivalent of weeks if not months of reading about topics ranging from anxiety and bullying to Gen Z lingo used online. I’ve conducted research, analyzed information, kept meticulous records and written enough correspondence to school administrators, counsellors and other professionals to, in my opinion, earn an honorary doctorate.
I don’t want another framed certificate on my office wall, though. I want to raise good humans (which I am) that are resilient (which they are learning to be) and who find joy and good in people and the world despite the crud it sometimes throws at you (which I have reason to believe will happen).
I also work as a children’s writer. Many of my projects have social-emotional themes, likely sparked by my recent self-education about the nervous system. A few months ago, I attended a conference and during a book editor’s presentation, she said that when hard things happen, we need to write a story about it. That’s how we can make a difference. We are writers, after all.
That’s why I’m writing this reflection. Maybe my words will reach someone else that needs to read them as much as I need to write them.
Psychologist and author Dr. Lisa Damour says that there has never been a harder time to be a teenager or to parent teenagers. Hearing this makes me feel like I’m not alone or the only person trying to find their way through the land of teenageville. Based on my personal experiences so far, I have every reason to believe that Damour’s statement is 125 per cent accurate. That means, however, that this may not be my last reflection on raising teens, especially since my daughters are only 12 and 17.
If the past three years are any indication, I can’t begin to imagine what subject matter I’ll delve into next that will further diversify my multidisciplinary degree. Here’s hoping it’s as mundane as learning the ins and outs of cross-stitch.
Some days my heart feels tired from maintaining its steadfast pumping, especially when the winds pick up again. Yet I keep it secured to that clothesline, held firm by my belief that knowledge is the pin that keeps it up there, hanging on whatever the weather delivers.
If my girls have to be teenagers in the 21st century, the least I can do is face the storm with them. If I’ve learned nothing else in earning my honorary doctorate, I’ve learned that.
And that I’m unlikely to run out of story ideas any time soon.
Beth Elliott lives in Ottawa.
