Growing up in an immigrant family in an all-white middle class suburban neighborhood, I never felt quite like I belonged. As a child, I did not think about it or even take the time to feel much about it. Thinking back on it, all I remember is that I always felt different. Now I know why I felt that why and why as I became a teenager and a young adult, I felt almost like I did not belong in so many of the situations I found myself. Or, as I climbed the education ladder in college from the undergraduate up to the graduate, that I was an imposter.
I vaguely remember learning the word immigrant in a history class in school– I think it was in middle school. I guess I remember it because maybe I realized that the word was what my father and extended family were. I don’t know why else I would still remember learning that word. But I do not believe I gave it much thought because it wasn’t until college that I started thinking about how my childhood was different than all my friends. I had always thought it was different because my family was not as economically secure as my friends’ families. As I grew up, I began to see that those families did things my family did not– like shop at certain stores, buy items that my parents would not spend money on, go out to restaurants that did not have coupons, shop without coupons, and buy brand name items while my family bought all the store brand items. I also started to understand that the difference was due to my father’s lack of education (he didn’t get to finish high school before he was brought to America and sent to work) and the other families’ education. Those fathers and mothers had college educations (which I really did not know what that was).
I also knew that half of my family spoke a different language, much to my embarrassment, and that no one else in my neighborhood or friend group had grandparents who did not speak English. That I knew. But I did not know that all of these differences would make my lived experience so different from their lived experience even though we lived next door to one another and went to the same schools.
What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with the world of the teenager? Quite a bit actually.
My father did not allow my brothers or me to have the teenage experience that all my friends had. I did not get to go to many sleepovers and got to have even fewer at my house. I did not get to start dating at a young age. My first boyfriend was towards the latter half of my senior year of high school. I did not get to move away from home to attend college. Nor did I get to move out of my house and live with friends in the dorms of my local college or in an apartment with a bunch of other girls. No, I stayed home until I married at the age of 27 years.
Again, you are thinking, what does this have to do with the world of a teen?
When I started having my own children, I believed that they would not push away from me as most teens do at some point. Rejecting their parents for their friends, becoming private, and not sharing the details of their lives, going up to their room, closing the door and staying up there for hours. Because I was not allowed to behave in such a way when I was a teen and was forced to see my grandparents every Sunday and have dinner at their house, I knew my children would turn out the same way.
No resistance, no rebellion, no teenage angst.
That was the American way, not the immigrant way.
But when we entered the world of the teen, I learned that I was wrong. My son was angry many days and did not want to talk to me. I couldn’t figure out where my happy-go-lucky kid had gone. I tried to be silly with him, joke with him, do all the things I had done before that would make him smile, but they didn’t work. On some days he was fine, but most days he was not. And I never could predict from one day to the next what we would get.
We made it through. But then my daughter became a teen. If I thought the years with my son were difficult, I did not know what hit me with her. There were days that I worried that I really didn’t like her and might never like her again. She was so selfish and self-absorbed. I couldn’t even have a conversation with her, because all she was doing during our conversation was thinking about herself– what she wanted to say, what she needed, what someone might be thinking of her if that person saw her having a conversation with her mom.
How had this happened? I had done many of the same things that my dad did when I was growing up– spending time with the grandparents, spending lots of family time together, eating family meals every night. I had also let my kids have friends over for play dates and sleepovers, plus letting them go to friends’ homes for sleepovers. They played sports, joined teams, did all the things that American kids do. I believed in balance– a nice mix of the immigrant experience with the American way of life. I was the parent who understood what my children were feeling and going through while also being the parent who instilled respect for family. I thought for certain this would protect my children from becoming the “typical teen”.
But it hadn’t.
Where had I messed up?
Well, I hadn’t messed up. And there was nothing wrong with my teens. They were behaving the way they should behave, based upon what the science now tells us.
And trying to get them to not behave this way could lead to much worse results.
Because as I know, although my dad protected us from risk and danger, that time of my life was not a happy one. Through his fear of letting go, I felt suppressed and unheard.
Is this what I wanted for my children?
