Adolescents are children too

I’m walking in the rain (and yes, the old song runs through my head) enjoying the shifting colours of the season fall here in Quebec. It is just dawn and I am also thinking about how, just a few months ago, if I had been walking at this time I would be in the full daylight.

As the day moves eventually to early dusk, it turns to Halloween night in Quebec; a time when children dress, or are dressed, up as “something other than they really are” and parade the streets knocking on strangers doors looking for some sweet treat, which the strangers willingly shell out into the bags the children carry.

Later there will be “oh so cool” adolescents walking the streets as well, grouped together for safety and connectedness, pretending they are above it all but occasionally giving in to their real selves and, popping up to a door, they too will ask for treats.

It’s cool, really, when the adolescents come to the door. They knock and then stand there waiting. When you open the door, there they are, in all their cool, giving off a “where’s the treat, mate?” look. As if they weren’t really doing this childish thing and were at your door demanding something you were obligated to give. Tough and demanding is the pose. Anything to hide the fact that, really, they too are seeking to play the game.

A few years back, Sylviane set up a little game inside the door “it was a big board with a series of holes in it and above each hole was attached a different kind of treat “a sweet bar, a small bag of candies, a banana ... and what you had to do was toss a small sandbag into the hole which held the treat you wanted. If you missed and did not get the sandbag into a hole, you got to try again “and again “until you did “no losers here!

Well, the children thought it was great. But when the adolescents came to the door in their “oh so cool” pose, they let her know they thought it was stupid. But she insisted that this was the only way you were getting a treat here. It was fun to watch. For many, of course, they casually tossed the sandbag, missing any hole and so had to try again “within a few minutes they were laughing with her and trying again “and when they were successful, she cheered, gave them their treat and congratulated them on a job well done. Some of them even wanted to try again, not because they did not like the treat they had achieved, but, simply, they were having fun. So, she let them do it again, reminding them that there were no more treats to “be won” if they had already been successful. They didn’t care “they were, simply, having fun and wanted to continue. In the end, whether they tried again or not, they left laughing “cool and real, is the way I thought of them when they left the door.

The children come to the door dressed up in their costume “a witch, a goblin, an angel or some recognisable person. The adolescents come to the door dressed in their “oh so cool” attitude.

In the end, I remember, adolescents are children too. We need to remember this, I think. Otherwise, because we do not treat them as adults, we end up treating them as objects. And that just alienates us all in the end.

Thom