Who has the more difficult role, the parents or the teenagers? In “Adolescents – Instruction Manual”, psychologist Eduardo Sá breaks myths and undoes knots that, after all, may be easier to untie than one could imagine. The answers to tension between teens and parents sometimes lie in the simple act of listening to each other. This is clearly evident in the excerpt that we exclusively publish from the new book, published this week, by the author and host of the Rádio Observador podcast “Como Sim Não é Reposta”.
“Dating is much more important than studying.” The phrase, which we take from the excerpt published here, may terrify some parents, or most, but it is necessary to read it in context. In this chapter titled: “It’s very boring to be a teenager,” Eduardo Sá guides us through the many doubts we have at this stage of life. The plural is intended to contain us (parents) and them (children). We (parents) show signs of forgetting what we have already experienced when we question ourselves about the “hits” that they (children) give us. However, as Eduardo Sá asks in this book, “but, at the end of the day, who suffers from attention deficit, will it be them or (who knows?) us?”
Eduardo Sá is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He has dedicated a large part of his professional life to supporting children, adolescents and, of course, his parents. We can hear it in “Por qué si es no hay responder,” the Rádio Observador podcast, which is broadcast from Monday to Friday after the 4:00 p.m. newspapers, and read it in the articles published on Sundays in Observador. Eduardo Sá is one of the most respected names in psychology in Portugal. He is a professor at the University of Coimbra and ISPA, in Lisbon. He is the author of scientific articles and books in the area of psychoanalysis and psychosomatics, in addition to disseminating good mental health and parenting practices.
“But when you look at it, teenagers are really worthwhile people. I like teenagers! From your loyal and serious side, when they talk. Even when they are demagogic, every day. I like the sulfurous way in which they test us and, as if it were a roller coaster, they go from Rezingão to Calimero in almost an instant. And I like the way they resist talking (when they imagine us as double agents, working for their parents) and the way they almost get irritated because they can’t contain a smile, after we’ve been ironic to them. And the flash with which they go from morality to insolence and wait, from those they admire, for the rules and arguments that, shortly after, are deployed on their younger brothers, as if they had thought things through with method and delicacy . And I like the way they embrace causes and ignore what’s boring. And they look for slogans. Both when they say that they are unmotivated (as if this were a virus, indifferent to the fact that they do not feel motivated to meet them and rescue them) and when they block (which is a way, with special effects, of talking about the fear of failing, of not being capable and even the fear of being afraid, which seems forbidden to any bureaucrat with a backpack). And lastly, I like the trickster side they show in the game, at school and outside of it. And they eat the grass (and play with their head, body and soul) whenever they feel like they are winning head-on. Or they take refuge in guilt, laziness or stupidity (other people!), every time their commitment, pride, determination or tenacity is constrained or they barely avoid competing with a colleague or avoid measuring their strength with an adult.
I like teenagers. Even when I recognize that everything is important and valuable, it takes time and involves a lot of mistakes. And what they demand of them does not seem to include any of that. Then, because connecting social relationships is very confusing, to the point of not knowing how to manage it. Later, because each one demands this world and the other, while, at 12, puberty distorts them and, at 14, sexuality. When you hit your head, it only complicates them.
It’s really boring being a teenager! Because everyone asks them how they’re doing at school when they dabble and flirt and constantly struggle with their hearts when it comes to seducing, flirting and flirting. Because no one tells them that dating is much more important than studying. Because – although passions sometimes last 10 minutes – first comes, forever, love (and the desire to be happy every day!) and only later comes work and career (although anyone who guarantees them, with the example they give them, that the world is going backwards).
And it is annoying, too, because parents have to endure more or less silent regrets, faced with the difficulty of their children’s adolescence, when there is no task that hurts more than losing parents: losing the side of them that, well, It’s spread. outside (and on tiptoe), it seemed to take them almost to touch the clouds, and it seemed to never get tired, never fall out of love, never give in to honesty and coherence (but it was falling apart, little by little). ); losing the guessing finger with which they made one bluff after another but who, in the blink of an eye, are unaware of other people’s fears and the adolescence they did not have; and they lose the sense of justice – and the authority, which comes immediately after –, looking like (parents and children) two scared hedgehogs trying to hug each other; although it stings.
And it is boring, too, because it is not easy to separate dreams from daydreams and mix the dreams that you dream with those that your parents postponed forever (at the same time everyone tells you that what counts is the present, only the present) . as if dreams were no longer (as they only are!) the door to the future.
And it’s annoying, especially, because everyone talks about school. And although dreams are woven in school, most adolescents make functional decisions when they decide to dedicate themselves to an area that they do not like but that will be more favorable to employability and more profitable in the short term (as if the maxim that which is what they are given: choose a rich girlfriend and then do what you do with Schweppes tonic: learn to like it!). But does anyone realize that the vast majority of teenagers, by the time they reach the second period of their tenth year, have already noticed that their dreams seem to have gone, too fast, too far? And does everyone believe in adolescent blocks or adolescent demotivation when what happens is that, taking into account their dreams, they begin to live in early retirement for life, because their passion seems to have been compromised forever? for your choices?
But, at the end of the day, those who suffer from attention deficit, will it be them or (who knows?) us?…
And it’s boring, finally, to be a teenager because everyone teaches them otherwise. Nobody tells you that there are no successful careers if a person is not paid to play. If not after a passion. If you don’t get confused and shuffle many times until your choices are to your liking. But that’s why you have to work hard to find a passion. And that only cheaters wait for their passions to fall into their hands or to come by surprise (especially when they say that, first, they need to be sure of what they are good at so, only then, can they do their thing). better based on this).
Someone tell teenagers that we are never good! That without passion there is no determination and without dreams we remain at the doors of the future! And that we are all teenagers who are building ourselves. That wisdom is a way to make the most of mistakes. And that, yes sir, many hours of determination are necessary, so that, with genius and with a smile on your lips, you can put your passion and the future in your pocket.
Source: Observadora
