By Charles Oseroff, MD
[Spring 2006; Vol. 32, No. 3; Pg 7]
Being
a therapist has to be easier than being a parent. I’ve had this thought many
times over the years, but find myself ruminating on it today as my son and I
take our first tour to look at colleges. As a therapist, my teenage patients
argue with me and tell me I’m wrong, but I’m rarely lost and I have them at
a professional disadvantage. They need me to sit tight, to hear them out, to
argue back on occasion and relentlessly interpret their rage. Within a few years
they come to their senses, think of me favorably and move on with their lives.
My sadness when they do is heartfelt, but passing. In contrast, watching my
young one’s passage into adulthood has left me nakedly aware of my own.
Our
trip was billed as a college tour, but when we found out that Nine Inch Nails
was playing at UMass the day before we planned to be in Boston, his mood
changed.
Whatever anxiety plagued him about leaving Baltimore and finding a new
place in the world was replaced by a sense of joyful belongingness. Whatever
uncertainty and life changing decisions lay ahead would have to wait. He left
the hotel moments after arriving in Amherst to stand in line for two hours for
our reserved seats. When I finally joined him to enter the arena, he introduced
me to the strangers he’d been chatting with next to him as if they were old
friends.
The
next day, waiting for the University tour guide, five students sat nervously in
a room next to us with their equally nervous parents.
My son quietly said something about the concert the night before to the
girl next to him. It was as if he had waved a magic wand. The roomful of young,
scared faces was instantly transformed. I watched my son nodding and grinning in
response to the chorus of gleeful questions that cascaded over him.
Later,
at another school in another town, I overheard him ask a freshman, “what music
do most of the people here listen to?”
As if talking a foreign language, the two of them traded names and genres
and song titles I’d never heard of for several minutes.
I drifted off, looking around at the tall buildings and serious looking
students walking across the quadrangle.
When he called “Dad” and our gazes met, a look of deep knowing and
intuitive understanding crossed his face.
With a certainty I could not possibly match he said, “This is the place
for me!” I smiled back, sharing his happiness in this idealized campus, glad
to know that no matter where he goes, he can connect to the world in a way that
feels much like home.
On
the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I can be so confident in my
work with teenagers, sitting and listening to their endless suffering, saying
the right thing so much of the time, yet if the teen in my house takes a stand
and risks stubbing his toe I have to bite my lip so as to not to spaz out?
As a long time friend puts it, “we’re all stupid in our own lives.”
He’s right.
When we’re not sitting in a professional chair, our ego levels the
playing field. Identifications and unfulfilled wishes trip us up. We can’t
help but fall. The measure of a good parent, as well as that of a good
therapist, is to accept that bumps and bruises come with the territory.
Children have to learn to make decisions for themselves even if they
aren’t the ones we would make for them. The teenage voice inside me that once
shouted in response to Country Joe McDonald and the Fish, “Give me an F. F!!
Give me a U. U!!! . . . ,” agrees and whispers that that’s a good thing.
Otherwise, no one would ever find their own ground to stand on.