Most amazing thing about the teen years

So … some time ago for your’s truly but very now for my two. Some observations:

• it must be healthy for them to fight – they do seem to do OK on the constant to and fro and (in the small quiet times) it’s clear they talk with each other about most everything
• there are two very different people there – emerging, trying stuff out – and it’s right to let them both try for themselves (impossible to prevent, useless to complain – talk it through beforehand though)
• love is hard at that age – what is it, where does it come from, where does it go, is there enough to go round
• can I really have forgotten or never experienced what they are going through?
• I’m most proud of their being proud of themselves

Read a book recently – The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.
“Zdenka shakes her head. Love seems a relative quality, not a unitary thing that can exist independent of an object. There are different grades of love, different shades of love, different scents and tastes of love. It is not like happiness or misery, qualities that seem dull or limited. Love is limitless, she feels. You can love one person one way, another person another way and your store of love, all the different loves, is never diminished. And she loves Hana. She loves her as a daughter loves a mother, as a pupil loves a teacher, as friends love and lovers love, all these things, all the time. ‘I don’t mind’, she says, ‘I don’t mind if you don’t mind’.”

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