At Christmas time, if faith so inclines you, your thoughts turn to an image of an infant whose birth, centuries ago, has come to symbolize for many people hope and redemption in a world as much in need of both saving graces today as it was back then.
If you are the parent of a young child, in celebrating the season you celebrate the gift of love she brings into your care by gifting her. You are reminded by this small person of the innocence and promise of a life beginning with which we all enter this world, and which we gradually lose as age and experience causes our vision of life to become more realistic, and our opportunities for starting anew to diminish.
If you are parents of a teenager, however, there is another meaning to the season you may want to reflect upon. A young college student brought it to mind.
"Going home for the holiday?" I had asked.
"Yes. But just for a couple of days. I don't want to wear out my welcome," he replied.
"What do you mean?" I wondered, not understanding.
"Well," he explained, "there's still a lot of tension left from my leaving. So once me and my folks get over being glad to see each other, pretty soon we start talking about old times. Hard times. Bad times between us. What I did to them. What they did to me. We start arguing about who was at fault, about a lot of stuff that we wish had never happened. Wrongs on both sides which neither of us can forget."
"So visiting home just means bringing back a lot of pain by bringing it up again?" I said.
"Yes," he shook his head sadly. "Nothing like family reunions to open up old wounds and restart old fights. I think the problem is that we've never really made peace with each other. Maybe we don't know how."
But parents and their grown children need to know how to "make peace" with each other. Because without that sense that old hurts and conflicts are finally laid to rest, the end of the adolescent relationship between them cannot be fully realized. Each will remain partly tied to the other by grievances over what was done and not done which cannot be undone.
This urge to go back and get back at the other will prevent both from going forward. Hurt and anger over the inevitable acts of selfishness, insensitivity, and ignorance that were committed on both sides as they struggled with opposition and separation during those teenage years will forever stand in their way.
Resentment is holding on to hurt for anger's sake. Or better put, as they like to say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." The resentor suffers more than the resented who often gets to live, as they say, "rent free" in the resentor's head.
So it is that the final act of letting go of adolescence for both parents and teenagers needs to be forgiveness. Each party must be able to look back at the struggle between them and let go any resentment by saying to the other: "It is over now. And I want you to know that I believe you tried your best even when you were doing your worst. And that your worst was not all that you did. You also gave me much that was good, much that I value and for which I shall always be grateful."
Therefore, if the meaning of the season so moves you, reflect upon the power of forgiveness - that saving grace to which both parents and teenagers must appeal if their relationship is to finally grow up, if there is at last to be peace between them.
May this holiday season bring the healing gift of forgiveness to all!
For more information about my book on adolescence, "The Connected Father," see: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Risk prevention in adolescence.
