April 14, 2003
CYBERCOLUMN:
Listening to my teenager
___By Brett Younger
___"I’m going to write openly and honestly about something that has happened to me. I’m not ashamed, because it’s not my fault. It’s happened to others, too. Some of you who least suspect it will have it happen to you.
___ I am, and it’s hard to talk about it, the parent of a teenager.
___It all started when Carol and I decided to have a baby. The baby was small and smelled funny, but we were delighted. As the years passed, we enjoyed talking to him, and he enjoyed talking to us. We understood him, and he understood us. We liked the same music, ate the same food and spoke the sam
e language. He wanted to be around us more than he wanted to be around anyone else in the world. Much of that changed about 13 years after his birth, almost a year ago now.
___ We no longer speak the same language. I’m cool enough to know what cool means, but only recently did I learn that "cool" is no longer cool. If you’re cool and want to say "cool," you say "off the chain," "tight," "freak," "sweet" or "krunk," which I was not able to find in Webster’s.
___We no longer eat the same food except for pizza and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which is all my teenager would eat given that choice.
___We no longer like the same music. Every day as I drive him to school, my teenager and I take turns picking a song to play. When it’s my day to choose, we listen to Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett—the classics. Graham enjoys the music, and I use the word "music" loosely, of Ludacris, Good Charlotte, No Doubt, Weezer and 50 Cent. When he is at home, he enjoys this "music" through headphones.
___Carol and I are no longer the people our son most wants to talk to. He spends some portion of most days on the computer instant messaging—trading short notes on the computer—with friends. Some of the teenagers in our church who look mostly normal have as their screen names Crazymonkey, Twizzler Bear, Starburst Queen, Sweet and Sour, Soccer chick, Iceman, Flying White Guy, Pathetic Bum, Spongebobforlife, Rockingpinkpoodle, Doorknob, Bigdogru1too, and, this is my favorite, Ahmyheadisgone.
___When Carol or I ask, "What did you do at school today?" the most common response is "nothing." And yet unsupervised, my child could spend hours recounting his day to Crazymonkey.
___ Within our churches, because of our differences, it’s easy for teenagers and normal people to get used to ignoring one another. We need to keep that from happening. If we’ve gotten the impression that teenagers don’t need adults or that our youth won’t respond to genuine interest, then we’ve gotten the wrong impression.
___ In the church of Jesus Christ, 13-year-olds and 73-year-olds work hard at listening to one another and sharing their lives.
___Brett Younger, the pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, was a teenager, according to his teenager, about a hundred years ago
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