Wisdom from and old friend
I caught up with an old friend I hadn’t seen in decades. We swapped stories of raising kids and I loved what he shared about adolescence. “At about ten and it is like watching them walk into a haunted house.”
Picture an old Victorian house in the woods, Jim said. The windows are broken. Fog drifts through the rooms. It looks mysterious and a little scary.
Your kid walks inside.
You know they’re there. Sometimes they wander close to a window where the breeze clears the fog and you can see them.
“Hey, how’s it going?” you say.
For a moment you connect.
Then they turn and disappear back into the fog.
You know they’re still in there, but you can’t reach them.
That’s adolescence.
It’s not that they don’t love you.
It’s not that they don’t care.
It’s that their brains are changing and they’re trying to separate and figure themselves out.
They actually need to go into that house.
As parents, the hard part is standing outside.
Sometimes you want to bang on the door.
“Talk to me! Tell me what’s going on!”
But often the best thing you can do is simply stay nearby.
Be present.
Because every once in a while they come back to the window.
You might be driving somewhere. Sitting on an ATV. Getting ice cream. Suddenly the fog clears for a moment and they say something real.
That’s the big reveal.
But it only happens if you’re still there when they come to the window.
So patience matters.
Presence matters.
And remembering the haunted house helps.
Because when your kid disappears into the fog, you realize:
They’re not gone.
They’re just inside the house for a while and come out when they are about 18.