Coping with teenage tantrums is no picnic.
In Daniel Woodrell’s superb novel , Winter’s Bone, the protagonist is a young woman named Ree whose father is missing presumed dead and whose mother has a wasting illness that reduces her to a vegetative state.
Ree is forced prematurely into the role of a single parent to her two younger brothers. In one scene she is teaching them to skin and gut a squirrel. One of the boys complains and says he hasn’t got the stomach for the job – Ree is resolute : “You got a whole bunch of stuff you’re goin’ to have to get over bein’ scared of, boy”, she tells him. It is her way of saying that he cannot take for granted that she is going to be around forever.
I love this scene because it acknowledges the harsh reality that one day you are going to have to fend for yourself. In Woodrell’s story, this initiation comes early; in less harsh conditions it occurs around the time of adolescence. This is an age when teenagers are asserting their right to free expression while at the same time lack the wherewithal to be truly independent.
They both need and resent the power and protection of their parents. It’s at this point mom and dad need to take a firmer line and teach kids to fend for themselves. As the father of a confused 16-year-old, I am well aware that this is easier said than done. Coping with tantrums is no picnic.
Still, I am convinced mollycoddling our kin does them no favours. I remember well at the age of 17, I was away from home on my own for the first time and having not the faintest idea of how to cook a meal for myself – as I recall I had even had great trouble manipulating a can opener! This was both a shock to the system and a source of embarassment.
In Italy, where I now live, the offspring tend to fly the nest definitively only if/ when they get married and sometimes not even then. If they do move out it is rarely to a place very far from where they were brought up (close enough for their dirty washing to be collected by the ever-doting ‘mamma’).
To have three generations living in the same property is not unusual. Sometimes this can be the result of economic necessity but frequently it is a choice and very much emblematic of the Italian devotion to family.
Any stress that results mostly stays behind closed doors but I suspect that the recent case of the parents in Venice who are taking legal action to evict their 41 year son represents the tip of the iceberg. There must be many less extreme cases which cause significant trials and tribulations.
In the UK the equivalent case would probably be of a young adult taking action against his/her parents for being kicked out of the home too soon. The heart of the issue lies in when is the right time to stop being overly protective towards the ones you love. A variant on the message ‘if you love somebody set them free’.
