My husband and I recently went away for the weekend, leaving our two teenage boys home alone. Thankfully our boys have the responsibility and kind of relationship to make that work, even if it does mean they subsisted on bagels, Goldfish and Deliveroo for 48 hours.
When we got home on Sunday night, we got their weekend report which included soccer practice, a cycling race, homework, and a lot of and likely still underreported screen time. But our thirteen year old was most excited to tell us that while he and his big brother were Home Alone, they had not wrecked the house but rather he had written something.
He didn’t write it for school (our first question.) He wrote it “because I realized I am happy right now and I thought writing might help me understand why.”
Thirteen is not the most becoming of ages. I’ve been relaying an analogy I heard recently about parenting teens. Our teens are now out in the pool (the world) swimming on their own but occasionally they get dunked or tired and need to come back to the pool wall (their parents). We are there to hold them up to catch their breath but as soon as they do, they are off again — usually with a push against the wall (forceful words, attitudes, behavior) to get back out there.
I know I am prone to hyper focus on the challenges of each age. And thirteen has a lot of them but thirteen can be beautiful too. In that push for independence, when we give them space — they aren’t just swimming in the world. They are also figuring out for themselves how they will react to life’s curve balls. Their thoughts are as deep as the waters they are swimming in.
And so, on this Valentine’s Day, I share with you what one 13 year old boy — Lawton Ballbach - has to say about Living the Life You Love:
“All of you sprouted and flourished into this earth, to live. To let yourself flow and become the best version of you. We don’t pummel life with anger and jealousy, but sometimes it seems the easier option. There’s no way to describe life, there’s too many ways. We love, we learn and we believe. We look at problems and turn them to a different angle to find the solution. A wise man once said ‘no one ever injured their eyesight by looking on the bright side’. Proven studies have shown that you, and everyone else around us lives longer, dies happier and brings joy to those around us, by just stopping and taking the time to appreciated and fulfil the life we were meant to love. Me writing this doesn’t have to make you change your way of thinking or acting. But I can guarantee that if you dig a little deeper inside your mind you’ll find what you’re looking for. “