The Emotional Risks of Skipping the "Rebellious Stage"?

0:00 There's a very weird way in which adolescence,

0:02 that period between say 12 and 19,

0:05 is, you know, commonly held to be a nightmare by parents.

0:08 Parents always go, "Oh, you know, adult my child's adolescent." You know,

0:10 lots of sighing and lots of sort of mutual

0:12 commiseration that the parents are going through this.

0:14 But something extremely important is going

0:17 on during that phase known as adolescence.

0:19 When a child turns to its parent and goes, "You ruined my life.

0:24 I hate you.

0:25 Everything about you is ridiculous and you know,

0:27 I'm quitting." Um that is part of growing up.

0:30 That is part of a journey to adulthood.

0:32 It's messy, you know, it's a very messy metamorphosis,

0:35 but it is a necessary metamorphosis.

0:37 And if you haven't had an adolescence,

0:39 what you haven't been able to do is to tell your parents they're ridiculous,

0:43 tell your parents they've ruined your life,

0:45 um feel utterly hopeless about things, you've had to be prematurely adult.

0:51 And a premature adult is not an adult.

0:53 They are a child who's had to act like an adult

0:58 in order to protect the adults around them from their reality.

1:02 And that's a brutal and cruel thing to have done to you.

1:06 And so one of the greatest things to do to a young

1:10 person is to allow them to have an adolescence in all its messiness.

1:15 There is a real danger that we will

1:17 get together with somebody who's not had an adolescence.

1:20 That's quite weird.

1:21 I mean, imagine on an early dinner date you say to somebody,

1:24 "Have you had an adolescence?" Um they might

1:26 not know really know what you're talking about.

1:27 But what you're really asking

1:29 with that question is something extremely important,

1:30 which is have you had a chance to be something other than merely good?

1:34 Have you had a chance to listen to your own feelings and divulge

1:39 the messier bits of you to an audience that could bear it?

1:42 Have you had a chance to be angry in the way

1:44 that you needed to be in order to feel real?

1:47 Are you more than just uh a kind of an actor of adulthood?

1:53 Are you actually mature rather than a good boy or girl?

1:57 And it sounds like a weird question,

1:59 but it's a really necessary question because real trouble happens when

2:03 people act out their adolescence in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s.

2:08 And it can really I mean you get

2:08 70-year-olds who are suddenly suddenly wake up and think,

2:12 "I've never been 15." And they cause utter

2:14 chaos to those around them because they're still,

2:17 you know, one of the laws of psychological life is if

2:19 you haven't had all the stages that are necessary to growth,

2:22 you will need to go back and repeat a stage.

2:25 a curriculum, emotional curriculum.

2:27 And the stages that we've missed, we need to go back and have them.

2:30 So, you know, if you've got to 50 without having been properly 15,

2:34 you're going to need to go back and have that 15.

2:36 And that's likely to be very difficult cuz it's hard to be a 15 when you're 50.

2:39 So, really, you know, one of the most generous things that parents can do is

2:43 allow their child to be who they are at every age.

2:47 When you're five, have all the tantrums that you need

2:49 to have at five cuz if you're not having them at five,

2:52 you may be very tempted to have them at 40.