Sharing the sweet magic of the Beatles with my teen daughter
Most days we quarrel about her screen time. Dripping with condescension, she claims that her contractual two hours (de facto four hours) are way less than everyone else’s – and, just to be clear, that’s everyone else in the world.
Yet, in spite of these daily dustups, the mad disorder of her bedroom and her vertiginous descents into self-loathing that choke my heart and poison my sleep, my 15-year-old daughter is the most wonderful person in my life. Like any self-respecting neurotic mother, I spend most of my days thinking about her – her happiness and the smoking threat of her unhappiness. The female tinder of body image/complexion/friends can erupt into a conflagration at any time, consuming her fledgling self-esteem as I stand by helplessly.
I chant to myself: She just has to survive the slings and arrows of the teenage present; get through this and the future will reveal itself. I physically cringe when thinking about my own lonely passage through those years. I know there are no words, no advice to save her – I know that she has to save herself.
And yet, I think a familiar but unexpected rescue might be on its way.
Like many of us did at her age, she is living a lot of her life alongside and even inside music. In spite of my shrill accusations, she uses her screen time to develop her musical tastes and, as such, she is building (pace Caitlin Moran) herself.
By: Katharine Cukier
Source: The Globe and Mail
