There’s a scene in the latest season of Sex Education where Jean (Gillian Anderson) sits across from her son Otis (Asa Butterfield). They’re fighting because he’s awful. He whines at her, the way kids like him do, about why she won’t just forgive him. It’s so unfair! Anderson takes a long, tearful look at her terrible son and says: “Because as the primary carer in your life, I always get your worst. And I’m tired of it.”
For a show about kids figuring out love and sex, it was a beautiful piece about the hardest part of parenting: teenagers.
I was a pretty typical teenager. I had a boyfriend my parents hated. I dropped a knotted sheet over the balcony to sneak out at night and came home reeking of cigarettes and cheap beer. My parents were always yelling at me. I was mean, or angry, or self-centred. Mum would threaten: one day I would have teenagers and they would do the same to me.
No, I thought. My teenagers will be different. They will be thoughtful, dutiful young adults who do everything right. They will respect me and talk openly and act kindly. We will be best friends always!
My first daughter was born when I was 20, almost a teenager myself. When they were small, I thought that was the worst it could be. Waking up five times a night? Done it. Hiding during a supermarket tantrum? Yep. Scraping explosive poo out of the DVD player? Twice. I remember the exquisite relief of deciding, at 3am, a bottle that I’d picked off the floor was probably sterile enough. I was so tired I thought I would die.
As they got older, parenting did get easier. They went to school. They tied their own shoelaces. They made themselves breakfast. I could have real conversations with them and I realised they were smart and funny, kind and interesting.
Then they turned 13.
It was about the same time we stopped watching Frozen on repeat. One week we had it on every day, and the next my children had grown into Jim Henson creations that shouted all the time.
I watched in horror as my sweet, spirited tweens turned into rancid, angry teenagers. My Facebook statuses switched from photos at ice-cream parlours to desperate pleas for conversations with more than one syllable. They stopped reading books in favour of dank Tumblr feeds; they started wearing eyeliner and listening to music I didn’t “get”. Suddenly they picked up on the double entendre at the dinner table and they did not like it.
Where I had once had gentle, quietly worried toddlers I now have aggressively panicked giants. When the little one grew taller than me, I started to feel like I was in trouble all the time. Other people’s parents let them go to the city on Saturday night! Other people’s parents don’t talk about periods! Other people’s parents don’t have hundreds of empty chocolate wrappers in their cars!
Now they answer back in voices I don’t recognise. Sassing me. Ignoring me. Slamming doors. I buy the wrong food, the uncool sneakers, the off-brand snacks. I don’t know who BTS are, or how to do cosplay. I’m somehow both too much and not enough like Amy Poehler in Mean Girls.
I’ve started shutting myself in the bathroom just to wonder how I got it all wrong. I’m realising, with horror, that Mum was right.
You know when you’re young and you shout at your parents “YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND” and they tell you they were young once too? And you think, impossible, you were always a crone with a mortgage.
They were right about that, too. It turns out the only way to parent teenagers is to try to understand.
Babies’ needs are simple. When they cry, there are four options: hungry, tired, dirty, gassy. Now when my teenagers cry I have to unpack a lifetime of trying to understand the world. Their problems aren’t: “I want new Littlest Pet Shops.” Instead they ask: “How do I know if I’m getting things right?” or “Why does everyone hate me?” They have abstract ideas but don’t know how to fix them. They are worried about things I can’t solve.
My daughters are 16 and 14 now and they know how to look after themselves. I’ve taught them everything they could need to be independent, capable adults. They can cook from recipes and ask girls on dates and catch a train and pretend not to see texts they don’t like. I was so smug teaching them those things.
But those lessons were easy. Showing them how to function is part of what makes the rest of this so hard. All they need from me now are the impossible things.
At the end of last year, our beloved family cat died. He had cancer, and one Sunday afternoon we had to rush him to the vet for his last breaths. My little daughter had known him her whole life. The others left the room when the drugs were administered but she and I stayed there together. Her face was flushed and determined.
At home, the rooms were quiet. We watched some TV together on the couch. When night finally came, my independent, headstrong, furious daughter said: “Could you sleep in my bed?” And I did, for two days. Every few hours she reached her soft hand across to me and I held it.
Jean/Gillian Anderson was only half-right when she said that parenting a teenager means always getting their worst. My daughters are tough and stubborn. But they are also determined and courageous, bringing big energy to causes they support. They can be snarky and flippant, but they’re sharp and clever. They care deeply, argue loudly and are ruled by their hearts.
At their worst, we fight and cry and misunderstand each other. But their best is amazing, and I know that’s what will last.
• Anna Spargo-Ryan, from Melbourne, is the author of The Gulf and The Paper House, and winner of the 2016 Horne prize
