Essay, Research Paper
My assigned lot in life is that of the mother of
a fifteen-year-old son. My son has not yet gone
through the growth spurt that always accompanies
adolescence.
I can imagine that as my son, I would feel
extremely self-conscious at all times. Speaking from
experience, it?s hard to be so different than all your
classmates are. Many high-school students dislike
having distinguishing features that set them apart
from the rest, such as being short. These features
can be the basis for a lot of teasing and humiliation.
Being a female, I don?t have any first-hand
experience dealing with a male?s perspective, but I
would think it would be even harder to be a short boy.
Males in our society are stereotypically strong and
muscular. Rarely do we see couples in which the wife
is taller than the husband. My son must feel
humiliated by his peers because he does not fit the
“masculine mold”.
Teenagers are very impressionable. They are
still trying to form their own identity, separate from
that of their parents. Most adolescents want to be a
person that everyone else likes and accepts, and some
will take drastic measures to be just that. It could
get to a point where my son would try to take some
sort of growth supplement from the back cover of a
magazine, which would not be a healthy idea.
Teenagers often have such a burning desire to fit in
that they hate themselves when they cannot. I say all
of this from experience, currently going through “the
best years of my life” right now.
The thing to remember, though, is that everyone
grows at a different rate, and not everyone is truly
laughing at you. This information will be extremely
hard for my son to believe, because I as a teenager
myself still don?t get it. When you walk into a room,
it is impossi
laughing about your appearance, because they are too
worried about themselves! Teenagers don?t often
realize that many of their peers feel just as
uncomfortable in their own skin as they do.
For my role as a mother, I think I need to be as
supportive as possible. It can be a very detrimental
thing for a teenager to feel like he doesn?t belong
anywhere and that no one likes him, leading to drugs,
alcohol, even death. I need to find out what my son
needs and do my best to provide it for him, without
turning him into a spoiled child. The best thing for
a person who is upset is a loving, caring individual
who supports him.
However, none of this support can be shown in
public. Adolescence is the time of natural separation
from one?s parents, a time when parents begin to be
“uncool” and “embarrassing”. To show any sort of
affection in front of his friends would make my son
feel even worse. This would only be yet another thing
that would set him apart from his peers (or at least
he would think so).
Overall, the fact that my son has not yet
received his growth spurt will probably be viewed as a
negative thing. He will be unhappy and teased by his
friends for not appearing masculine, and this could
lead to disastrous results. To prevent any of these
happenings, I will try to be a loving, caring,
supportive parent, although not in public, for I feel
that would simply make it worse. The situation,
however, could turn out to be very positive. When all
of his friends have stopped growing, my son may shoot
up past every one of them. We will not know how this
turns out, however, for at least a few years, at which
point it will probably be less of a problem. As a
poster I once saw states (paraphrased), “The problem,
once solved, is simple”.