For a few weeks now, my teen son has been feverishly writing poetry. Poetry is actually something he enjoys, and he takes it pretty seriously. For school, his sophomore class hosted a poetry slam on Friday night for all of us parents, grandparents and siblings to attend. What caught my eye on the invite was the warning sign: explicit language and subject matter might apply. Well, I thought, this shall be an interesting evening.
A little back story on the events leading up to Friday night. My son had originally created an eight-minute long poem. It was tedious to get through but the idea was quite clever. He managed to reach out to over 25 fellow teens to ask them what their one biggest regret was.
After he compiled their answers, he then proceeded to dictate each one into a stanza. It made for a very interesting poem but his teacher wanted him to edit it quite a bit. After days of rewrites and stress, he finally got mad. The anger is what he needed to push himself forward. He ended completely throwing away the original poem and wrote a new one. It literally took him five minutes to write. It was two minutes long and he nailed it. It was him to a tee.
As we all know, poetry is an amazing outlet for teenagers. It is empowering and can be used as a vessel of raw truth and feeling. They can use words as daggers and knives, or for humor and light. I didn’t really know what to expect on Friday night from this group of kids but I left there in awe, for many reasons.
As a parent, it can be quite difficult to listen to young people describe in their own words suicide attempts, unwanted physical attention, hopelessness over lost love and depression. But I soon realized that these very serious issues are these teenagers’ real life experiences. Life, as we know, can be cruel.
After watching these brave, amazing teens share their most intimate challenges I went home that night with a new appreciation for our generation of teenagers. They are deep, dark, funny adventure seekers. It made one thing very clear. It doesn’t matter what race you are, what sexual orientation, what God you believe in, or what your social status is.
All teenagers are full of creativity and imagination. They fear the unknown but are driven by excitement. Each and every one of them has so much potential, the world at their feet. Now so more than ever, as parents it’s our job to never, ever squash that out of them. We just need to keep them on a positive path forward.
There are moments in our lives when we are particularly proud of our children. This poetry slam was one of my moments with my son. You see, he was born with verbal apraxia, a speech disorder. He didn’t talk until he was almost four years old. Now, 12 years later he is up on stage, reciting a poem with such dignity and grace. It truly was his moment to shine, and he did, very brightly.
My husband and I each told him how proud of him we were. It was a big night for many reasons. To quote my son, he said, “For a kid who couldn’t talk, I think I did pretty good.”
Maybe it won’t be a poetry slam, but next time one of your teenagers does something amazing, appreciate and celebrate it. The littlest things can end up being the most magical.
Elizabeth Knobel lives in Windsor and is the mother of two teens who give her inspiration everyday. She can reached at [email protected].
