Paris/COVID: Lockdown 2 “Halloween Scream”

We made it through curfew.

Biggest challenge: major differences between anglophone and French parenting styles. My son doesn’t appreciate being subjected to the former while his French peers enjoy the latter. Here’s the deal: my husband and I try to stay informed of where he is and who he’s with while French Moms and Dads are way more laissez-faire. It could be that we are more aware of comings and goings because we work from home on flexible schedules while most of the French parents around us work more rigid hours in and outside the home. Or have the French parents just given up? That would be understandable!

Even during curfew and confinement, most of my son’s friends are allowed to disappear for long stretches and stay out all night without divulging any addresses of where they will be or parental phone numbers (assuming there is adult supervision where they are). French parents seem to consider this normal, unavoidable, or not worth fighting over, or a losing battle, or perhaps just a welcome break.

You can see how this might be a problem during a COVID pandemic.

Psychologists I’ve spoken to assure me this is part of adolescent experiments teens have to try. The battle of wills and communication breakdown may be exhausting and painful for us, but they’re not a rejection of us as people, we’re merely “collateral damage.”

I keep thinking about initiation ceremonies described in the works of Joseph Campbell and in Patrice Malidoma Somé’s Of Water and Spirit. Traditionally, young people had to endure ritual trials and hardships away from their family groups to become full-fledged members of their tribes. Accepted wisdom says teens have to separate emotionally from their parents to form ties that will shape their relationships and careers for years to come, hopefully in rewarding ways. They hunger for physical closeness with their age group, taking risks together and slamming into boundaries to test their strength. Could my son and his friends be inventing some form of self-initiation because our modern world has no organized and socially acceptable rituals for this purpose?

I know it’s hard for the young. Over the past year and a half, before COVID, just in my circle of French and anglophone friends, three teens have attempted suicide.

Their levels of maturity are all over the map. Neuroscience now shows that as their brains undergo rapid and chaotic development, literally overwhelmed, they’re not always able to process information and feelings in a logical way.

So it’s impossible for some teens to grasp the seriousness of the pandemic or empathize with others. Instead they feel victimized. A highlight of the Fall school vacation during curfew was the study group we set up to help my son and his friends complete a big assignment for lycée. They had to read a novel and fill out a reading journal. The book they chose, Le Fumoir could be called a 21st century version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest from a first person POV. Talking over the themes together, it became clear they identify with the narrator, feel trapped and sacrificed, angry towards cruel restrictions. The world is Nurse Ratched.

Seeing things from their perspective is an eye-opener.

As difficult as it is for us, we have to keep up a dialog, listen, empathize while providing structure and maintaining our integrity as parents, wearing masks and social distancing in our own home, sanitizing doorknobs, railings, handles, and wondering what’s next.

Despite curfew, COVID cases are increasing alarmingly, the government just announced a second confinement and it’s Halloween…

Halloween, Celtic New Year, Day of the Dead, Catholic Toussaint, a time for reflecting and honoring ancestors, braving or mocking fears, preparing to enter the darkness of winter, or just blowing off steam, depending on where you come from.

This year, it coincides with a “blue” moon (second full moon this month), interesting astronomical and astrological configurations and the US Presidential election, which will decide not just America’s future but the future of the planet. Muslims are celebrating the birth of the Prophet, Charlie Hebdo is taunting extremists with extreme caricatures and France is paying for it in blood, putting our parenting problems into perspective.

If nothing else, they’re bringing back plenty of memories of my own impulsive teen misadventures, how my poor parents must have felt, and fleshing out the coming-of-age femoir I’m working on.

From Rilke’s Poem, “The Man Watching,” some parting words:

“What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights us is so great!

…..

Winning does not tempt that man.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,

by constantly greater beings.” (Translation Robert Bly)

Let us grow!

Aliss

Originally published at http://thankyouparis.wordpress.com on October 30, 2020.