If I had to pinpoint one of the hardest years of my teenage life, it would definitely have to be my Freshman year of high school. I was 14 and I had a “best” friend who influenced me in ways that were neither good nor healthy. In other words, that was the year I made some of the worst choices of my young life. For example, when my friend decided we should go to a Pat Benetar concert at the Providence Civic Center in Providence, RI where I grew up, it never occurred to me to say, no, I don’t think so. Even though we lived in the suburbs beyond the suburbs, couldn’t drive yet, had no actual money to my name, and would have to lie about sooooo many things to make such a thing happen.
We found tickets listed in the newspaper (yes, they were a scam). We planned to hitchhike from our small suburban town into Providence, which was at least 20-25 minutes by car. Don’t ask me how we were going to get the tickets from the newspaper-ad-scammer; that part I cannot even recall—likely, we didn’t have a plan for that part. The good news in all of this is that we never fully executed on any of it.
Why?
Mainly because we did a few other really, really stupid things for which we were discovered and my friend confessed this to add fuel to the already raging firestorm of trouble I was in. For yet another few weeks or so, I was grounded. Looking back, those repeated groundings truly were a blessing to me because they kept me from doing whatever other ridiculous schemes my friend and I could dream up during this tumultuous time of my teenage life.
Obviously, the things we planned were not steeped in good decision making or wisdom of any kind. Rather, they were born from that teenage arrogance wherein a teenager, in this instance, me, believes she knows way more than she does. My girls have heard a few of these stories over the course of their teen years, and they are not weary in any way of bringing them up from time to time, whether for clarity or for comparison. Especially my 17 year old. She revisits my stupidity somewhat regularly. Honestly, I don’t mind. These escapades that paved a road of folly and foolishness are good teaching tools and helpful anecdotes.
There is a common misconception about going to school, actually there are several misconceptions, but this one is focused around the idea of friendships and connections. It’s a misconception each of my girls has voiced recently as they have lamented their bone-deep longing for real friends. I don’t know that they have used the term, real friends, but I do know that is the thing for which they truly yearn. Even so, they have both said something along the lines that they believe they should have stayed in the public charter school they once attended because then at least they’d have made friends.
These words raise every rankle within me.
All you have to do is reread the opening words of this post if you don’t quite see why their words rankle me. I firmly, truly, wholeheartedly believe that friendships forged at school are hit or miss at best. My response to both girls has included the fact that pretty much forming friendships based on the fact that you are reading the same book in English class is not friendship; rather it is socialization by convenience because you happen to attend the same school.
I get it. There are exceptions to this statement. But that doesn’t change that sometimes friendships are based on proximity and shared experiences you are expected to participate in during the school day. As parents, I believe it’s important not only to recognize this, but to understand this on a deeper level. Especially if you are the parent of a teenager. Even more especially if you are the parent of a neurodivergent teenager. I think we, as parents, can take for granted that those convenient connections are enough. I say, they’re not. Not necessarily, anyway.
When I got further along in my high school years, I connected with someone who became a dear, close friend. While I still struggled to understand friendship (much like each of my girls), this friendship was more edifying and much healthier when it came to the choices we made and the adventures on which we embarked. In fact, while I remain in contact with each of these two women, I continue to have a stronger connection with the woman I reconnected with in my sophomore and junior years of high school. She is the woman who helped me when one of my girls had to go to feeding therapy at a Providence-based hospital and the one I have leaned on in difficult times in my adult life.
It is because of these experiences—both as a teenager and as an adult—that I am deeply invested in walking alongside my girls in their journeys to discover friends who make them feel seen, heard, and deeply alive. These are the connections that make us feel like we matter in the world; when we matter to others, we begin to matter more and more to ourselves as well. And, until they make those connections, I am more than happy to remind each of these remarkable young women just how amazing they are and point out the ways they make this world a better place.