When people think of life in Aspen, some may sneer at the thought of kids being dropped off at the high school in cars that cost more than their homes. They may envy families with private jets who fly off on a whim for exotic adventure weekends, or for a whole year if their kids are misbehaving. I have felt that envy myself, especially while experiencing the wrath of teendom.
There were many days when my husband and I felt this task was far bigger than we could handle, and I spent many hours exploring options for sending our oldest son somewhere that teaches civility, grace and the importance of contributing to humanity. Every lead circled back to the reality that we couldn’t afford any programs and would have to deal with it using the resources available in our valley.
Being a stay-at-home working mom has its benefits, but financial freedom isn’t one of them. With no budget for summer camps, I played camp counselor for many summers, taking the boys on travel gigs for the blog and on daily wilderness excursions through enchanted forests of pristine white aspen groves and fields of wildflowers, sometimes ending in icy plunges into mountain lakes.
When the Adventures Stopped
When the oldest turned 15, those adventures came to an abrupt, rebellious stop. To our newly teenage boys, just the mention of adventure or hiking brought a litany of grimaces and rejections. That’s when our freestyling son’s summer consisted of hucking off ledges at the Aspen skate park and throwing mistys off the Stillwater bridge into frigid rivers, until we demanded that he throw himself into a job instead.
That eighth-grade summer is when parenting kicked into high gear. Conversations were no longer enough to talk him through his dramatic eruptions. Our breathtakingly adorable, entertaining, curly-headed little boy had transformed into a volcanic mythical creature with beautifully carved horns that he butted into us with every attempt we made at parenting. Enduring walls punched by bloody fists and expletives that left us gasping as if we too had been punched, we navigated the storms swirling around us as best we could.
Just after that summer, Colorado Amendment 64 passed, and pot shops quickly began to appear on the streets of Aspen. Soon after, Denver launched its first public education campaign of the post-legalization era, “Don’t Be a Lab Rat.” At the time, our boys ranged from 8 to 13, exactly the lab rats the campaign was targeting with its warning that the risks of marijuana for teenagers were still unknown. We knew they could be rat-like at times, but lab rats? I worried.
Soaring into the high school like a gorgeous, scaly, charcoal-black dragon with leathery wings, he discovered his tribe, and together they puffed out sparks of fire and herbal-scented smoke rings, and his sweet breath turned skunky. The angrier and harder the punches, the more we knew he was about to do something he shouldn’t be doing at his age.
A Marriage Under Strain
Giving in to our obstreperous teen to avoid the painful outbursts would have eased the vise tightening between my husband and me. Our relationship had suffered before from financial stress, but nothing had threatened our marriage until now. With each fist thrown, we grew further apart, he thinking I was paranoid and hovering, and I thinking he was in denial that our son was partying and wasn’t being the disciplinarian our son needed.
I began meeting with counselors in our valley to learn how to raise a teenage boy in a town where supervision ran thin. That’s when I realized why many parents take a big step back when their kids become teenagers. Teenagers are angry, scary and extremely difficult to manage. The less discipline and fewer expectations, the fewer confrontations. Taking the path of least resistance would have given my husband and me the freedom to rekindle our passions. If we had let our boy loose, believing the best way to learn is through trial and tribulation, it would have lightened our parenting load, but it also would have set a horrible example for his younger brothers.
What I knew from the bottom of my heart was that he was going to learn life’s lessons even if we were mindful and present, and I was certain that turning a blind eye now would be the worst thing we could do. Just as we kept our toddlers from veering too close to the wood-burning stove, I was determined to guide our boy away from danger as much as possible.
The Counselor
My fear that addiction might set in, in our boy or in ourselves, intensified my search for a counselor. One year and six counselors later, I found the right fit and received a grant from a local community foundation to pay for in-home counseling.
When the counselor walked through our front door, rubbing the belly bulging over his belt as he took in the family vibe, I worried I had made yet another mistake. His resemblance to Robert De Niro was uncanny. It felt as though we were the cast of a Quentin Tarantino movie where everything was about to go very wrong.
He asked the whole family to sit down together, and as we slumped in our chairs, our youngest wide-eyed and confused at 9, the counselor began by asking the boys whether they knew how many rights kids have until they turn 18. The boys, and my husband, looked at me simultaneously with “what on earth” expressions. What cockamamie thing had Mommy set up this time? The counselor answered for them: “They have the right to be fed, the right to an education and the right to be safe.” I held my breath, grasping for his point.
The air thickened as he launched into his next question, which made my walls of parenting and hard work crash down around me. “Why do you feel the need to tell your mother the truth?” he asked. My son was all ears. “Because she doesn’t want me to lie,” he answered. “Buuut,” the counselor went on, as I gawked at his eagle-like features, waiting for him to swoop down, grab my boy in his talons and carry him away forever, “if you give your parents the impression that all is OK, then they don’t need to question you… do they?”
With that one statement, he transferred the responsibility and accountability from us to our son, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. It turned out his point about rights was to let them know that they didn’t own the world like they thought they did, and that while they were under our roof, they abided by our rules.
Things got better as our son realized we were watching his mood, his breath and his grades, and he did a good job of giving us the impression that all was well, until the calls started coming in from the principal, the teachers and the police. At each weekly 9 p.m. visit, the counselor walked in asking who needed counseling. Since the oldest had already gotten the message about what he needed to do to get me off his back, and my husband had gone back to seeing our family through rose-colored glasses, it was usually me asking for more guidance on how not to worry and how to trust that the training was legit. Working with me late into the evening while I recorded each conversation to play back when troubles flared, he helped me understand his personalized approach to consequences and how not to worry so much.
Four Years Later
That was four years ago. My husband and I have run the gamut of emotions, veering close to destruction and back to oneness in any given month, and now, with our third child turning thirteen in a few months, we can only hope we’re that much further ahead in our parenting than we were then.
What we do know is that we live in a town where some parents allow unsupervised parties, believing it’s better to provide a safe place for kids to party than not to know where they are at all, a false choice we don’t need to accept. We also know these obstacles exist no matter where you live, and that it may take time none of us have to move past the tip of the iceberg on how to parent effectively. For the moment, though, we seem to be on the same page as a family. We have progressed by leaps and bounds, and we’re hopeful that by being present and mindful, our boys will grow into healthy, responsible, happy adults, without addictions. And with THAT, I’ll leave you until the next story.
