Spoiler alert: I've just finished watching 'Behind Her Eyes' on Netflix, and as you may already know, it has a very unexpected ending. Don't read on if you don't want to know what happens!
After watching the last episode, I lay awake for hours replaying the plot in my head. It has been a long time since something I've read or watched has had such a big effect on me. I surprised myself with how upset I was over the ending. Then I realised what was going on. I couldn't handle the fact that the baddie had won. She had literally got away with murder! More than once! She was destroying the lives of her husband and 'her' son, and getting away with it! That is not how it is supposed to go. There is a traditional narrative arc to these things, and the baddie always loses in the end. Evil is defeated as good triumphs. How could they let her get away with it!
What this all boils down to is I am a deeply conventional person. I don't like it when the rules aren't followed, or people go off script. I'm not good with innovation or departures from the norm. My husband teases me about how I won't walk on the grass, or how upset I get when he doesn't use the right mug for the right purpose (the smaller cup is for herbal tea, the brown one is for hot milk etc etc). He still brings up the time I refused to drink out of a water fountain that looked like a toilet in an interactive exhibition at a science museum. This is why in many ways being a teacher suited me, I got to enforce lots of lovely rules and procedures and I was responsible for teaching young people social conventions. But eventually I started to see that many of the rules and conventions we were imposing on young people were doing them more harm than good.
Adolescence is a time when we start questioning our world. We start to see that there are different ways of living, not just the way we have been shown by our parents. We start to look critically at the society around us, and seek out alternative ways of doing things. Teenagers can be incredibly creative and innovative, they experiment with things like their appearance or their political views. They start to explore their sexuality, and maybe change their friendship groups. They take up new hobbies, and discard old ones.
As a parent this can be challenging. We can feel uncomfortable or threatened by their experimentation, or their rejection of our views and lifestyles. Sometimes it can escalate to full blown conflict. We as parents have a responsibility to keep our children safe, but we also have a responsibility to let them explore and develop in ways we might never have predicted. Rather than feeling threatened, we could feel excited about the unpredictability teenagers bring to our previously conventional lives.
I'm going to try and drink my tea out of a different mug, and eat an apple instead of grapes for my supper. I'm going to watch a film that doesn't follow the usual plot conventions (any recommendations welcome). I'm going to learn from the teenagers I work with and become a little bit more unconventional, though I draw the line at drinking out of a toilet.
Barry Lyndon is a great film about a character who tries to play within what he thinks the rules are most of the time, but it's never enough. One of my favourites!