Q: I am so glad Juno didn't win the Oscar for best picture. I am also relieved that Ellen Page didn't win as best actress for playing the 16-year-old Juno MacGuff. If they had won, I wouldn't know how to deal with my daughter. As it is, I am having a hard time starting a dialogue with her about pregnancy and abortion. Anyone with tween daughters knows what I am talking about.
My 11-year-old daughter and her friends have seen Juno about five times. They delight in the main characters, they want to wear the clothes, they try to mimic their banter, and they envy their "cool" parents. Every time I seem to put a limit on my kid regarding curfews, homework, or behavior, she tells me that I need to be more like Juno's parents. They are supportive, she says. They don't yell. They understand. I want to yell back, "They're lousy parents!" but I hold my tongue.
My daughter wants to know why our family can't be as much fun as Juno's. She wants to know why I can't be as approving of her friends as Juno's step-mom is of Juno's friends. Of course, I can understand what my daughter is saying: Why can't we be friends? It would certainly be fun not to have to impart limits or impose values. Can this be done? Can we joke with each other? Can I be completely and unconditionally supportive of her while being a responsible parent?
A: Ah, adolescence! This is one of the great joys of parenthood - a great, if not greater, challenge as well. As everyone knows who has been through that passage in their children's life, you can be assured that they will make it through. The question is will you? Adolescence is tough on a kid, but they're young enough to take it. It can be tougher on the parent. Among other things, we know what can go wrong.
Let's just review some of the issues pertaining to adolescence. This is a time of what we shrinks call separation-individuation. What does that mean? It means your child is trying to move away from the paramount identity that they have had up until this time -- as a member of a family unit. Now they want to separate from you. They want to become their own person. They trust and look to their peer group for guidance and they think of you as not quite informed. They are rebelling. They are working on their own identity as an adult, one who's independent and capable of making their own wise choices. If they were a snake, they'd be crawling out of their old skins.
At the same time, they are scared and ambivalent about becoming an adult. Isn't it easier to stay a child and to just let others take care of you? They become aware that an adult has many -maybe too many -- responsibilities. So, they want to have their cake and eat it too - be independent and, at the same time, have Mom around for support when, as sometimes happens, things go wrong. Some days they're an adult, some days a child -some days one in the morning, the other in the afternoon.
So, how do you know what to do? How do you know what they need, as opposed to what they want? It can be maddening to satisfy their true need and get nothing but invective by way of thanks. Nevertheless, the best path to follow is not to look to their clues, but to remember that you are a parent, not a friend. Be clear about the choices you would make. Be clear about the choices you therefore want her to make. You have a set of values. She has been raised with them. She's relying on you to remain consistent.
As long as your child is your child, and that is for a lifetime, you have a legitimate right, if not solemn obligation, to express your own views. You do not have to defend your views up against a movie. Teen pregnancy can be fraught with difficulty and abortion may be the choice a family makes. This is real life, not a movie. No background music here.
But, don't ever forget, no matter how difficult, that you also love your child. That means sharing good times, laughing together and loving each other. Being a mom can entail a difficult balancing act, not between being a mom and a friend -You are always a mom -- but between your daughter's proclivity to be an adult one moment and a child the next. You have responsibility for the totality of your daughter's life, not what's happening at the moment, no matter how intensely felt. You should be parenting your child while simultaneously enjoying your child. Like a mantra, keep those two thoughts defining your choices and actions.
You can agree with your child that Juno has a swell relationship with her parents. They have fun with one another. They banter. They joke. This is what you want to keep working towards, the aspect of the movie that is truly worth emulating. This is something you and your daughter can agree on - not the pregnancy, but the warmth of the family. The conversation you want is not whether you would approve of a teen pregnancy -that's a settled matter - but about your relationship with your child. The subject can change. The subject will change. What cannot change is the comfort level you and your daughter must have to discuss anything. This is not only a discussion about pregnancy and abortion. Instead, it's a discussion about how your family can achieve fun and cohesiveness, while respecting not only your daughter's views, but yours as well.
One of the first lessons that I taught my kid about the media was that the media was after him. It wanted his money and his attention. I taught him about cameras, camera angles, written scripts and dialog, sound bytes and commercials and made him demonstrate that he understood what the appropriate context for the media was.
I demanded accountabiilty and did not faulter when called upon to make judgement calls..etc...
In the end, I did ok. I homeschooled him and got him out of highschool and into junior college at 16 and things have been moving along every snce.
However, even now as he enters his 22nd year I don't waiver in my control or my opinons though my influence is naturally waning.
Good luck, and make them toe the line. Get them to appreciate their unique life - or you'll ground them and take away their movie priviledges.
Teenagers forget that you are human...they really do, and need to be reminded ("that hurt my feelings", "comparisons make me uncomfortable", "are you agnry with me?" " that sounded mean...did I misinterpret?"
And, how to talk to girls about sex? From a young age help girls understand the amazing power they have...to create life and carry it in their bodies...how billions of years of evolution conspire to have teens and young women, at the heighth of fertility, conceive. Awesome, SACRED power to be respected. The bearers of life.
Day in, day out, over many years, they really come to understand the power of sex and their responsibility.
If Bodies Revealed comes to your town go see it...amazing real babies in uetero begiining at 12 weeks.
Why would you EVER yell at your child.
Humor is always far more effective.
My child will be 17 soon.
I'd never dream of yelling at him.
Please reconsider that approach. He's an amazing kid. Not that I'm at all biased.
Thanks.
soisam
The concept that a teenage girl gets pregnant and that her parents don't shame her, call her a sinner or a slut, throw her out of the house; I happen to think that's a great model. That she continues with school, makes the decision herself to have the baby and give it up for adoption, be responsible--wow, such a thing might actually be possible, whereas probably most teenage girls don't think it is. They think they have to hide it from their families, get rid of it, and feel their pain and confusion alone.
The idea that there is a real alternative to abortion, and that a young girl's life doesn't have to be ruined, is one we should be encouraging.
I to have young daughters and am faced with the same conversations of pregnany and abortion. Yet I have not read anywhere that these critics mention that when talking to their kid(s) that they stress to their children that Juno is a MOVIE-ITS MAKE-BELIEVE- IT DID NOT HAPPEN – that is why the conversations and banter seem cool and the parents so understanding-IT’S A FANTASY.
My advice, which probaly means nothing, is when you are faced with the difficult questions from your child, remember what else you are addressing: Juno is "played" by a 21 year old girl who is not pregnant nor has been (to my knowledge) and the people raising her are not her parents. They are actors who are paid to pretend to be cool. The problem with the movie is they just did it very well.
The most heart-breaking moment for me is when Juno and her working class father meet the rich people and their lawyer completely bereft of support, counseling, or legal representation, and Juno thoughtlessly signs off on a traditional closed adoption.
The immense inequality of this relationship is never questioned. Watching Juno and her father's total abandonment to the whims of ignorance and privilege is one of the hardest things I have ever wittessed (on film). I am not beeing paternalistic here. I am being fair.
Forgotten are the many years of news stories about birth children and birthmothers who grieve over their inability to know anything at all about their parents or children because of closed adoptions. The film treats the birthfather as little more than a sperm donor who doesn't even sign a document to make the whole thing legal. Yeah, try that one in court and see how far it gets you.
Like the prospective parents of Juno's baby, my wife and I began the adoptive process as people desperate for a child and frightened that any inclusion of the birthparents would threaten our relationship with our child. We were wrong. Fortunately, both we, our child's birthparents, and our child benefitted from the compassionate and expert counseling of an adoption agency that cared about everyone's well being and not just about handing off a child from one group of people to another.
Adopton was the right choice for Juno and her boyfriend, but not in the way it was expressed in this film. For all her wise cracking sophistication and confidence, Juno was unqualified to make a decision of this gravity without recourse to the resources she deserved. She was still just a kid, and this film unintentionally proved it.
then you need to start watching tv with her and point out all the inconsistensies so she has a firmer grasp on reality.
I think this movie would be acceptable for ages 14 and up. Why introduce such deep ideas and life complications to an 11 year-old child when it is completely unnecessary. Whatever happened to parental guidance?
Kids-In-Mind.com movie ratings for kids gives Juno a 6 out of 10 for sex and nudity, a 3 out of 10 for violence/gore, and a 5 out of 10 for profanity. Fifteen other movies ranked exactly the same as Juno on Kids-In-Mind's website and eight of them were rated R.
PG-13:"Parents Strongly Cautioned. Some Material May Be Inappropriate For Children Under 13." and Juno is just that, not appropriate for children under 13.
If you hadn't presented this view of life to your child at this age, you wouldn't be confronted with the comparisons and envy it has generated. If your daughter was older she would be mature enough to see it was just a movie and that good parents don't wish you had gotten a DUI instead of getting pregnant.
As to the Oscars, if you believe that if Juno had won best picture your daughter would have run out and got pregnant, you either are gravely misjudging your daughter or should be spending much more time with her.