Our Kids Eventually Become Their Own People

Friday afternoon, my 18 year-old son wanted to go see the movie Sonic the Hedgehog. I was a bit surprised but surely happy about his eagerness to still see a 'kid' friendly movie.

Saturday morning, the same 18 year-old asked to go see the movie Nosferatu. I hadn't even heard of it. I quickly watched the two minute Nosferatu trailer, then looked at this kid with disbelief and asked, "really?"

How is it possible, I asked him, that the same human that wants to watch an animated movie full of laughter and joy want to go watch all the darkness and blood-letting that comes with vampires?

He gave me the blank stare, non-answer that teens expect their dad to interpret as the answer, but in that look he seemed far less confused by this choice than me.

So at 60 years old yesterday, I watched my first vampire movie.

Walking out of Nosferatu yesterday, I told the boys that I was pretty sure I'd never in my life sat in two more opposite experiences on consecutive days as I just had with those two movies. They do not make movies any more different than these two, I told them. In response, my youngest offered up, "but both writers achieved what they were trying to achieve."

I actually found that to be quite an empathetic thing to say. Ian's ability to look into the hearts and minds of both writers, looking beyond even the final production and audience makeup and response, was encouraging to me.

Our kids are often learning lessons we aren't teaching.

As a dad, I am reminded that yes, there are certain ways I'd like my boys to adapt to my way of seeing the world. It's a natural parental instinct, I think. But I also think there is great value, necessity even, for a parent to adapt to a child's wide ranging curiosity of the world, to give a child's interests permission to defy categorization.

Frankly, I'm not even sure what the Sonic/Nosferatu overlap genre and category could possibly be!!

Reflecting on Elliott's movie choices, I couldn't help but see a blend of innocence and maturity. I couldn't help but see that two simple movie choices were complex indicators that my kid is definitely becoming his own person. And that a lot of that person has interests that aren't mine, a lot of his decisions don't and won't look like mine.

Maybe some parents get scared by that. Scared when their kids have minds of their own.

I don't.

I feel like I've been fighting my whole life to develop a mind of my own. I'm not sure I've ever felt as free to equally embrace Sonic and Nosferatu as freely as I can embrace their differences today. I'm thankful for that freedom.

More than that, I'm thankful that my boys seem to be embracing that freedom long before I got there. Who knows, if they hadn't, I may have gone my whole life without seeing a vampire movie.

I'm still processing how I feel about that reality 🤣🤷‍♂️ - but in the words of my 16 year-old, both writers achieved what they were trying to achieve.

Parenting can be a wild ride, and sometimes it makes perfect sense to just go along for the ride.