When children are still little, the joys and sorrows of life are like passing weather. An emotion-cloud comes over the horizon, they get rained on, it passes. The sun beams down on them and they shine in its light. A turbulent little squall whips up, and they are all over the place, and then it abates. So, for instance, in the sand-pit a little child might suddenly be in conflict with a neighbour, yet a few moments later they are happily playing together again.
This weather of the soul is external to them. It comes over them, and then it passes. Such weather-patterns continue into the early school years. Around the age of twelve, however, there is a distinct climate-change. Now, they are completely caught up in the weather — the highs and lows, the wind-shifts, the tropical cyclones — suddenly they each become storm-centres, or high-pressure regions… They are their weather in a very personal way. There they are, right in the middle of it but, because they are in it, surrounded by it and looking out through it, they tend to experience it as coming at them from outside. It is all your fault.
These little weather-systems are very volatile, very regional. And, from within them, another curious attitude arises. When, for instance, in grey wintry Canberra we see on the weather map that it’s just great in Brisbane, or always 30˚ in Darwin, then we have to find something else that’s wrong with being in Brisbane or Darwin… So too with these proto-adolescent climatic regions. They feel an affinity with similar weather-patterns, but then this might be disconcertingly ephemeral because each pattern is constantly changing; they feel disgust towards any differing patterns, and they feel bewilderment regarding those peers where some affinity but also some difference occurs.
Affinity — disgust — bewilderment. Life can be pure sunshine, or it can be a storm. Or a whirlwind. All so constantly subject to change. This is so very difficult for the proto-adolescent. You think it’s hard! Try being in one of those weather-systems… Everything has become personal, everything is changeable, and it’s always your fault. When a little child awkwardly bumps into a table, injuring their body, they might admonish the table — ‘Naughty table!’ — for having hurt them. The twelve-year-old will do the same with emotional hurt, for this personal weather-system is in fact a rather clumsy attitude-body, and so when they bump into another attitude with it — you, for instance, or very often a younger sibling — they quite naturally project their anguish.
So, previously the child has existed in the values-atmosphere and weather-patterns of the parents. This atmosphere is a generalised realm of ideas, feelings, attitudes and values and impulses which has enveloped the child just like the atmosphere encompassing the earth. But now the twelve-year-old child starts to spin into their own intense, ever-contracting, localised weather-system that embodies all its own patterns. This is a specific event emerging from the meteorological background of the family.
One notable ‘emotional weather’ phenomenon developing at this time is ‘acid rain’. Suddenly your child is sarcastic, even cynical in attitude. When you are exposed to this acid rain, it stings. And it is really corrosive. Just like the acid rain corroding the temples and statues of the Parthenon in Athens, it starts to dissolve the beautiful marmoreal images you hold of family ideals. Now, we cannot solve the problems of atmospheric pollution through blame and recrimination; we have to learn to work together with the new conditions, and this takes some understanding on our part.
For instance, we need to recognise that the newborn attitude-body at the heart of this weather-system is just as vulnerable as the physical body of the baby. The baby can only flail about with its little limbs, can only grasp with its fingers. It has to learn to direct its movements, it has to learn to let go of what it grasps. So too the attitude-body of the adolescent flails about initially, and grasps instinctively, locking on to issues often quite obsessionally. Control of the attitude-body’s unpredictable movements takes time, effort, and skill. And letting go is something to be learned.
Pictures like these — of the weather-system, of the newborn attitude-body — can really help us see what’s going on. And because they are living pictures, they can develop. So, for instance, the weather picture might lead us to acknowledge that if the weather is squally and we forget to take a coat or umbrella with us and then we get rained on, it’s hardly the weather’s fault, is it? The weather is just doing its thing.
However, we might also note that as a storm pattern develops, it forms a centre — a still, relatively calm centre that we call the eye of the storm. This centre, which is an inward intensification within the weather-system, becomes a reference-point in which the self develops throughout these years. It’s an encouraging thought in the face of adolescent climate-change.
[Note: Adapted from an essay published in my free journal { parent-theses }. It also presents the foundation idea for a parenting workshop I offer. Contact me via my website www.johnallison.com.au]
