Dear Mary-anne: Why is our teen daughter so vacuous?
QUESTION:
My wife and I are committed environmentalists. We aim to produce zero rubbish, we compost, we pushbike: you know the drill. We have one child, a lovely 14-year-old daughter who doesn't seem too concerned about these things. Even as a little girl she didn't like going camping or tramping with us; and now her sole interest is watching makeup tutorials on her device. She's a kind kid, but she's more interested in her lip gloss collection than her homework and her grades are getting more average by the year. Just recently, I was shocked and hurt to hear a family member refer to her as vacuous. I've not been able to get this criticism out of my mind and now, some of the things she does are really starting to annoy me. I can't bear to think of her growing up to lead a shallow consumerist lifestyle, but what can we do?
ANSWER:
Thanks for your letter and I have to admit it did make me laugh. It's lucky we don't go into this parenting business knowing what's ahead because there's no guarantees for any of us.
There's several things to consider re your girl. One is that it might be just a stage. Let's face it, 14 can be the boondocks for children and she might be trying different personas to see where she's going.
Fourteen is also when hormones can be doing their thing and your daughter may be smarter than you give her credit for. She might know exactly how to wind you up and her interests may be her own deliberate form of torture for you.
Another scenario is that she might be vacuous – for now. Lip gloss may be the main thing on her mind, but you can't force her to care about other stuff. Life itself will take care of that.
At 14, I was an avid reader and I was particularly obsessed with stories about resistance fighters. I remember wishing I'd been born into a more exciting era – and family. I must have seemed like an alien but apart from rolling their eyes at me, I don't remember anyone in my family taking me too seriously.
Perhaps you should laugh and go back to enjoying your daughter. Set a bar for how much homework she's expected to do (be realistic rather than overly ambitious here) and be clear with her that as long as she meets that standard, she can let her mind wander to where it will. Be grateful she's happy. It's admirable that you have such a passion and that you're doing your bit to save the planet, but you have to trust your daughter to find her own passion.