Words of Wisdom, From Debolina Dutta

Debolina Dutta is a teen educator and she has worked in public, private, and international high schools for 15 years. On March 16, Debolina will be facilitating a guided conversation group for parents about sexuality and changing bodies with psychotherapist Leah Chalofsky. Debolina believes that knowledge of ones body empowers people to make educated decisions for themselves. She offers parents and guardians a few words of wisdom about parenting during this transitional period for tweens and teens.

Debolina's Words of Wisdom:

Being a parent/guardian of a tween or teen is hard work; but being a tween or teen is even harder. It’s the time in life when the world stops being black and white and really morphs into technicolor. Parents are the representation of all they knew thus far, and so it is the young person’s duty to try to seek answers from the rest of the world. The answers are however muddled and sometimes can set a young person down a less desirable path. No matter how much our tweens and teens may want to push their caregivers away, it is our duty to stay with the messiness. Our tweens and teens want us with them and also want us to stay back (this is part of life coming into technicolor). We have to arm them with love, support, and as much information so that they can make the best choices for their (not our) lives. We should identify other adults as part of our community of sages, whom we trust and our youth trust, so that they have a pool of safe people to go to with life’s challenges. We have to let them fall, because falling young is a shorter fall. And be there to dust them off from their fall. We are here to teach our youth how to learn from their mistakes; we are there to teach them how to fall forward.