Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ is ominous. But it can also make us better parents

The Netflix show “Adolescence” has set a global streaming record with 66.3 million viewers in two weeks. Set in a small U.K. town, it revolves around an average middle class family, and a seemingly innocent 13-year-old boy with an online addiction accused of a vicious murder of a female classmate.

The show is a wake-up call to a forgotten phase of parenting and exposes our cultural perspective on adolescence.

I could write multiple articles on themes from the show. It’s dense with therapeutic material. Generational trauma, cyberbullying, online addiction, adolescent male rage, parental disengagement, impact of teacher burnout, oversexualization of girls, etc. For now, I’ll offer a two-point flyover.

First, the show calls attention to a forgotten phase of parenting.

I’ve preached the ills of social media usage in teens and banning phones in K-12 schools, the need to talk about sex, guns and violence with our kids, focusing on perseverance over success and kindness over performance. We must fight for our kids not with them; rail against the injustice of tech companies abusing mental health and profiting from online addiction. However, the underlying theme is that parenting is not a linear equation.

Parenting isn’t deterministic. Take Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel and in this show’s case Jamie and Lisa. A+B does not always equal C and the teen years put this on display like no other time in life.

Our best laid plans for the little babies in our arms become confused and muddled when they hit puberty, hormones come into the picture and they begin making big choices for themselves. An alarming number of parents think they are essentially finished parenting and their relationship status with kids is changed to “it’s complicated.”

We have to adapt as parents to become a different kind of caregiver when they hit adolescence and many of us make one of two mistakes: either parent the same as when the child was elementary age, heavy-handed with simple obedience as the aim or transition to the “friend” role when the kids start pushing against them, fearing they will damage their fragile ego.

The healthy friendship phase between a parent and child does not begin until they move out of the home at 18 or 19. The rule and order phase ends with elementary school; so what parenting phase is adolescence? The in-between phase of parenting is just as awkward as the adolescent themselves; it’s connecting deeply with them, sharing yourself, listening to their perspective, and guiding them along a framework of boundaries and expectations.

Too many parents have stopped growing with their children. Just because they don’t need you to wipe their bottoms, tie their shoes or cut their grapes it doesn’t mean they don’t desperately need you to be the parent. We can’t clock out and be besties with our 15-year-olds.

Which leads to the second point, our cultural perspective on adolescence is exposed.

Adults often are tempted to pity this generation of kids, the faults, weaknesses and characteristics, finding them utterly lacking. (Cue the ominous and foreboding music.) Mental health crises, gender dysphoria, teen gun violence, onslaught of social media pressures, cyberbullying, teen suicide and self-harm rates. With great cynicism adults view it ‘harder’ to grow up now. The skeptic says that the younger generation is doomed with teenage boys in crisis or teenage girls in crisis or even what some are saying parents in crisis.

While I agree unequivocally with identifying the struggles of teens, pitying adolescents will not help them, it only hurts them. There is an implied sentiment that adolescence is harder today than ever, but I question the validity of that complete thought. Yes, we have more lines in the diagnostic manual to describe it and more therapists to treat and diagnose the issues but is that it? What about adolescence during the Jim Crow South, the Cold War scare, post World War II and after Vietnam when fathers were killed or came back with severe PTSD, or the Great Depression when food was so scarce they were eating water pie and dandelion salad (yes those are real). There are no glory days of parenting teens or being an adolescent, full stop.

The problem with being in crisis mode all the time is that it can lead one to feel helpless, hopeless and overwhelmed; preventing rational thought and decision-making. This negative view of adolescence is not only pessimistic, it leads to fear-based parenting decisions. Let’s just keep the kids happy.

But there is hope. Every generation has to decide if they will rise to the unique challenges in parenting and adolescence, not brushing them off or minimizing them. Beneath the veneer of hair products, colognes, sneaker brands and shimmer lotions young people are asking the same age old questions, much like Jamie in the show.

Do you like me? Am I worth it? Can I be loved for who I really am?

Parents are here to say yes. Yes, I like you. Yes, you’re worth it. Yes, I love you for who you really are. In comparison to all these yeses, the no’s will diminish in focus. It’s difficult to say no and set boundaries, especially with an emotional, irrational, sullen or even hostile teen. However, this is part of the job of an adult in a relationship with an adolescent, with zero guardrails teens flail.

Yes, adolescents are in crisis. They always have been. Always will be. It’s the job of the parents of adolescents to help them find their purpose, passion and people but also protect them from themselves. Yank the computer out of their bedroom, put restrictions on their social media, ban phones from the schoolhouse, keep guns out of their hands and reclaim some of the authority that we’ve given away just to make them happy.

After all, what if the thing that’s making them happy is hurting them?

Beth Collums is an Atlanta-based writer with a background as a child and family therapist. She focuses on the intersection of mental health, relationships and education.