Your teen doesn’t care.
I can almost hear you thinking, well duh. If you are parenting a teenager, that statement is the least surprising thing you’ve read this year. Each kid’s particular flavor of apathy may be different than another’s, but there’s nothing that says “teenager” quite like the eye roll, deep huff, and long groan that inevitably accompanies a parent’s suggestion that something – anything, really – is important.
Oh sure, they do care about some things. Wearing the right clothes, their hair being just so, and what their peers think about them usually sit high on the list. Some kids care about grades and college applications, but they might not care about personal hygiene or healthy relationships or saving money. After decades in youth ministry and now raising three teenagers in my own home, I know teens care about many things, but usually a lot of those things are ultimately insignificant, and they almost always disagree with their parents regarding priorities.
When it comes to teaching our kids life lessons, soft skills, and prioritizing the things that matter in the long run, the fact of the matter is that most of the time, your teen doesn’t care.
Do it anyway.
On April 8, 2024, millions of people in the U.S. got to behold that celestial marvel of a solar eclipse. Most of the country had at least a partial view, and millions traveled into the path of totality to see the full eclipse in all its glory. After casually witnessing totality from our home in 2017, I became an absolute umbraphile, determined to never again treat something so magnificent as a solar eclipse with such nonchalance. My husband planned a weekend trip to visit family in Cincinnati while I watched weather apps, community events, and guesstimated traffic patterns to plot the perfect location to view totality. We ended up at Brookville Lake in Indiana, with a beach and grassy lawn for pre-event play, a wide horizon to take in the sights, and – most serendipitously – telescopes and educational materials donated to the park by Duke Energy Foundation. Not only did my kids get to vacation in a new city, enjoy time with family they haven’t seen in years, and play in a lake, they also got to witness three full minutes of solar eclipse totality! We saw shadow bands racing across the sand, a magnificent 360 degree sunset, the diamond ring, a solar prominence, and the most spectacular corona that mere words are insufficient to describe. And you know what?
My teens couldn’t care less.
In fact, they spent much of the week leading up to our trip fuming about how annoying it was to travel such a long way for something so silly as a solar eclipse. One child actually had the audacity to say, “It’s just the moon crossing in front of the sun; what’s the big deal?!” True, they missed birthday parties, social invitations, and days of work. We didn’t take their consoles, so there were no video games all weekend. The family home we stayed in didn’t have internet, so they missed watching the Final Four basketball games, and they had to sleep on couches. They definitely would have rather stayed home and vegged out, and it would have been a lot less stressful (and less expensive) for me to have left them with grandparents or friends while my husband and I went by ourselves. But you know something else?
I don’t care.
This event was once in a lifetime. Well, actually it was their second time seeing an eclipse, and they certainly could see another one in the future, but they were so young before, and this was the last time we could all go together with everyone living under one roof. The next eclipse will touch Europe in 2026, but my daughter will be in college then. I’m already making plans for Alaska in 2033, but I’ll only have one kid at home; it will be fully two decades before the contiguous United States sees totality again. Will we be able to observe it at all? Will we manage to come together for the experience? Will we all even be alive then? Who knows?? The way I see it, this was our only shot, and I wasn’t going to miss it for anything.
Because solar eclipses are freaking incredible, and I believe no one on that beach in Indiana will ever forget the experience. Because my kids got to see me nerd out about something that I really, really love, and even they noticed my joy was palpable that day; how often do they get to see me like that, really? Because spending time with family and making lasting memories together is important – more important than getting more hours at your part-time job or being at that one birthday party or earning new skins on Fortnite. Because sharing something incredible with my kids is one way of showing them love, and I want them to know that my life is better with them in it.
Your toddler doesn’t care about brushing his teeth, but guess what? You make him do it anyway. Your kid doesn’t care about taking yucky medicine when she’s sick, but, that’s right, you make her do it anyway. Your teen doesn’t care about turning in homework on time, keeping their room clean, or driving the speed limit, but we teach them anyway. My teens didn’t care one iota about seeing a solar eclipse in totality, even though it was hugely important to their mom, but we made them do it anyway.
In the middle of totality, my sons ran over to me talking a mile a minute about the shadow bands they saw. They asked, “what’s that red glow?” and listened to me gush about solar prominences. My daughter confessed that the 360 degree sunset effect was, in fact, really pretty, and they actually said, “So, you’re taking us to Alaska too, right?”
One day, in 2044, I hope my kids get to see another solar eclipse, maybe with their own kids this time. They probably won’t remember which direction to find Venus and Jupiter, that they should watch the western sky for the moon’s oncoming shadow, or to be sure and bring a colander for those crazy crescent shadows. I’m pretty confident they’ll remember that 2024 corona, though the image may be slightly dimmed in their minds’ eye. Most of all, I think they’ll remember their mom geeking out with the park rangers, the way I cried tears of joy as I beheld totality, and the way I couldn’t stop smiling for days. I hope they forget being rude about having to take a trip, because that’s ultimately insignificant. They probably won’t ever agree with me about everything – nor should they! – but one lesson I really pray rubs off is that their mom absolutely adores them, and that life is always better when we do it together with people we love.
