Goren Is My Sacred Cow

I was sick last week, which means I searched for and watched Law & Order marathons. My all time rankings for Dick Wolf shows look like this:

1. Law & Order: Criminal Intent
2. Law & Order: SVU
3. Law & Order
4. Every abruptly cancelled iteration of Law & Order
5. Chicago P.D.
6. Chicago Fire
7. Law & Order: True Crime
8. All the ones I've never watched.

Since Criminal Intent is my favorite, I've pretty much watched every episode several times. Last week they showed the episodes where Goren goes to therapy. His cruel mother is dead, but he still can't speak ill of her to his therapist.

I know I've seen the episodes before, but for whatever reason, this time that idea really struck me. It was all I could do not to wake the kids and tell them that it was okay for them to complain about me to their future therapists.

I mean, I doubt any of them will go on to become emotionally unstable, professionally successful police detectives who must go to therapy to keep their jobs, but I don't know that for a fact. And of course, it's not only Dick Wolf characters who go to therapy. Chances are good that at least one of my kids will need some help some day.

And while I sure hope they don't have to go to therapy BECAUSE of me, I also hope that if they do go they feel free to bitch about all the times the tooth fairy was several days late. Or how I wore antlers to chaperone the school holiday party. Or all the times I yelled.

I want my kids to know that I'm not a sacred cow, especially with their therapists. Most especially after I'm dead.

I want my kids to understand the difference between criticism and disrespect, between loving acceptance and worship, between acknowledgement and responsibility.

I'm not entirely sure how to do this, although I'm tempted to have them just watch all the Goren episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent  with me so we can properly analyze all the issues Goren and his mother have. I suspect, though, that this would be fodder for their own future therapist visits and would probably have the terrible side effect of making them not appreciate the awesomeness of Goren as a character.

I'm definitely NOT okay with that side effect.

Shut Up About My Teenage Girl

It's practically a cultural norm that teenage girls are terrible.

Their tastes are insulted on the regular - think about your perceptions of "boy bands"  and other things popular with teen girls.

Heathers and Mean Girls, movies that I adore, are, in essence, movies about how cruel teenage girls are.

Chances are good that if you find a woman who hated high school, she will blame her female peers for her torment. Hell, I didn't hate high school and I've still said shitty things about teen girls, based solely on a few bad apples who are probably also terrible as adults (I don't know for sure, because I'm not friends with them on Facebook) and the stupid things I did and said as a teen. 

The first articles that popped up when I typed "Teen girls" into Google all had to do with the pressure teenage girls get to send nude pictures of themselves. The top news stories included one about a pastor who was APPLAUDED BY HIS CONGREGATION for confessing that he molested a teenage girl and one about a series of murders of teen girls that remains unsolved 50 years later. 

I had to scroll nearly to the bottom of the results page to find an article detailing what a mess the teenage brain is. (If you have a teenage girl, or a future teenage girl, I highly recommend reading the linked article). 

Couple that mess with the pressures of school, of boys you may have crushes on demanding your naked photos or other things you're not comfortable with, your dearest friends also falling apart, a society that alternately dismisses you or sexualizes everything you do and the confusion of figuring out who you are as a person. . . .

It's actually amazing that teenage girls aren't worse. 

Do you remember the Fierce Five? They were the teen girls who won gymnastics gold at the 2012 Olympics. Three of them have since come out as survivors of sexual abuse from their fucking team doctor. They were being molested at the same time as they were winning the Olympics.*

Can you imagine the kind of emotional strength it takes to do that? 

The kind of emotional strength it takes to act in a movie and be on set with your abuser. The kind of emotional strength it takes to survive and become a high school valedictorian. So many teenage girls are fighting demons we can't imagine, while maintaining their image on Instagram and their grades and their jobs/sports/hobbies and sometimes even freaking parenting. . . even though their brains are not fully developed and this is often when mental health issues first arrive. . .

and we want to call them mean or terrible or silly?

Teenage girls are amazing. Especially the ones surviving today.

I've described my teenage self as a "terrible human being" more than once. And yeah, compared to who I am now? I was pretty spoiled, thoughtless and clueless. But it's not like I was selling heroin to elementary school kids or beating up old ladies. Judging my teenage self - or any teenager - by my adult standards is unfair, to say the least.

Ironflower turned 13 last month (yeah, I can't believe it either). She likes Mean Girls and Heathers and loves to point out when she's being a stereotypical teenager. She's more Daria than Quinn, at least so far, which makes it easy to forget that when we make comments about teenagers, we're talking about her too.

But you can bet that she, and all the other teenagers and almost teenagers we love, remember our comments. They will always remember how we talked to them and about them.

*Since my first draft of this post, Simone Biles - the most amazing gymnast in the history of ever- has also come out as a survivor of that evil doctor's abuse. I am in awe of her strength. I am also horrified. If this is what happens to our most celebrated teens, what do you think is happening to regular teens?