"Our Teen Son Just Turned Conservative. It’s Making Our House a Total Nightmare."
Heed the groovy poster.
Original column: Slate’s Care & Feeding, December 18 2024
This morning AdviceObsessed found herself scrolling through the advice columns, looking for material for a new post. She found nothing…nothing…nothing…
Then this! What can she say? The scrolling was over and the gloves were off.
To recap: The letter-writer begins by establishing that everyone in her family has a very high IQ. First things first, right? So her 13-year-old son is “very intelligent,” and was “reading at five.” She herself manages a nonprofit, and her husband works at a university. Both are “perfectly smart” and “methodical and analytical.”
The trouble is that her son (“a voracious reader, and verbally dexterous”) has picked up “some very conservative ideas.” She writes: “He now loves arguing with us about politics—and he nearly always ‘wins’ the argument because of his debating skills, even though his ideas are utterly opposed to the values we have inculcated in him from birth.”
It’s a nightmare. He raises these new ideas with their friends, which is “horribly embarrassing.” He’s started corrupting his younger brother, who notices his parents always lose these arguments.
The LW and her husband sought help from their son’s school, which declined to provide it, and AdviceObsessed would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that one. They even sent the kid to therapy! More than once!
Now the LW’s husband is ready for “drastic measures.” She doesn’t say what these are, but feels there must be a better way. What should they do?
Care & Feeding starts with those drastic measures. What are they? it asks. Good question, Care & Feeding!
Then it says these parents need to stop letting their kid get under their skin. It suggests they say: “‘I love you, [name], and I do not wish to debate politics with you anymore, because it makes me sad.’”
After that, all they can do is live by their own values, and hope their son will move on to debating someone else.
AdviceObsessed has better advice.
Let’s start with the odd way the LW framed her problem. Their son wins these arguments, she says, because he’s a good debater, “even though” his ideas are contrary to their values. But “good debater” and “good values” aren’t on opposite sides. When values are sound, debating skills support them—skills like logic, reason, and the marshaling of evidence.
If the LW’s values are defensible, she should apply these tools and start defending. This is something a “methodical and analytical” person who runs a nonprofit and is “perfectly smart” ought to be able to do. And if she can’t manage this—if she can’t defend her values—then she should reconsider them, frankly, instead of copping out by saying her son’s just a better debater.
While she’s reconsidering, the LW should also think about what kind of family she wants, because right now she’s prowling for thought police to keep the kids in check. She tried the school, and multiple therapists, but she struck out. Now she’s trying Care & Feeding. Fix my son, please! Correct his ideas!
Let’s remember: This woman has a son who’s thinking independently, and loves to test his opinions by bouncing them off people who disagree. Many parents would be proud. But this mother would prefer kids who never challenge the ideas with which they’ve been “inculcated since birth.”
That’s why, when their son leaves the room, they don’t ask his little brother what he thinks. They tell him how the older brother “is actually wrong.”
So what does AdviceObsessed recommend?
If the renegade son is badgering or browbeating his parents over his political ideas, the LW does have a problem, though she’s unlikely to solve it by telling him it makes her “sad.” Parents are absolutely entitled to cut off conversations if they’ve become unproductive or have tipped into harassment. This is a matter of offering the kid the last word, listening courteously while he takes it, thanking him for the thought-provoking conversation, and then refusing to respond to any further remarks.
This may not work the first time—it probably won’t work the first time—but parents are used to that, aren’t we?
AdviceObsessed doesn’t intend to be mean. No one wants their kids to reject everything they stand for. It’s a nail on a blackboard to hear your child express an idea that to you is anathema.
But to quote those groovy posters that hung all over the place in the 1970s, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.” Et cetera. It goes on. The image above captures only part of it.
Anyway, for many years, when their kids were kids, AdviceObsessed and her husband sometimes found themselves numbly reciting those words.
Did it help? I don’t recall that it did, actually. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and worth remembering. And the payoff when you do is, you love those kids despite what they think. They teach you. You open your mind and heart to something new, and no one ever, ever regrets it.