What Writing Looks Like With Teens/Young Adults

When I was a kid, our family of four lived in a home with one bathroom, and I recall deciding, whenever my mother was in the bathtub, that I needed to speak with her at that moment about something highly important. I remember sitting on the toilet lid, chatting away to my captive audience. I can still picture my mother rolling the bar of Ivory soap in the washcloth and rubbing it over her shoulders, and how her toenails made me think of bird talons. Children always seem to want to interrupt their mother when she is trying to relax or trying to work. I eventually understood my mother’s bathtub frustration. 

When my children were toddlers, they interrupted me with their neediness, their never-ending quest for the most perfect sippy cup and a bowl of Cheerios. As they got a little bit older, entire afternoons and evenings were interrupted with extracurriculars and homework help. It became abundantly clear that for my own mental health I had to learn to let some things go. Occasional paid writing assignments took precedence, often requiring me to find a place to hide and write in fits and starts. Writing to explore an idea or emotion with the potential for publication just didn’t happen. 

I stopped teaching full-time when my oldest was born because I knew I couldn’t juggle all the things. I didn’t want to resent my baby or my job so I picked (and was fortunate to be able to do so). As more babies came along, I made other choices to preserve my sanity, and this was my choice with writing. 

Now at 13-, 15-, and 19-years-old, my kids don’t interrupt me in the same way, and I don’t feel as aggravated as I once did (for the most part).  Rather than an endless loop of interruption until the end of time, I see the writing on the wall; this is not going to last forever. 

This recognition doesn’t mean that I never get frustrated. During COVID, when everyone needed their own space for virtual classes, I converted our never-used dining room into my office. It is right off the kitchen on one side and off the foyer and stairs leading to the second floor on the other. There are no doors, which means that when I am trying to write or think about what I’m going to write, my children (and honestly, my husband, too) sometimes decide that they have something highly important they need to tell me. It doesn’t matter if my eyes are scrunched, my shoulders hunched, earbuds in, and a pensive grimace on my face, all clear nonverbal signs of “LEAVE ME ALONE.”

But this only happens sometimes. 

My oldest lives at home while attending college right now, but there are days when I don’t see her at all. Actually, it can be several days that I don’t see her, depending on our schedules. Our communication is mostly text messages to find out where she is so I can go to sleep and funny cat memes via Instagram. When she is at home, even if I’m working on something, I try to carve out time to check in with her. 

My middle child spends the 17 hours of the day when he is not at school in his bedroom. He comes down for meals, grunts a little, and then scurries back to his hole. If he wants to talk to me, even if I’m pretty sure it is only about the new video game he is playing which bores me to tears, I listen. Or try to. Crumbs for a starving person, and all. 

The youngest plays his video games in the family room, and in our open concept home, his chatting with his online friends is entirely too loud for me to formulate a single solitary coherent thought. It is at this point that I sometimes revert to hiding. But mostly, I try not to let it bother me because I’m getting to hear him laugh. 

My writing, my time thinking, my work has always been important to me, even when I couldn’t put it first. Now, though, I’m seeing a wide open space on the horizon that is full of uninterrupted silence and time, and that changes how I feel about the moments when my kids want to check in with me or if they are being a little louder than I’d like. I still get frustrated, but I can temper it with “Soon, soon.”

My mother, now 85, has long been able to bathe without interruption. I anticipate my writing will one day be the same.