George Clooney and the 10/30 window

When I get the witching hour wakeup call sometimes I reach for my latest copy of World Magazine. Not that it puts me to sleep, au contraire. The January 14^th issue is definitely not warm milk and wooly sheep.  One article that has stayed with me is a Mindy Belz essay on the 10/30 window.  According to Mindy there are 2.4 billion youth in the world that are in an extended state of adolescence.  They begin puberty around the age of 10 and are not fully formed adults until they are close to 30. That is 20 years of teenage angst!

Furthermore, your kid is more likely to find a kindred spirit in a Facebook friend from Kathmandu than she is from an older family member.  And as she and her brother will search the internet for advice before they will consult their wise elders, there’s not much opportunity for torch passing.  

Even in our Christian circles adults are no longer a treasury of wisdom and experience for children but a directory of services.

After reading that, I punched up my pillow, turned out the light and started thinking about George Clooney.  We just saw The Descendants.  I think it’s a movie every parent should see.

Clooney plays an emotionally distant father forced to regain the high ground with his 10-year-old and 17-year-old daughters while their mother lay dying in the hospital. He responds to the girls’ bad behavior with a mystified expression and does…nothing. His puzzlement drove me nuts, but it paid off in the end.  When he finally figured out what to do, it proved to be the right action.  He protected the younger girl and engaged the older girl in a way that helped her mature. He created the bond the family needed to remain a unit.

You can’t get that off YouTube.