Lux AlptraumHonestly shocking to me as both a one time high school sex educator and a one time teen how many of you don’t believe that teens deserve privacy
Teens are not children! They’re simply not! Are they adults? Nope! But they’re in an in between development stage and they deserve an age appropriate amount of privacy and autonomy in order to practice our being adults.
“But what if they fuck up?” Yeah I mean that’s how people learn shit.
This is also why I hate when people feel like they have to infantilize teens in order to argue that when teens date adults there’s a higher likelihood of abuse. It’s not because teens are children! It’s because they’re *not fully developed adults*! There’s a difference.
Evan Urquhart 🏳️⚧️@luxalptraum My first job out of college was working with teens, and I also fostered a couple when I was still married living in California.
They're really their own thing.. They can reason basically like adults, they can make and execute long term plans/goals... but they are hilariously naive and open and vulnerable, and even incredibly smart ones just happen not to know a lot of very basic things because they haven't lived long enough to learn them.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@e_urq @luxalptraum "but they are hilariously naive and open and vulnerable". This explains the various people I knew in college (esp. the first year or two) who changed their religious alignment, because the churches were actively recruiting on or very near campus.
Wyl McCully@luxalptraum it seems like the problem is our binary approach to maturity. 17 and 364 days: young, stupid child; but overnight, the grownup fairy comes down and at 18 you are magically a grown, intelligent adult. There is no room in our laws for something in-between.
Tom Bellin 
@luxalptraum if they fuck up then I hope you haven't done something to screw up their natural trust in their parents (like, say, spying on them) so that they come to you to help them instead of someone else.
luvadergolder@tob @luxalptraum like my parents. I stopped telling them anything and stopped journaling/leaving personal documents at home at 14. Then at 18 went NC for 13 years.
@tob @luxalptraum luckily I didn’t screw up bad enough I needed their help.
Mikey Brenndorfer XVX@luxalptraum 100% - I feel half my job is providing a safe place for young people to fuck up so they can learn on the way, and helping their parents do the same.
Bluedotmo@luxalptraum Parent of two teens. The balance is letting them fuck up without killing themselves or fucking up their entire future.
@bluedotmo @luxalptraum Just try to keep them away from heavy machinery (i.e., the car) and OMG, these days, fentanyl.
Illiath The Fae@luxalptraum I still find it weird that many people don't get that you have to fail at something to learn something. The important point for good teaching is to make sure your students don't fail in a manner that can actually hurt them. (Note: I said "good teaching", not "teachers", if you don't believe you're teaching things to your kids, please help them get to a real parent!)
Collin Beyer@luxalptraum fucking up could mean catching mono and regretting wasting your vcard. Maybe if parenting was better kids wouldn't rush into zero sum relationships that have a shelflife of a month or so. We need to teach our kids the difference between a real life partner and one night stands. If parents communication was better kids wouldnt ruin their love life. If they truly want a one night stand then thats fine too but they need to be given condoms and good advice. Making sex illegal encourages
Ash Rose@haplessidiot @luxalptraum Rushing into bad relationships is part of being a teen though, because you have all these feelings and you don’t know the red flags yet. Parenting is about teaching good emotional intelligence so they pick someone better next time
Also “v-cards” aren’t real and no one would care if society didn’t fetishize virginity so much. Mono or STIs are a bigger danger but proper sex education that doesn’t fetishize abstinence and virginity is the only way to prevent that
Bert Latamore@luxalptraum The latest brain science, based on large numbers of non-invasive medical imaging of teen brains, is that between the ages of approximately 12 to 22 humans completely restructure their brains from the child to the adult. At the same time they get hit with maturing sexuality. That combination is why one minute a teen can sound and act very adult and the next like a child. The problem is they are both.
Voltaic@luxalptraum Teens in relationships with adults should be protected with the legal rights of children. It’s not a consensual relationship.
PeoriaBummer@luxalptraum Of course they do! We have to gradually give teens/tweens more autonomy as they age into adulthood. We should give them time to experiment and learn safely as they slowly become independent grown ups. Privacy must be a part of this transition.
Toxteth O'Grady@luxalptraum Shocking. But not surprising...
Luna@luxalptraum The trick for me, when my daughter was a teen, was to figure out when safety was more important than privacy. And by safety, I mean literally, not 'what if she's having sex omg!'
Jacob Harris@luxalptraum It really troubles me how much surveillance technology is out there and how it’s normalized to use it. I told my son I have no interest in monitoring where he goes and what he reads, but there is so much tech pitched at all that
ZacMany people seem to have forgotten what it was like to be a teen. Or are simply repeating the same abusive behaviour their parents inflicted on them.
Dr.Ubertrout@luxalptraum Parents are afraid their teens are going to do the exact same stupid shit they did at that age.
@Dr_Ubertrout @luxalptraum Unfortunately doing stupid shit is kind of what humans are best at, better to give them a safe space to learn with your support while they’re with you than to shelter and monitor them so they do all their acting out and learning once they’re out of the house… and no I’m totally not speaking from experience
Peter Weyand@luxalptraum A room with a door and a lock. I remember when I was in high school that my father removed the door off the hinges of my bedroom door and took it out. Abusive messed up parents create intergenerational problems. It is what it is.