Lessons from my 16-year-old

The Company We Keep is a column on the CN&CO blog that profiles some of the most interesting people in our networks. Here we share the details of the lives of people we know, showcasing the extraordinary diversity of our society and proving that people truly are at the heart of everything we do.

This post is from CN&CO’s marketing guru, Stella Carter.

As a mother of a soon-to-be 16-year-old son who is wired very differently to me, I often find myself in awe of how he handles life. (That’s him and my daughter in the pic above, by the way.) Throughout his teenage years, I’ve watched him navigate situations with a calm and perspective I never had at his age.

I was a far more anxious child growing up. I cared far too much about what other people thought of me. I was so focused on being liked and accepted that I lost sight of all the things that made me me – ironically, the very things that would have made me liked and accepted in the first place. It’s funny how, when you’re young, other people’s approval feels essential, yet the older you get, the less power it holds. I suppose that comes with learning to love yourself, accepting who you are, and realising that you don’t need external validation to be enough.

Back to my son.

I absolutely love the way he approaches situations that would have sent me – and sometimes still do – into an anxiety-driven spiral. There are two things he says, often to me, that have genuinely made me stop and reassess how I approach life.

The first, and probably the most used:
“It’s not that deep.”
Translated: This is not nearly as big a deal as you’re making it… just chill.

This one comes out a lot, usually in response to my reactions to things that don’t actually require one. And it’s never condescending or dismissive. He genuinely doesn’t believe certain things deserve that much emotional energy. There’s no overthinking, no replaying the moment – we simply move on.

The second, and possibly the most profound:
“Let them cook.”
Translated: Leave them be. Let them do their thing.

You don’t need to get involved, fix it, or change it. Just let people exist in their own way. For someone like me, who tends to control situations in an attempt to manage the anxiety of not being “in control”, this is a hard lesson. It’s tempting to step in and take over because it feels easier or quicker. But who does that actually benefit? Not me, and certainly not the other person. Sometimes the healthiest choice is to step back and let people figure things out for themselves. So now, I try to “let them cook”.

There is no handbook for parenting – good or otherwise. We’re all out here living life for the first time, trying to figure it out as we go. Sometimes the simplest perspectives are the healthiest ones. And sometimes, the best teachers aren’t the ones we expect, but the ones we raised ourselves.