ELENA writes:

I want to endorse your comment about kids benefiting from interaction with people a little older than they are, who seem interesting and grown-up without being, you know, parents (ugh!). When I’ve tutored teenagers, in particular, I’ve spent probably 30 percent of my time with them just talking to them about their lives, rather than teaching the subject. They’ll open up to someone they perceive as experienced but not a boring adult in ways they won’t to their parents, and (to their great shock) they discover that twenty-somethings offer the same advice as their parents would, and that perhaps that advice, therefore, isn’t all bad.

When I moved into my house two and a half years ago, I hired the sixteen-year-old across the street to do yard work every couple of weeks. He’s now eighteen (I’m now twenty-nine), and our employment relationship has evolved into a friendship. My husband and I both advise him, and he comes to us with problems he won’t share with his parents. We give him the same advice his parents do, but he listens to us, because we’re not old enough to be his parents, and yet we obviously have much, much more life experience than he does. When he storms out of his house after an argument with his folks and comes across the street to vent to me, they aren’t worried, because they know he’s safe in our house. I don’t mind at all, because he’s a nice kid, and I’m friends with his parents, and more than anything, I remember what it was like to be his age, totally frustrated and confused, with my frontal lobe not working consistently. A good tutor, or a family friend, who’s five to fifteen years older than a kid can fill a really important role in a kid’s life (and when they really are a good tutor or good friend, they can be trusted to pass on any real problems to the parents).

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