The parent of a teenage expat

An interesting concept and one I hadn’t really thought through. I hadn’t thought about the impact it would have on my family- having a teenage expatriate.

When I was a teenager, I lived in a college town in the heart of Illinois. I used to refer to it as “growing up in the middle of the corn”. There were only a handful of things I could do to get in trouble and only a handful of places I could do those things. We would pass the time doing fairly harmless things, albeit now, I cringe when I think of the painfully ignorant choices we made, like driving our parent’s cars through the cornfields and doing donuts in the street or in a neighborhood park when it snowed. Another favorite was “confuse the idiot and get a dollar back” – a game where we would try to “exchange” coins for a dollar and our local convenience store. The way we saw it, it was a game of skill and harmless. Hey, if the clerk can’t do simple math, then we end up with an extra dollar. We also managed to survive more obviously bad choices- buying beer as 16 year olds and going to bars in town with fake IDs, but always careful to get home by curfew. Sneaking out of our bedroom windows to meet up and hang out in the neighborhood well after we should have been in bed was something we did fairly frequently. I was bracing myself for these years with my boys. I wondered how I would stay awake, waiting for my boys to come home after a long night out, or worse, something my parents had to endure, getting a late night phone call from the Emergency Room after I had been in a car accident. I can’t imaging the fear they felt when the nurse asked if I was their daughter. But I survived, and miraculously, so did all my friends. We all grew up, became educated, had families and lives.

And then we moved to China.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had dodged a bullet. My 15 year old would be safe under my watchful eye. He would not have a driver’s license because there is no car. I thought I was safe. We would have a wonderful close family and we’d watch movies and eat pizza and I wouldn’t have to worry about all the things teenagers do when it’s dark or their parents aren’t home.

I was wrong.

While some laws or rules in China, I must admit, are “suggestions” and funny because no one ever follows them, there are very serious consequences for not following what I would call, very benign infractions.

Last May, several seniors at my son’s school were spotted in Sanlitun, an area of Beijing where the kids go to hang out.  Sanlitun has a party atmosphere. There are many shops, coffee houses and bar street. You see the allure…..and they do, too. They were seen buying a joint. One joint. The police followed them home to my neighborhood and entered their house without a warrant, because they can. The kids were arrested immediately and taken away. The parents were deported and one of the boys is believed to still be in jail. This makes my blood run cold. Imagine trying to explain this to your child – these are very real and very permanent consequences and there’s nothing that can be changed. Ever.

A few weeks ago, my 15 year old texted me that he wanted to hang out with his friends and would be home late. Of course, I said, sure, and waited for him to get home on the 6:30 pm bus. 6:30 came and went. I texted. Where was he? Missed bus? At a friend’s? No. He was in a taxi with friends on his way down to Sanlitun for a night of fun and who knows what else. He said he’d try to be home by 10.

Did I mention he is 15? Did I mention that he doesn’t speak fluent Mandarin or have his papers with him? Did I mention he wouldn’t know how to tell a taxi driver how to get home home if something happened? Did I mention it was a school night?

After I returned from my out of body experience and back into reality, I managed to tell him to “get his ass home now”. Traffic was bad, so it took him over an hour to return to the house. Then it hit me. I didn’t have a car to go get him if he needed me to. I don’t have a driver’s license. There’s no ambulance that would ever find him and get him to a hospital if there was an emergency. And worst of all, I hadn’t even known where he was.

Worst of all?? No, not quite. After we recovered from the shock that our baby knew how to hop in a cab and the fact that he was on his way downtown to bar street, we had the serious talk- the one where we felt like we were lucky that we had such a good kid – that he told us the truth! It must have been a fluke! Maybe peer pressure? Or maybe he was just looking for a good place to eat pizza? We thought it was clear- it would never happen again.

Then, he put a sign on his bedroom door, “Please knock before entering”. Apparently, it takes more than a split second before knocking and the door opening to get rid of all the cigarette smoke that had accumulated in his room his clothes, his curtains, rugs and everything else. I screamed. I’m sure the entire neighborhood heard me.

Then he mentioned the vodka and Gatorade his friend shared with him at a local restaurant near school. And he was surprised that I didn’t notice. And honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t notice. I thought I would ALWAYS KNOW. I thought my child didn’t do this, wasn’t interested. Didn’t care. It awakened a brand new kind of hell in me. Frightening- more so because I didn’t have a clue. I was so busy watching the Blonde One, that I completely missed this one, flying under the radar.

I have spent the past week watching his every move. Sniffing him constantly and observing him with the tenacity of a CSI specialist, complete with a tracking app on his phone and text “check ins” throughout the day. I hate the way I feel. And I hate that I have to do this. But the hardest and most unpleasant part of parenting is sadly, the most important.

So, what do I do? Keep him on lockdown til he’s 21or comes to his senses? Have him do as he likes and let him experiment his way into a Chinese prison? No. It will be a fine line for the next few years. Let him find his own way without irreparable consequences. Quite a tough job for all of us, but that is the way it has to be. Like the saying goes, I can sleep when I’m dead. He’ll either thank me or hate my guts. Or both. Stay tuned.