To answer the question, you may look to norms. You may look to your own teenagers, You may look to your pediatrician. But to really answer it, You must look to you.

Are You a Candidate for Living? or are you a Wallflower?

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of going to Disney World for the day.Walt Disney World does an awfully good job at an awful lot of things. But what it does best, I think, is bring out the kid in us all. The goofy kid, The enthusiastic kid, the playful kid, the adventurous kid. And if you’re willing, the uninhibited, free spirited kid. I saw quite a few during the afternoon parade. The song and the scene that struck me most, was “Shake it”. Lots of Disney Characters took part, dancing alongside the float, some of them agilely on stilts even!

That was inspiring for sure, but what I was most inspired by, was a very special young man. He had Downs Syndrome. But You know what? As I watched him,dancing with with abandon, I was smiling from silver hoop earring, to silver hoop earring. What was clear, at first glance was his sense of joy. It made me happy just to observe him, experiencing so much deep-core-level joy. It made me cry, first from happiness, but also from a little sadness, at my own inhibition. It made me wonder, where, along the way I had picked it up, and decided to carry it along, to my detriment.

I guess we pick up inhibition when we pick up fear of disapproval, and fear fear of wondering how we’ll look to others. sadly, we pick up self judgement along the way.

As I watched this young man, who some might pity, I saw a complete lack of inhibition, and a complete state of oneness–with the music, and indeed, with those of us around him, who , by our engaging in his joy, were slowly creeping out of our long overdue shells.

We are all candidates for living, but we’re not all taking part.
If we want our teenagers to take part, then we have to take part ourselves, casting aside our own inhibitions, looking at what’s kept us from engaging with our own joy. We absolutely need to model it ourselves, but also to encourage and support it, in the lives of our teenagers. Because it’s a great big world out there, just bursting with opportunities, just bursting wit Joy.

After all, Wall flowers, rarely get to see the sun,
which is where all of the Disney Parades take place.
Come out and Shake it!
Just try it and see,
You may find, if you look,
It’s the Only way to really Be.

Alphabetical is the ONLY right and fair way to arrange lists.

“…so what we’re goin’ to do now is get up on these here horses, round up all those cows up over yonder, bring them back to the barn, and remove all them ticks that’ve been latched on my poor ladies since last week.”

…

“Why ya’ll three in the middle don’t seem to be too exited by that?”