Rock-solid bond: These teens aren’t embarrassed to attend concerts with Mom and Dad
I have a hot date with an edgy and very handsome young man this month. I’ll be the gray-haired lady on the arm of a tattooed and pierced young man, clearly young enough to be my son.
Actually, he is my son. We’ve planned to arrive early and stake our ground by the stage, then do what we must to hold our stake. We’ll be seeing a band we first saw opening for a band at yet another concert date the two of us went to. We were both entranced by the raucous and chaotic performance, and we both jumped at the chance to see them again.
I always assumed that at the ages of 17 and 19, our kids wouldn’t want to hang out with us square old folk. We’d be embarrassing and uncool. If we were lucky, perhaps they’d hide how much we’d make them cringe, but we’d probably be able to tell.
They did, in fact, think it was embarrassing and uncool to go to concerts when they were young. When we took them to their first rock concert to see The Presidents of the United States of America, they objected, complaining with eye-rolls and attitude that their parents were making them go to a concert.
The kids soon learned that concerts are, in fact, cool, and that their parents (especially their dad) is unusually eclectic in his musical taste. We were thrilled to share the experience of seeing a live performance, and even more thrilled that much, if not all, of our musical taste overlapped. If any of the four of us want to see any given band, we can most likely find at least one other among us who wants to go.
They don’t always want to go, especially when they aren’t familiar with the musician. We’ve used our parental authority to mandate full-family attendance at shows such as Jack White, delighting as they realized we’d had to drag them to witness mind-blowing talent, all on our dime. They admitted they were obsessed, and I enjoyed my, “I told you so.”
We’re in an opportune time where the cultural gap doesn’t feel as gaping as it did between my parents and late-teen-Emily. My mom loved singing hymns as she had with her family. My dad enjoyed classical music or singing along with mom.
My husband and I both had to hide our music with “explicit lyrics” warnings, and can attest that we did not live out the lyrics that our parents’ generation so feared. We’ve experienced the therapeutic effects of angry music. We know the transcendent feeling of knowing rock ’n’ roll deep in our souls does not actually steal, or even damage our souls. It’s hard to be shocked at the dark themes or musicians’ appearances.
Not only did the music we enjoyed when we were their age pave the way for modern music, it still stands. Our kids’ playlists include some of the same songs as our mix tapes, and they’re sometimes surprised when they make a new discovery, and we already know all the words.
We’ve spent a pretty penny indulging our kids by making at least a moderate effort to take them to any concert they want to see. But I know it’s worth every penny. How?
Because they have never asked us to pay for them to go to a concert without us. They assume we will go with them, and that’s fine by them.