My Reaction To Adolescence Made Me Question Myself As A Mom Of Sons

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Adolescence on Netflix.

Like so many others, I recently watched Adolescence on Netflix. I cannot stop thinking about so much of it, but I mostly cannot stop thinking about our first look at 13-year-old Jamie Miller (played by Owen Cooper). I cannot stop thinking about it because I cannot believe my own foolish, naive reaction to him. That he was not what he appeared to be, that Jamie was not capable of killing.

It was his little arms that did it; the arms of a 13-year-old who is still growing, still gangly and unsure, still becoming who he is going to be. He was in bed when the police came in, his room the same kind of mess my own four boys had in their rooms in their early teen years. And his little boy arms, so like my little boys’ arms. I assumed the police were wrong about him, just like his parents assumed they were wrong. I assumed young Jamie was a red herring, that someone else must have killed the young girl he was accused of killing.

Because I really didn’t think it was possible that it could be him. Not when I watched Jamie get arrested, not when I watched him cry for his dad. Not when the officers stepped away so he could change out of his pajama pants after wetting the bed. Because he was just too little for bad things. Too tender, too vulnerable, too new to the world to do any real damage. He was all gangly arms and nervous ticks and baby-faced. Too much like my own gangly, baby-faced kids. He was safe in bed on a school morning like he was supposed to be. He was just impossibly regular and so no, no it could not be him.

I kept thinking this throughout the episode. Even when my own adult son, who watched it on the couch beside me, said, “There’s something not right about that kid.” He knew right away the thing I would not see.

Wrong, I thought. He’s too young, too gangly, too tender. He wanted his dad. Never his mom, I’ll admit this gave me pause. Only ever his dad. Still, it could not be him.

I refused to believe it even after the police played a video of him stabbing a girl to death, shocking his father and, I guess, me. I watched the next episode and waited for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it was doctored? AI? Then I watched the third episode. THAT episode. Where he is alone with his therapist. A woman. Where he is still young and gangly and tender but also something else entirely. A boy who wants to be a certain kind of man. A boy who is angry at girls and women and himself and everyone.

I finally saw it. A little murderer made violent by the dark world of online misogyny and misinformation. And I wondered if I would have seen it if I were Jamie’s parents. And I think I knew straight away that the answer was no, probably not.

Because we think we know our kids. I think this was one of the main takeaways for parents watching Adolescence. The thing so many of us are talking about on social media, and in articles and think pieces. We didn’t know that we didn’t know.

I thought I was deeply in tune with my own teen boys. We talked a lot, usually in the kitchen or on a drive somewhere or sometimes during a movie. I knew their friends really well. I knew what sports they liked to play. I knew about their grades and their teachers, their taste in music and what they liked on their pizza. What they wanted for their birthday. I even knew sometimes if they had a crush on someone. I thought that was enough.

This is what Adolescence hammers home and has taught me. That it was not always enough. That I didn’t know anything about their digital universe. I could be sitting right beside them, looking at the same social media feed, and I would not have understood a thing. I did not know that danger was in plain sight but so cleverly hidden from me. I would not have known if they were suffering or making someone else suffer. Most nights I went to sleep in the next room with a smile on my face, happy with my sweet boys. My growing boys. My sensitive boys. Believing that we inhabited the same world. That the cliches from my own bout with puberty would apply to them, and would therefore by relatable or understandable to me.

I wonder what I would do now if my sons were still teens. What would I watch for? What would I do differently? My instinct tells me that I would try and limit their access to smartphones. That I would try to engage other adults in their lives, to create more of a village for my kids than the one I was giving them as a single mom. Like most parents, I was trying to stay connected. Like most parents, I didn’t always get it right.

The truth is this world is not the same for them. The truth is, I didn’t know as much as I should have. I did not know that one of my sons was bullied at the same age as Jamie, and that teachers stood by and watched and said nothing. That he dreaded going to school for a full year and told no one. That he didn’t get a break from the bullies once he got home, that they lived in his digital universe and laid claim to a part of him I had never seen. Would it have been different without access to social media? I really don’t know.

He survived. He came out not unscathed, but able to move on. To share what he went through now, as a grown up, with me, his brothers and his partner. We were so damn lucky to make it through that it stops my heart.

Adolescence is, sadly, the truth I never wanted to see. And I’ll never forget.

Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.