In other news, Sarah, who has been refusing to talk to me about high school graduation, finally found the motivation to be open to discussing it ... a little. She's been asking me whether she can watch any movies she wants when she turns 18. Lest you wonder why a kid who'll turn 18 in a few months has these limits, her taste in cinema tends toward the extreme. Those of you who know her will get what I mean. :-)
When she was about 12 or so, she talked me into letting her watch a disturbing British Indie film called The Living and the Dead. That was her gateway drug to "extreme cinema." She took it quite seriously, writing several reviews of this film and writing the director to ask questions about his interpretation of the plot and characters. I'm not arguing that these movies don't have educational benefit for her. Just that they aren't beneficial to her sanity.
Since then she's graduated to more violent and disturbing movies. She's talked me into watching some with her. I'll admit ... some of them are pretty good. I'll even admit to loving Pulp Fiction. But there are some movies I still won't allow in this house.
Here's the thing. I finally told her she can have free reign over her movie choices when she graduates from high school. I consider this more of a milestone than a birthday. So now she's willing to discuss it. :-P I've put together a transcript-in-progress of sorts. It's very non-traditional, because Sarah definitely insists on following her own path and the whole thing has been done in a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fashion, working around the ebb and flow of her interests and a lot of health issues. Anyway, the short version is that I told her she needs about 5 more classes (120 hours each), including Algebra I, plus she has to pass the local community college entrance exam (so she won't be able to say "I can't go to college.") I'm O.K. with the fact that she doesn't want to go to college. I just want it to be perfectly clear to her that it's a possibility.
She's been spending a lot of time thinking and learning about writing screenplays and directing movies. She's been working like crazy on her novel, which she hopes to turn into a screenplay. She also wants to spend time on a movie set, seeing how a film is directed -- I haven't figured out how to make that happen. Any suggestions?
She staunchly refuses to take any formal film classes. The way she sees it is this: why should she be meeting someone else's expectations, and writing essays on topics related to her area of interest, when she could just be learning to do it?
She's also been taking an active interest in her brother's future, mostly by berating him for "wasting" most of his time on video games. *LOL* She's advising me to steer his passion for gaming in a constructive direction by encouraging him to start writing gaming reviews. He seems to have no interest in changing the way he spends his time.
I wanted my teens to follow their bliss and grow up to be autodidacts. As the Jewish proverb goes, when God wants to punish us, He answers our prayers. They're either going to be freaking brilliant, and doing stuff they love, or they'll spend their lives shooting themselves in both feet with their determination to do everything their own way. Or both. We'll see, eh? ;-)
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