So what did the Adolescence psychologist’s report state?

[sideeyes]

I have been thinking about this for a few days. What do you think?

No they aren't.

I'd like to hope that most 13yo aren't, but some will be. Fairly certain that my DC wasn't because their life was so tightly timed and run, by bus schedules, or too public, there wasn't any time to have a romantic/sexual relationship. AfAIK, my DC did not have a sexual relationship until they were quite a bit older. I could be wrong, but DC is now 25 and I am not about to ask that question directly.

Something that struck me was Jamie's relationship with his mum and how little he seemed to know or care about her. I haven't seen the final episode, but in the first one he went straight to his dad as his appropriate adult, then in the third episode he said something about his mum not liking herself but she could cook a good roast. And that was it. Maybe there is more to come in the fourth episode but it felt like a very sharp contrast with the focus on his dad and his relationship with his dad, e.g when he was taken away from the interview with the psychologist he was shouting 'tell my dad I'm ok' or something, nothing about his mum

Everyone keeps talking about his they are a normal loving family. They seemed like it but they had absolutely zero depth!

That is the issue for this generation. Growing up in households were everyone is isolated is dangerous in a generation where a phone is a world of its own. Generations before us could parent like this - this family set up reflects my family growing up - I spent lots of time with siblings but the relationship with my parents was a little … superficial.

Why superficial? I was the kid, they were the adult and there are certain conversations we would never have, there are ways I would never behave around them because of that hierarchy.

This style of parenting may be “respectful” or “I’m not friends with my kids” but the families that I know that have not built a human level relationship with their children are struggling.

Im not perfect but I watched Adolescence with my teen and we had a thorough conversation and debate about it. I wouldn’t have ever done that with my parents.

when we saw the police officer choose to have dinner with his son, despite saying prior “I don’t get my son” - he probably realised that no matter what he has a duty as a parent to know who the human behind his son is. It’s not enough to just provide for our kids now, we need to show an interest in who they are.

That’s what I got from Adolescence.

To answer your question OP, I really wanted a better close for ep 3 and would love to read that report.

I think Ep4 (which some posters said was boring and pointless) tells you all about Mum's relationship with Dad.

I agree, I think it's showing their relationship and how tines have changed for teens, so much online, rather than in person.

I do think you can reestablish relationships with parents when you are adults but the main issue is that if you aren't 'there' for them as teens that they may fall in with bad groups.

I always say the only reason I never got into more trouble was because I went to a school outside my area. I just didn't have the local connections. Any opportunities to meet friends were under more parental watch. They had to have given me a lift there.

So they need good friends (would good friends give a knife), barriers against getting into trouble (rules about where you can go and when), more supervision, and self esteem building work.

I feel like I haven't really delved into his friendships much. I might need to watch the episode with them talking about it again to try to see if those kids seemed to actually know him, or if that was superficial (as I seem to remember). He said he wasn't popular but a couple of kids in that episode said they were sad for him and wish he hadn't been arrested or similar. The friend who gave him the knife I think he described as stupid, so didn't respect him or think much of him. In comparison DCI's son was literally sitting alone at lunch, so not as popular but had more self belief (possibly through relationship with dad trying to keep up with him more) so although it annoyed him he didn't seem depressed by it. I think the superficiality of relationships is important as pp said.

I don't really read episode 4 the same as many (no surprises there!) and didn't think the idea was to blame SG's character but to understand and sympathise.

I read it as focusing on them searching themselves for their own responsibilities and reason, the poignancy of the fact that the teenage girl daily becomes overshadowed by her absent brother. She did have agency though and it was her who said they shouldn't move away. I actually thought they were lovely to ehr really but the show focused (lightly) on her own trauma, poor thing.

The idea to me seemed to be they get up daily to try to have a nice , better, more normal day - mow the lawn, wear new top, have a Chinese, go to the pictures ( they never had the breakfast) but the trauma of what Jamie did is always below the surface - the van being vandalised was the inciting incident. Even in a DIY store they get recognised and trapped. Their lives were constant stress.

It was significant that it was dad's 50th - a milestone birthday and his life had amounted to being the dad of a child killer. His day escalated and was basically destroyed. Birthday not happy, cinema plans aborted, Chinese plans modified, pointless inane chit chat about his new top which was now worn just to not go out. The teddy bit was genuinely touching.

The programme showed how events like this can eat away at families and highlight their imperfections and flaws. But he parents were still married ,still loved each other. Yes, they were fairly traditional in gender roles - but lots of families are.

Honestly, I think most things were normal and that that was the point. That's why Jamie's descent was overlooked.

13/14 year olds out with mates late into the evening - mine never have, but to many parents this appears safe and normal (this seems a surprise to MN but it quite common- in fact on some threads you'd be called over protective if you didn't allow it). I live opposite a row of shops and there are often kids outside the chippy at that time just hanging around (and , yes I have seen them shouting at each other, fighting, drinking - and then they go home).

Teenagers spending the whole evening into the small hours on phone - also normal. On the c4 School Swap programme one girl said on Friday nights , she stopped looking at her phone around 5am. On school nights it was 1am.

Teenagers on dodgy websites and addicted to social media- also normal.

Year 9 boys making up stories about girls and being lairy in lessons and corridors - also normal (but not the day after a murder - not accurate or normal)

Dads trying to make their sons play football and be like them - also normal

Losing your temper when kids vandalise your van - pretty understandable. He felt like things were spiralling out of control. He had clearly once had a good relationship with neighbours. I think he was a fairly complex man, not one dimensional as that would be silly.

The rather overlooked conversation was the one about him being 'safe' in his room and their naivete around this and the idea (perhaps as a result of his father's abusiveness) that the dad was wary of telling Jamie off too much so left him too often to stay up - the 'what can you do?' line. They learned the hard way that they should have been more intrusive. They are going to spend the rest of their lives picking over things that they might have done or not done and that is a sad truth. Really, it was made up of a multitude of factors.

Jack Thorne really thinks this is all about the internet.

The one thing we all coudl learn from this - police bed times, no devices in rooms, no gaming or surfing at night alone. Conversations around social media.

It's easy to ask schools to teach about dangers, and schools can and do police phone use - what happens when kids go to the 'safety' of their homes is huge society wide problem. I actually wish the programme had pushed that a bit more vocal because it is honestly really common for kids form stable and ordinary homes to be up all night by themselves in their rooms , falling down all sorts off rabbit holes without the maturity to deal with it.

I agree but do think the idea of him being "safe" in his room is dependent on what you have taught your kids about safety. The whole premise that the issues in the family were never talked about or resolved before they escalated into rage filled blow outs by the father, shows how simple conversations were not happening.
As I said previously, if dad had said "what a shit 50th! What did we do wrong?" to the wife and let her comfort him by doing the breakfast and actually addressing things like his mood and feelings, rather than the enforced "fun" in an effort to continue to avoid it (even though he must realise it doesn't work or help in any way?!?! Maybe not?). Avoidance of hard issues was his main character strength that people seem to be mis-reading as effort. It is only effort to avoid himself feeling uncomfortable, not for anyone else's benefit.

Don't lots of people avoid hard issues? Isn't the point that they now wish they hadn't?

Quite - but to contrast, the DCI made time to take his son to the chippy and ask about him. Even though it felt awkward as hell.

Ignoring the hard stuff is not how parenting should work.

But we can't all be perfect? Who is? We all know how parenting should work - but it often doesn't and many parents will remain passive for an easy life and less conflict and in this case there were catastrophic outcomes . But it wasn't all the father's fault.

For Ashley Walters, it wasn't too late. But his son was sad and being bullied and he didn't know either. And surely he was now making that time because he was reflecting on the fact that he previously hadn't . The case made him think harder.

I don't think it is about being perfect - as you said the family thought they were pretty perfect but largely because they refused to address any negatives whatsoever. The women couldn't, because it would result in a rage from the father who ruled the roost.

Personally I took from it that a lot of us are distracted but some recognise that and make the time to touch base (proper base, emotionally) with kids and some would rather avoid it. In this day and age avoiding it isn't working because kids are exposed to the worst and need tools from parents to deal with that. We have to be better at having hard challenging conversations and understanding our own avoidance.

This hit the nail on the head.

A lot of people didn’t like episode 4, but for me it was the one that hit the hardest. It really made me question my parenting and family dynamics. I’m a massive overthinker at the best of times but after watching this episode I wondered if I was doing everything wrong. (My family is nothing like the one portrayed, FWIW, but still far from perfect.)

The last episode felt like a call to action. A message that said “parents, wake the fuck up”.

I pretty much think that's what the programme wnated us to see. But it also wanted us to see how hard it is. The Dad worked long hours, they both didn't see how much things had changed since they were teens etc etc.

Maybe I'm a bit of a shit parent but these terribly earnest conversations and these terribly involved parents who exhibit equality and respect at all times seem to be to a bit of MN constructed fantasy.

I also know as a teacher that most parents allow their 13 year olds unfettered access to phones.

I didn't actually like the show as much as I thought I would on the screen. But it is certainly really interesting to debate and discuss. So many different readings. As a female dominated forum we see it through a prism others may not, I guess.

The last episode felt like a call to action. A message that said “parents, wake the fuck up”.

Yes, this!

Jack Thorne really thinks this is all about the internet

Isn't that just it though? Kids retreat into the internet for a multitude of reasons and it's more likely in certain circumstances.

Yes, the house may have been "normal" (and I don't disagree it is for a lot of people) but "normal" isn't always "healthy".

Rigid views of gender roles, a semi-absent father that works late and has an explosive temper, a mother that is loving but ineffective (tells him to turn the light off but doesn't bother to even check that he's going to bed?), letting him hide in his room and no checking what he's doing on the internet. Not encouraging him with hobbies he enjoys, so he drops everything that gives him a sense of self and just "hangs out".

As parents, they very clearly love their children, but all of that is a breeding ground for a boy looking to find himself, what it means to be a man, and whether there is something wrong with him, which then takes him to Manosphere pages which he can read unchecked.

In contrast, had his father not pushed him down the hyper-masculine "boys play footy and I'm ashamed you're bad at it" (which clearly impacted his self esteem significantly) but instead encouraged art classes or similar that linked to Jamie's likes, not his dad's, had his parents been around to engage him in family life more, rather than giving him unfettered internet access, and had his parents been bloody checking what he was doing on the internet, would this have happened? Probably not, because he would have been much less likely to get sucked into those areas of the internet, and if he had, he probably wouldn't have found it hitting home quite so hard.

This discussion made me think about the last episode again - how nostalgic the parents were about their own youth, which initially I thought were to highlight how things have moved from irl to online over years, different pressures on young people, 'good old times'. But - considering their current relationship, their rigid gender roles and dad's controlling behaviour, mum's withdrawal - is it really what happened? Was it better back then? Or is it what they want to / or what they remember?

The drama looked at a family that does not talk about feelings, but when it does acknowledge them, and when they come up - it's all about dad's feelings, whether it's anger, distress, grief, rage. Maybe that's why I really struggled to engage with the last episode - yes there was a lot of difficult emotions there, but it all felt ... disconnected.There was so much more that was not even touched on - but perhaps this was the idea for this episode, to show how displaced emotions can be. It's the emotions that were not shown that were much harder to convey but perhaps more poignant - dad's shame and helplessness (having set expectations of himself and his son, feeling inadequate, failure, fear of losing his role) mum's anger and grief (at having little autonomy and not being allowed to show negative emotions, while having to look after dad's emotions, feeling powerless), daughter's sadness (there was little interest in her plus the pressure to be responsible for other people's feelings, replicating mum's role).

I spent hours in my room as a child long before internet and phones - once you're a teenager I think this is very common, I'd come down to watch tv shows and eat but otherwise I spent hours listening to the radio, writing in my diary, reading books, dancing badly in the mirror, staring at my pop star posters.
I'm not saying this means it's fine to leave young people alone all the time today, just that I don't think it's exactly new.

But also that they had got together very young and slipped easily into the dynamic of that relationship (provider/homemaker, alpha male/peacemaker) without any wider experience. Mum expected daughter to have a boyfriend who 'looked after her'.

It isn't and many of us used to read or play on games in our rooms in the 80/90's - the difference is the internet. As others say you cannot control what they see online, even with the best will in the world it is far more likely they will see something most of us would classify as 18+ before they are 18.

If your kid is aware of this and has had discussions about why parents are worried about it, eg - an explanation of topics they might find hard to understand and an open door policy about coming to talk about anything weird they might see with a parent who isn't too critical or embarrassed to tackle subjects head on is important. If your child sees rape and they are more worried about talking to you about it because they were on a site that they shouldn't have been, just taking the phone away isn't helpful. Discussing what they saw and reinforcing why it is important to be open and stay away from those sites because they are harmful and encourage behaviour that will hurt others and end up with a prison sentence (as a minimum explanation!) is more what is required- imposing a ban or something as a deterrent is optional IMO but the base needs to be self regulation and to recognise this is seedy, not normal. It does take time but the most important thing is to not shame them for what the internet shows them, even if they were naughty and "went looking" they still need a reliable adult to explain the real life situations to them. In real life you'd be saying "don't hang around by that dark underpass because dodgy guys like that area" online needs to be the same.

Really interesting article in the Sunday Times today which gives the female cast a voice. Interesting to read their thoughts. I can't do share tokens but if anyone else can, it's worth a read.

My son wore shoe inserts to school for years (he ordered online) because he thought he was too short after comments made on social media. I tried to get him to stop through reassurance and love but he was convinced he needed to be taller for girls to like him.

I think the abnormal body images boys and girls see on the internet have fed the trans issue. They see exaggerated versions of what male/female supposedly is, and then think because they don't look like that they think they are not the sex/gender they were born with.