The second in our Heritage Month series, What We Carry Forward
Somewhere between fourteen and eighteen, most children start doing something that unsettles their parents. They begin asking why. Why do we go to church on Sundays? Why must I greet every adult in the room? Why is it disrespectful to disagree with you? Why do we always do it this way?
It arrives like a health inspector at a restaurant that has been serving the same menu for thirty years. Nothing has changed in the kitchen. Someone has started checking.
This is not rebellion. It is architecture.
Erik Erikson, in Identity: Youth and Crisis, described adolescence as the stage of identity versus role confusion. The central task is not obedience or defiance. It is building a self that can stand on its own once childhood’s scaffolding comes down.
A child accepts beliefs the way they accept the furniture in the lounge: it was there when they arrived, so it must belong. A teenager starts walking around the room, lifting things, checking underneath. That is not vandalism. It is the survey you do before you own a house.
James Marcia later refined Erikson’s work and found something parents should take seriously. Young people who adopt their parents’ values without ever questioning them, what he called “foreclosure”, tend to hold those values rigidly but fragilely, like a shop-bought cake that looks fine until you cut into it. Those who question first and then commit, “identity achievement”, hold their values far more firmly. Questioning isn’t a threat to your values. It’s what makes them stick.
The awkward part: you didn’t choose most of yours either
Before we get defensive about the audit, it’s worth admitting who is being audited.
Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, argues that most of our moral convictions arrive first as intuition, and our reasoning turns up afterwards like a lawyer hired to defend a verdict already reached. We absorbed our beliefs from our parents, our neighbourhood, our church or mosque, our language, our history. Then we spent years explaining why they were obviously correct.
That is not a failure. It is how culture is transmitted. But it does mean that when your teenager asks “why do we believe this?”, the honest answer is often “I’ve never actually thought about it”. Saying so out loud is not weakness. It is the most respectful thing you can do, because it treats the question as real.
What happens when we refuse the audit
Some homes handle the questioning by shutting it down. “Because I said so.” “That’s just how we do things.” “Don’t question your elders.”
The questions don’t stop. They move out of the house, like water finding another route down a hillside. Your teenager will still test those beliefs, but now with friends, with the internet, with whoever answers. And they will do it without the one person who could offer context, history and love alongside the answer.
A closed door doesn’t end an argument. It just means you’re not in the room.
What to do instead
- Answer the question behind the question. “Why must I greet everyone?” usually asks, “Does this actually mean something, or is it just performance?” Explain the meaning. In many South African homes, greeting is not etiquette; it is the daily practice of recognising another person’s presence. That is worth knowing.
- Tell the story, not just the rule. Rules travel badly between generations. Stories survive. Why your grandmother insisted on Sunday lunch, what your family lived through, why education mattered so fiercely in your home. A rule with its story attached is like a photograph with a name on the back. Without the name, it eventually gets thrown away.
- Let some things be questioned to the point of destruction. Not every inheritance deserves to survive, and we’ll take that up in the next post. If a belief cannot withstand a sixteen-year-old’s honest question, it may not have been carrying much weight.
- Say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. Children do not need parents who have all the answers. They need parents who aren’t frightened of questions.
Ask your teenager: “What is one thing our family believes that you’ve never understood the reason for?” Then resist the urge to justify it in the first thirty seconds. Just listen, and see whether you can tell them where it came from.
In the Grade 8 rooms where Rudder4Life works, the turning point is never the moment a learner is told a value. It is the moment they interrogate it and choose it anyway. You can see it happen. A borrowed coat suddenly fits, because they’ve had it taken in.
Your teenager is not dismantling what you built. They are checking that it will hold their weight. Stay in the room while they do. Next, the third in our Heritage Month series, What We Carry Forward
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