“Adolescence” is a series on Netflix that has created a lot of buzz.
A 13-year-old boy, Jamie, murders a girl in his class. He stabs her seven-eight times with a knife. His story has been filmed in four episodes.
Episode 1: Jamie’s arrest and sent to jail and reform school.
Episode 2: Jamie’s school and his environment and his friends.
Episode 3: His conversation and interaction with the psychologist.
Episode 4: What do his mother, father and sister think about him?
Such a short series has been filmed very thoughtfully.
I, from the perspective of a psychologist, feel that the challenges, exposures, and stress that today’s young generation has to face have become very complex. Why did Jamie feel like killing, why did this happen?
Jamie is a smart and sensitive boy and is going through the changes of adolescence. These children want to establish and create their own existence, identity, and at such a time, their friends are very important to them. What people think of them is very important to them. Adolescence is about sexual development and attraction to the opposite sex. The topic of boys dating girls, asking them out on special dates is a juicy topic of discussion among today’s boys and girls. In this, there is a lot of discussion about who proposed to whom, who rejected whom, and who is like who and what. And all this happens on social media now. Which is just two fingers away from you. Thanks to mobile phones, apps like Share Chat, Insta are very easily available. In some of these Insta chats, Jamie was mocked and bullied, he was called an ugly person. All this was very humiliating and beyond tolerance for Jamie. It’s funny how kids these days are learning about masculinity, femininity, sex, being sexy, all these things on the internet. Their thoughts are shaped by the media they consume. Jamie is also a victim of this kind of thinking. And he’s frustrated. He also feels like his dad is ashamed of him for losing a football game, or for not being able to box. Jamie also has anger issues. And he gets angry easily. He doesn’t know who to talk to about his anger. It’s beyond his tolerance to have a girl reject him. He doesn’t remember the impulsive things he does in anger until later, and most importantly, he doesn’t understand the seriousness of the consequences of his actions. Jamie’s parents think they’re the ones who made him this way, but they don’t understand where they went wrong. His father used to beat him with a belt, but he never did that to Jamie. He tried to teach him football boxing but Jamie couldn’t learn it. The mother says she thought that a child sitting at home on the computer is safe. Sitting on the computer until late at night and being on the internet is very common for children of this age. But they never knew that he was lonely, that he was being bullied, and what was going on in his mind.
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The things I liked the most were
The police handling Jamie’s case sensitively in episode 1. In episode 2, the detective’s son, who is also being bullied and is in the same school, explains the slang language on Instagram to his detective father and at the end of the episode, the detective father realizes that he needs to get into his son’s emotional world and befriend him and invites him to spend some time with his son. Episode 3 is very important in which a psychologist gets into Jamie’s emotional world and tries to find out why this happened. The sandwich and hot chocolate with marshmallows she brings him is very symbolic and important to a psychologist. The interaction between the two is very interesting and revealing. At the end of episode 4, Jamie’s dad says I’m sorry Jamie, I should have been a better dad and this is his last sentence that is heartbreaking.
As you go through this whole series, you will definitely wonder what we can do as parents? I think that:
1) Instead of chasing after children and keeping them stuck in different classes, we should give them some time.
2) Enter their world with curiosity, mold their emotional world properly.
3) Keep constant communication and communication channels open with them.
4) Regulate their internet and YouTube access according to their age.
5) Be aware that children learn more from imitation than from teaching.
6) Help children build their identity.
7) Sexuality is not just about physical development, but also about changing mental development and talking about it openly with children without being shy.
8) Showing by example that becoming a good person is the most important thing.