Ever wish you could give your ungrateful teenager a dose of reality? So did Tracey Jackson, and here’s the great part – she did. What started out as the small project 
of sending her 15-year-old daughter to work in a school in an underprivileged area of Mumbai for three weeks turned into documentary called Lucky Ducks.
I was first turned onto this film by Joy Behar, who had Jackson and her daughter Taylor on her show recently. The title caught my eye – “Mom ships spoiled brat daughter to India” – because my mother used to threaten me and my four siblings with similar ideas (only hers were never so grand. She favored shipping us to the "other side" of the river). But the reality is the story of Jackson and Taylor goes much deeper and is much more profound than just the fantasy of giving your kids the boot.
After reading The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, Jackson decided to broaden her scope. Starting in Mumbai, she goes to California, New Jersey and Montana to interview folks in the know about raising kids side by side with regular folks just trying to get by. She found out that while the stories were different, the themes were often the same.
Like the book, Jackson started her journey with a question: Why is today’s generation of upper-middle-class youth so unhappy, considering they have more than any other generation? The answer to this question is woven into the documentary, along with powerful insights into American youth and the brutal honesty of parenthood. And, what surprised me most, was the realization of Jackson, and me along with her, that “how what we carry with us from our own childhood bleeds into our parenting whether we know it or not; and that to fix your kid you really have to fix yourself first.”
Whether you’re struggling as a parent or not, whether you have a teenager right now or not, see this film. (You can buy it via Amazon.com.) It made me wish the other side of the river was a real place. Click here for a clip.
By Sharon Linde, Education Blogger for SmartParenting
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