Of Paolo Fischiardi
Thirty-six appointmentsfour neighborhood libraries and an ambitious challenge: learning to communicate with those “aliens” who often seem to be teenagers. From January to May 2026, Milan hosts “Adolescents: these aliens”, a series of meetings promoted by the Hapax Foundation to offer concrete tools to anyone who accompanies children on the complex journey towards adulthood.
At a time when the news puts us face to face with open and dramatic wounds, like the Crans-Montana tragedythe distance between adults and children seems to be getting deeper, filled with anxieties, silences and misunderstandings. We met the psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist Laura Pigozzi to understand how young people react when faced with bereavement, how to manage parents’ fear and why, today more than ever, educating also means knowing how to take a step back.
When tragedies like Crans-Montana happen, how does a sixteen-year-old process the loss of a peer? Do they really need us to make sense of them?
«It depends a lot on the young person, but there is a fundamental premise: from the images of that day it seems that the boys did not seem to realize the danger. It is as if the civilization of the image in which they are immersed takes away a sense of reality from things, even from the body. The way the incident unfolded is incredible: only very few kids managed to *escape, perhaps* because there was a lack of education in how to respond to danger. This is the most disconcerting fact: the inability to think of having to save oneself. The Crans Montana episode tells us how unprepared our kids are. Parents often say, “we’ll geotag them because you never know,” but once outside, parents can’t turn into Wonder Woman or Spider-Man. We need to equip kids with a strategy, with the knowledge that they must save themselves from danger first and foremost by themselves. And this is what does not happen in contemporary education. The kids saw their classmates lose their lives in passivity: this highlights an educational flaw. We are helping their children, but with our continuous help we keep them in a condition of dependence and do not help them to help themselves.”
News like this triggers panic among parents. How do you avoid becoming too protective or “suffocating” after such a dark news story?
«Mine is an appeal: do not use this tragic episode to keep your children at home. In Crans-Montana there was an unfortunate intersection of responsibilities, but there was also a short circuit: when faced with danger, one thinks about the image and not about saving the body. I say to parents: let’s not take this episode as an emblem. Don’t let yourself be influenced to limit children’s freedom, which must be protected. It is in the group of peers – speakers, scouts, friends – that we learn the world. We need to build bridges, adapt to situations. This education is missing in the world today because the parent believes he is omnipotent and thinks he always has to save his child. Take a step back: frustration is a great weapon of education.”
Why call kids “aliens”? Is it really that difficult to talk to each other or are we adults the ones left behind?
«That adults remain behind is a constant in history. What’s new is having teenagers who are very careful not to contradict us, to please us. I wrote two books about this: Zero adolescence (Nighttime) e The age of high (Rizzoli). Kids today understand very well what we want and are more compliant than in the past, when we argued openly. Now conflict is taboo. They are complacent, but on the other hand they live in a parallel world that we know little about. This is my interpretation: they have always been aliens, but today this living in a parallel world that they cannot bring into their home makes them “alienated”.
Why have these meetings in neighborhood libraries and not, for example, at school?
«I hope that libraries also gather those who don’t go to school; we have very serious school dropouts. Then, in my opinion, it is always better to leave parents out of school for a bit. Overprotection often plays out on too much presence in institutions. It is much better to be in a public place that symbolically represents the social and a fabric that is not the family one.”
Today kids always seem to be under scrutiny. How much does the fear of disappointing parents’ expectations weigh on their mental health?
«Often the only performance required is not to disappoint the parents. You no longer get votes for yourself, but to take them home: it’s a familiar result. I see kids who choose faculties that don’t represent them just to satisfy fashions or their parents’ desires: they wanted to study philosophy or music and end up doing economics. Being in someone else’s dream is the worst nightmare. Doing philosophy, for example, opens your mind, but kids are often told that “it’s useless.” It’s a question of family satisfaction, and many people feel bad because they took over their father’s company that he didn’t care about.”
What do you hope a parent takes home from these meetings? What is the first step to start talking to each other again?
«We need to get away from the idea that children should only be pampered. We must get out of parental narcissism and introduce plans of frustration. Frustration must be given because only in this way desire is born. If your child wants to do something he wants, then you can demand the maximum, but you must know how to say no to material demands. What we must not do is give symbolic “privations”, such as banning a trip for a bad grade: the world of peers must always be supported. Parents need to take a step back, stop feeling “narcissized” by having children. Being a parent is a struggle, a commitment, not a status. Support the social bond between peers and equip them to defend themselves from the dangers of the world.”
