Cambridge! A city so steeped in history and intellect that even the cobblestones seem to hum with the echoes of Newton’s brilliance. Day 9 saw me traversing this college filled grounds, marvelling at its timeless allure while carrying an extra suitcase (blame the shopping we didn’t plan for), a curious niece and the ever-present baggage of parenting (a.k.a caregiving) dilemmas. But by the end of it all, I realized: Newton didn't just give us gravity—his three laws of motion could pretty much sum up the entire experience of raising teenagers. Let me explain.
Newton’s First Law of Parenting (a.k.a caregiving): The Law of Inertia
An object at rest tends to stay at rest—unless acted upon by an external force. This law hit me, quite literally, the moment we arrived at our friend’s house in Cambridge. It had been years since I'd last caught up with my ex-colleague, who now proudly called this picturesque city home. With him was his delightful (and shockingly silent) 13-year-old daughter, who I thought would be the perfect sparring partner for my Muskaan. What ensued? Two parallel universes of stillness.
Picture this: Two teenage girls in their prime, sitting next to each other, scrolling their phones in eerie synchronization. Nothing—not my subtle attempts to spark conversation, not an enticing offer of snacks, and certainly not the grandeur of Cambridge itself—could break their shared inertia. While I kept hoping for animated banter, maybe even a fiery debate about K-pop versus Bollywood, all I got were monosyllables drifting through the air like dust motes.
And as I watched my little chatterbox (in private) succumb to this sea of silence, I thought, Is it me? Is it them? Is this just how teenagers are now? Maybe pushing them to talk is like trying to shove a resting apple out of its serene existence on Newton’s tree. Sometimes, stillness just… is. Or maybe it’s just waiting—for the right force, the right moment, the right gravitational pull.
Newton’s Second Law of Parenting (a.k.a caregiving): F = ma
The force applied to an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. Translation for parenting (a.k.a caregiving)? The harder you push your teenager to do something, the more resistance you're going to face. Force, meet frustration.
Case in point: Earlier today, my niece—who has the energy of a firecracker and a flair for dramatic declarations—cornered me with a demand: “I’m bored. Talk to me.” It was as if my ability to have an hour-long conversation with a stranger on our way back by road to Heathrow had qualified me to now become her personal entertainment system. But let me tell you, every force I have ever exerted to redirect her boredom into something productive—read a book, go for a walk, join the conversation with the grown-ups—was met with equal and opposite resistance. Teens, I realized, are wildly unpredictable particles in motion. The more you apply force to steer them, the more they simply find another trajectory. And me? I was just the frazzled scientist in the lab, clutching my metaphorical chalkboard and muttering formulas that clearly didn’t apply.
Newton’s Third Law of Parenting (a.k.a caregiving): Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction.
Push too hard, and something will push right back— usually in the form of dramatic eye rolls or stony silence. This law manifested beautifully during our strolls through Cambridge, a city so awe-inspiring that it could stir even the quietest soul (or so I thought). As we passed the legendary Newton’s apple tree—the one that changed the course of human understanding—I found myself brimming with excitement. I turned to the teens, convinced this moment would spark at least a flicker of curiosity. “Girls, this is THE apple tree. The one that got Newton thinking about gravity!” This tree literally birthed an entire scientific revolution!” Their reaction? A synchronized shrug, followed by the return to familiar pastimes: scrolling their phones, exploring places where they could take a picture that would qualify for Insta uploads, and silently willing gravity to make me stop talking. For every ounce of energy we would expend waxing lyrical about history, we get nothing in return but the gravitational pull of indifference. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I thought. But in this case, I was the apple—and they were the tree, planted firmly in their unyielding silence.
The Final Theory: Parenting (a.k.a caregiving) is Perpetual Motion
By the end of the day, after circling the city’s colleges, marvelling at libraries, and standing in awe at the canals, I realized something profound: parenting (a.k.a caregiving) is less about fixing inertia and more about finding harmony within it. We are constantly in motion as parents—adjusting, overthinking, persuading, and questioning—while our children exist in their own unique orbits, sometimes intersecting with ours but often quietly choosing stillness.
Sure, today’s kids might seem bafflingly “still” compared to my need to always converse, engage, and activate. But maybe their quietude isn’t resistance—it’s reflection. Maybe their monosyllables aren’t a refusal to connect; they’re just processing their worlds differently. After all, even Newton needed silence under a tree before he could chart out the rules that govern everything we know.
So, here’s my epiphany from Cambridge: whether they’re sparkling chatterboxes or still waters, teenagers will always defy our expectations—just like Newton’s laws might defy our initial grasp. Parenting (a.k.a caregiving) is about standing somewhere between those rules, inching forward with trial and error, forcing ourselves to let go of the need to always understand.
As our taxi whisked us back home, I felt tired but oddly satisfied. Cambridge had given us 10,000 steps, countless shopping bags, and one magnificent paradigm shift: in parenting (a.k.a caregiving), much like science, there’s no single solution. And when in doubt, just remember: gravity works, whether or not your teenagers choose to acknowledge it.
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