Friday, January 28, 2022

Creating Empathy And Understanding

 In honor of Holocaust Remembrance day yesterday, I wrote this blog.

Recently there has been a rash of school related racist and anti-semitic incidents; football plays being named using holocaust language. Rascist and anti-semitic social media posts, and graffiti in bathrooms, and on school walls. The good news is that there is a long overdue heightened awareness and community involvement in addressing it. Does this mean that teens are racist, anti-Semitic? No!!


There is no excuse for these hurtful words and actions. It is the job of families, schools, and communities to teach and model compassion, and to help children understand the affects that words have. For every thing said, someone is affected. But just because teens say it, doesn’t mean that they believe it. And before we start putting detrimental life long labels on teens that may have acted without thinking, it’s important to understand where they’re coming from.


Research has shown that the teen brain is much more activated in the amygdala, (the feeling center) than in the frontal cortex, (the thinking center). This is why teens feel first and think later! The brain’s natural edit button, letting us know when to keep our thoughts to ourselves, is not yet fully operational. Teens can say and do things that can be hurtful and even dangerous. Just ask any parent of a teen!! 


Adding to this over-reactive and emotional brain is the hyper-self-consciousness that all teens feel. David Elkind, author of the book: All Grown Up and No Place To Go, calls this the “imaginary audience.” In adolescence, a new level of thinking emerges, resulting in a hyper-awareness of what other people are thinking about them. This results in the influence of peer pressure, and worry that not conforming to the group norm presented to them, might result in the dreaded exclusion and humiliation. This can cause teens to behave in ways contrary to what they know to be right. If your crowd at a school’s sporting event starts chanting, “You killed Jesus,”regardless of your own beliefs, the need to be invisible and a part of the crowd, can trump the measuring of right and wrong. Better to be bad than to be shunned! This is powerful stuff to a vulnerable teen.


Teens are also naturally self-centered, narcissistic, and egocentric due to this excess of emotion, and self-consciousness. (Don’t worry, they outgrow this) Often their ability to see and/or care about another person’s perspective no matter how much they have hurt, disrespected, and maybe even threatened them, can be clouded. 


And finally, as teens seek to develop their identity, they are bombarded with incoming new perceptions of the world. Certainly family and community are big influencers, as is the media. The presidential election, COVID mask and vaccine mandates,voting rights debate, are all perfect examples of highly emotional, name-calling, racial stereotyping, bullying, and physical altercations, sanctioned by adults! (So be careful how you talk about this at home.) All this is tailor made modeling for the drama teens crave. Most teens won’t read the full article in the Boston Globe, analyzing the intricacies of the political game, but instead will see the attention that bad behavior receives. Bring it on, consequences be damned!


So, a highly emotional brain; a hyper-sense of self-consciousness; a lack of experience in the world, developmental narcissism; impulsivity, a sense of invincibility, and a culture that loves bad behavior, that’s a loaded deck for a teen! As I say, these are not excuses, just explanations. Simply telling teens to be better, be kinder, respect differences, and then meting out consequences when boundaries are crossed, will alone not change behavior. What changes behavior, is to provide strategy and experience. Most teens stay close to what is familiar. So much of their life feels out of control; their brain, their body, their feelings, and their future, that they don’t venture much out of their comfort zone. Kids stake out their territory whether in the school cafeteria, or in their communities. This can make people who are different from them seem more threatening. 



So here is what you can do:

  • Challenge teen’s thinking in stereotypes. Provide teens with structured opportunities to get to know people who differ from them. At the 22nd Annual Youth Congress, students suggested  “mix-it up dinners where students sit with “classmates they don’t know.” As a family, seek out experiences where your children can interact with people from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs.

  • Model inclusion. The adults in children’s lives are the most influential in transmitting values of acceptance. When I was a fresh out of grad school therapist, I was seeing a couple that were experiencing difficulty with their teen. In a predominately catholic town, their daughter had befriended a Jewish boy. The parents used phrases like “those Jews” in describing their worry about this relationship. With fear and anxiety about ruining my tenuous therapeutic connection, I timidly said, “I am one of “those Jews.”

  • Anticipate and strategize: Help your teen to be prepared for situations that might challenge them. Because of their inexperience, many teens end up doing the wrong thing because they don’t know what else to.

    Adolescence is a messy stage. Teen behavior is layered. Good kids do bad things; caring and kind kids can be cruel and insensitive; and sensible and smart kids can beimpulsive and reckless. As teens move through this stage from childhood to adulthood,they are confronted with new feelings, new thoughts, and new impressions of their world.They are without precedent and experience and often react with emotion, not thought. But teens and adults alike share so many common, human experiences, regardless of class, race, religion, and sexual orientation. Let these be the bridge to mutual respect.


Monday, January 24, 2022

Building Resilience and Resourcefulness in Your Teen

 Parents, take this short quiz:

  1. T  F  When my kid has a paper to write, I love when I, I mean when he/she gets a good grade.
  2. T  F  When my teen is having a problem with a teacher, a friend, a coach or the other "parent" I love to provide the solution to make his/her life easier, and have them benefit from my experience.
  3. T  F  When my teen is looking for a job, a summer program, or community service, I do everything I can to help by calling everyone I know.
  4. T  F  Now that my teen is ready for the college process, I do all the research about the colleges, visits, and requirements, because I know how busy my teen is.
  5. T  F  When my teen doesn't know how to do something, I love telling him/her how to do it, because I know they appreciate and expect my help.
So, how did you do?? If you even had one "T" you might unknowingly be preventing your teen from developing resourcefulness and resilience, two personality traits that are present in very successful adults. Getting straight "A"s", graduating at the top of the class, or even going to an Ivy League college is not what guarantees success in life.

Covid has drained most parents. Too many vaccines, too many tests, too many zoom calls, too many anxious and depressed kids, too many meals, too many whiny requests!! Sometimes it's just easier to do the easy thing, whatever that is, and the hell with it. I TOTALLY get that. You and your kids are just tired. But sometimes doing the harder thing leads to a longer term pay-off.

Most teens demand to be in charge of their social life, not wanting help from you at all. But when it comes to the parts of their life, they feel less confident in, they may demand your help. And what parents doesn't love it, when your teen asks for your help. It's like a drug. It may not happen often, but when it does, you are primed and ready for action. If feeds your need to feel like a competent and supportive parent, especially if your relationship with your teen has been going through a rocky spell. But what makes kids feel confident and competent is moving past frustration to success.

Think of it this way. Perhaps recently you bought a coffee table for your family room from IKEA. In the store the table looked pretty simple to put together; A few slabs of wood, some glass, a couple of screws and bolts...piece of cake!! Then you get the big brown box home, enthusiastically throw all the stuff on the floor, with the expectation you will have your beautiful table up and usable in an hour or so. 5 hours later, sweat pouring off your brow, swears emanating from your mouth, you kick the stupid wood, throw the screws against the wall, ready to "cry uncle". You get up, stomp around your house, curse IKEA and the directions that seem to be written for someone with a PHD in engineering, and then you get back down on the floor, and start again. And finally, because the only choice was to figure out how to put the damn table together, the table comes together, almost magically. And you stand up, puffed up with pride and look at your "baby". And every time a new person walks into your house, and they compliment you on your cool coffee table, you say proudly.. I put that table together. And honestly it feels as important to you as almost anything else you have accomplished in your life. And why is that? Is is because you persisted through your frustration, your feeling of incompetence and what felt like the impossible, to your ultimate success. It is a feeling you don't forget.

When you solve your teen's problems for them, even if they ask you too, when you give into their frustration because it feels unbearable to you, you take away the opportunity for them to have their IKEA moments. The ability to delay gratification, develop frustration tolerance, and figure it out,  is something that will follow them all the way through their life. Through relationships that go through hard times, to jobs that aren't working out the way they anticipated, money problems, housing issues, and their own ability to parent. An A in English will not be helpful in those situations. There is truly nothing more important to teach your teens than the ability to accept and deal with disappointment, and lord knows these last two years have been full of disappointments, and we have all had to change our expectations about what we have control over. So helping them to use their wiley skills to be in control of the things they can control is a gift!

So the next time they come to you for help, start first with a "so what do YOU think you should do? The process will take a lot longer, but when you can say to your teen, I am really proud of you,I know that was really hard for you to do, but you stuck with it, and "just look at your table!