LOCATION : Education

Title  The Trout King Vote score Analysis 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  URL  http://www.carlpickhardt.com/      Poll  Poll Num : 0, Poll Ave : 0.00  Uptime  10-18-2005  ETC   Hits : 160, Visit : 62, Commnet : 0   ARTICLES ABOUT PARENTING CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS. Welcome: carlpickhardt.com is the website for author, graphic artist, and psychologist in private lecturing practice, Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. To see an annotated list of my books and 2003 lectures, click on ABOUT ME on my menu. To read excerpts from each of my books, click on EXCERPTS. To see my graphics, click on GRAPHICS (click on drawing to enlarge.) To reach me, click on CONTACT US for my email. Be sure to check back often for past and current articles about parenting. These PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATES (see below) are changed monthly to provide visitors with some fresh ideas for thinking about their family relationships. Thanks for visiting! Best selling book on step parenting: KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL STEPFATHERING (BARRON'S, 1997). 5 star Amazon reviews: "Insightful, meaningful and accurate." "A very useful resource for a stepfather." Latest books: THE EVERYTHING PARENT'S GUIDE TO POSITIVE DISCIPLINE (Adams Media, 2004); Amazon 5-Star reviews: "This book is so good it should be required reading," "Good pragmatic advice...Highly recommended." THE EVERYTHING PARENT'S GUIDE TO THE STRONG-WILLED CHILD.(From Adams Media,September 2005). PSYMBOLS -- Logos for the Mind (illustrated psychology from Xlibris.com, October 2005, drawings by author.) Next parenting book: THE EVERYTHING PARENT'S GUIDE TO CHILDREN AND DIVORCE (Adams Media, February 2006.) OCTOBER 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: COPING WITH SOCIAL CRUELTY AT SCHOOL Come early adolescence (around ages nine to thirteen), relationships among children at school can become very harsh and hurtful. Why? Because, suffering from loss created by the separation from childhood and from anxiety about uncertain growth ahead, early adolescent students jockey for personal and social security at each other’s expense, engaging in social cruelty to survive. When talking about the social cruelty at school that starts around grade three and continues through grades six or seven, we are not talking about "bad" kids. We are talking about "good" kids treating each other badly to cope with the developmental insecurity, social instability, emotional vulnerability, and frail self-esteem created by early adolescent change. In a world where everyone is easily hurt, hurting others first becomes a way to prevent getting hurt yourself. If your child is experiencing a significant amount of social cruelty from other students, you must provide emotional support, social strategizing, and, if the cruelty is excessive, with the child’s permission, adult intervention at the school. If your child is initiating or collaborating in social cruelty, he or she is only "poisoning the well," and must be told to stop this mistreatment. At a time when children feel personally insecure, social security through being popular seems like the Holy Grail. "If only I could be really popular, then school would be okay." But the problem is, popularity is an exclusive club, membership usually limited to a classroom few (the popular crowd), who use niceness to cement relationships with each other, and meanness to keep others out. To make matters worse, popularity is often not the sanctuary it seems, because the more popular you are, the more social envy there is, resulting in gossip and rumors attacking your reputation to bring you down. Popularity can be lost in a hurry when, for reasons usually to do with rivalry, supposed friends turn suddenly against you and cast you out. Students at this age can fall victim to social cruelty from INTIMIDATION (bullying, threatening, vandalizing), from EXCLUSION (being ignored, not selected, rejected), from HUMILIATION (nicknamed, teased, put down), and from having REPUTATION ATTACKED (rumor, gossip, slander). For many parents, reading this portrait of social hardship at such a young age will clash with their image of childhood innocence and fun. Social cruelty is neither innocent nor fun in early adolescence. It is real. And parents need to stand by with support and coaching should their child face this unhappiness to a significant degree. Here are a few pieces of helpful advice parents can sometimes give. About TEASING, explain, "Teasing is not about anything wrong with you. It is about another person wanting to be mean to you. Because people usually tease about what they fear being teased about themselves, you can truly say that teasing shows a whole lot more about the teaser than it does about you. Then just ignore what they have said." About BULLYING, explain, "Usually it’s not bullying that’s so much the problem, as fear of being bullied. So be brave and ask yourself, ‘How would I act if I were not afraid?’ Consider how the bully predicts you will respond, and then act to violate that prediction. There is no such thing as a self-made bully, so don’t act in ways that invite bullying, and don’t react in ways that encourage bullying." About GOSSIP and RUMOR, explain, "You don’t control your own reputation. No one does. Gossip has more bad to say than good, and the more popular you are, the more reputation you have to lose. Secrets are the most powerful gossip to tell, and slander is the most destructive—lies that are told as truth. Remember, anyone who gossips to you will gossip about you." About GANGING UP, explain, "There are three roles in ganging up—bully, follower, and victim. The bully has power, but also is personally disliked. The follower escapes mistreatment, but also loses self-respect. The victim gets attention, but believes mistreatment is deserved or unavoidable. I don’t want you to act in any of these three roles." At this age that is so complicated for friendship at school, it is helpful to have other social circles outside of school to which the child can belong—extended family, neighborhood, sports, church, special interest, for example. That way, when social relationships get hard at school, the child has other social outlets to enjoy. You can roughly assess the degree and nature of social cruelty your child is experiencing at school by asking your child if he or she is regularly experiencing any of the common social or personal hardships listed below. People gossiping about you People laughing at you People spreading rumors about you People teasing you People calling you a hurtful nickname People not wanting to sit with you at lunch People ganging up on you People cutting you down with an insult Quarrelling with a good friend Growing apart from a good friend Having a good friend turn against you Having a good friend share a secret you confided Feeling jealous when a good friend wants to be with someone else Seeing a friend change into a different person Being bullied Having possessions stolen Having belongings vandalized Receiving prank calls that hurt your feelings Having to go along with a dominating friend Having someone threaten "to get" you Feeling scared to go to school some days Having to fight to prove how tough you are Having to hide feeling hurt and pretend you don’t care Worrying if people will like you Feeling bad about your appearance Being excluded from a party when your friends were invited Having people write notes about you Having people say things about you that are not true Feeling shy at a party and wishing you were outgoing Having someone break up your best friendship Wishing you had a best friend Wishing you had as much as other people Having a good friend compete with you Having people want to be your friend only because you’re popular Having people not want to be your friend because you’re not popular Being spoken to one day and ignored the next Feeling trapped by a friend who is too possessive Feeling you don’t have the "right" thing to wear and others will notice. When social cruelty reduces social safety at school, studies usually suffer because the victim of social cruelty becomes far more preoccupied with daily survival than concerned with accomplishing daily work. Social cruelty reduces academic focus. Most of these feelings and experiences are subsurface—not observed by teachers or reported to parents, so these adults are woefully ignorant about what is going on. The code of the school yard ("You shouldn’t tell on other people") keeps children keeping this experience secret, and adolescent pride ("I should handle hard stuff by myself") keeps the young person from disclosing a lot of school suffering at home. Although no child escapes all these hardships, most children navigate this complicated social passage okay, without major injury or lasting hurt. However, if you have an adolescent who is already hurting from some major unhappiness, part of your job is to monitor what level of social cruelty occurs. So, in light of this information, what should a parent do? Of course, this list of social cruelties given here is very incomplete. However, use it to prime the pump of discussion with your child. If so inclined, he or she will be able to add other kinds of bad feelings and mean treatment that can happen at school—some directly experienced, some only witnessed. If you will ask your child to check which behaviors and feelings on this list square with his or her experience at school, you both may be surprised. You child may be surprised that you actually know what is going on, and you may be surprised to hear how much social cruelty your child is coping with. The goal of this exercise is to normalize discussion of this hard experience, get you and your child on the same page, give your child an empathetic listener to count on, and help your child strategize to alleviate what is going on. So long as you arm your child with fresh choices to help cope, he or she will feel empowered and not act like a helpless victim in the face of social cruelty at school. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use, contact the author. SEPTEMBER 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: PUBLIC, PRIVATE OR HOME SCHOOLING When it comes to type of education, some parents have the means to have a choice between public, private, or home schooling. There is no right or wrong decision to be considered here, only understanding that each choice has some factors that recommend it of lack of other factors that may not. What follows are some suggestions about how to match which factors with the preference of parents and the needs of the child. Comparing which of the three types of schooling offer the most of fifteen different factors, the three types of schooling tend to rank highest as follows: PUBLIC SCHOOL TENDS TO OFFER THE MOST: Teacher pre-service and in-service training, Standardized curriculum and mandated testing, Instructional resources and equipment, Extracurricular and special support services, Social/economic diversity and size of student body. PRIVATE SCHOOL TENDS TO OFFER THE MOST: Academic achievement focus, Performance motivation and emphasis on grades, Strictness of rules and intolerance of off-task behavior, Education directed toward college preparation, Tuition and fund raising demands on parents. HOME SCHOOLING TENDS TO OFFER THE MOST: Individual attention and individualized instruction, Parental involvement in/knowledge of daily work, Curricular adherence to family values and faith, Social sheltering and small class size, Social safety. COMING TO CONCLUSIONS: Assuming they can afford to have a choice, what parents have to ask themselves is which of these paths might most favor the development of their child. Public school creates the opportunity to cope with the push and shove and impersonal treatment that can come from being one in the larger world of many. Children learn to make their way in a crowded institutional system with a great variety of instructional and extracurricular resources. Private school (whether non-denominational, religious, or charter) offers students a more academic focus, usually with a sense of preparing for post secondary education at the end. Children learn the will to work when they don’t want to study because studying is the norm for their peers. And home schooling creates the opportunity for having education tailored to the child’s nature and the parents’ values. Children learn to discover and develop their individual interests, sheltered from the distracting exposures that exist in a classroom of same-age peers. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: Also consider how location affects your child’s learning environment. In public school, children are usually assigned from he same geopgraphic attendance area and so can make friends who live relatively close by. Going to private school, however, means making friends with children from all over the community, and so it becomes harder to get together with friends after school, and harder for parents to get to know other parents. Home schooling usually requires that parents network with other home schooling parents to avoid social isloation for their child. Paying for private school does not guarantee parental influence. In a public school, if parents disagree with how their child is treated, they can appeal to the principal, superintendent, school board, even state board of education. But in a private school, there is no appeal. The principal can simply say, "If you don’t like how we treat your child here, you are free to enroll him elsewhere." Same-sex schools, particularly for young women, can have beneficial effects both academically and developmentally. There is less presure from sex-role stereotypes about what a woman can and cannot do and no social distraction from trying to manage day time relationships with young men. More social and psychological freedom for personal and academic growth is a lot of what same-sex education has to offer young women. Public, private, or home schooling? Each has its strengths and limitations. What parents with the means and desire to choose will be affording is a compromise between getting the best that type of education has to provide, and missing some of the best that the other two types have to offer. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use, contact the author. AUGUST 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: Parenting the Strong-willed Child Although all children can be strong-willed on occasion, some children are much more intensely so, and more often so, than others. Strong-willed children are not different in kind from other children; they differ only in the degree to which need for self-determination rules their life. But degree makes an enormous difference. For most parents, occasional willfulness is tolerable, but continual willfulness can create a problem as it quickly gathers shaping power of its own. The more often a willful act achieves its objective, the more powerful the child’s willfulness becomes. What separates willful children from those who are not is how they manage not getting what they want. When children who are not generally willful don’t get what they want, they may feel sad, shrug off the disappointment, and then go on to something else. Willful children, however, tend to have a different response: telltale anger. The emotional hallmark of the willful child is getting angry when he doesn’t get what he wants. His intense desire turns his aspiration into an imperative, and an imperative into a condition. "I want to have" turns into "I must have" turns into "I should have," and the result is anger when the willful child is denied what he now feels entitled to. The strong-willed child often believes: "If I want it, then I should get it," "If I’m refused it, I should be given a good reason why," "If I don’t want to do it, I shouldn’t have to," "If I argue, then I should win." Then, when any of these beliefs are violated, this outcome seems unjust, and so he or she gets angry because a condition of assumed entitlement has not been met. The parent’s job to help the willful child learn to disconnect "should" from "want," to let go of the conditional view through which he sees the situation. So the parent says something like this: "I know when you want something very much it feels like you should be allowed to get it, but life isn’t like that. Wanting something very much doesn’t mean we should get it. Wanting just means there’s something we’d like to have or do, and maybe we’ll get some of it, and maybe we won’t. And if we don’t, we’ll still be okay." Some willfulness seems naturally endowed. After all, children do not enter this world as a blank slate. They are endowed with genes that determine certain physical characteristics, personality, temperament, and aptitudes. Although some infants emerge complacent and compliant from the outset, others seem to be born strong-willed. These children are born intensely committed to satisfaction of their needs and desires, with a tenacious personality, and frustration that is easily aroused when what they want is not immediately forthcoming. Even children who are by nature willful usually increase that willfulness as a function of the parental response to willfulness they receive. Parents who engage in power struggles with their strong-willed child usually end up empowering the child’s insistence and opposition. The development of most willfulness, however, seems not just naturally endowed. It is learned from the experience of family life, often from the very parents who wish such willfulness would lessen or subside. For example, parents who grew up intimidated by their own critical, angry, or even violent parents are often fearful of taking hard stands and offending their own child. In response to their submissiveness, the child may then become extremely dominant and extremely willful because healthy social, emotional, and economic boundaries have not been clearly defined, firmly set, and consistently enforced. When it comes to having a willful child, parents are often their own worst enemy because there are many direct parental behaviors that encourage strong will in a child. Consider just a few common examples. There are the adoring parents who cater to their child so much he comes to feel entitled to always being given what he wants (parental overindulgence is one major contributor to the willfulness of a strong-willed child.) There are the permissive parents who give extreme freedom of self-determination to the child. There are the insecure parents who can’t say ‘no,’ who don’t want to displease their child and so cannot deny a want or insist upon a limit. There are the guilty parents who allow the child to exploit their feelings of remorse. There are the neglectful parents who are too preoccupied with their own lives to adequately supervise their child. There are the argumentative parents who by example and interaction teach their child to stubbornly argue back. There are the enabling parents who continually rescue their child from the consequences of ill-advised decisions. There are ambitious parents who by insistence and example instill a will to win and excel at all costs because anything less is deemed not good enough. There are the inconsistent parents who don’t stand by or follow through with what they say. There are demanding parents who give grown up responsibility to a child, expecting him to contribute to family and take charge of his life while very young. In all these ways, and in many others, parents can be their own worst enemy, complicit in their child’s growing willfulness. It’s at the parenting extremes that willfulness is most powerfully nurtured – by strong-willed parents and by weak-willed parents, by overindulgent parents and by neglectful parents, by oppressive parents and by permissive parents. Therefore, if parents have a continually willful child or have a child who is going through a willful phase, it is important that they do not get so preoccupied with their child’s determined behavior that they ignore their own. The critical question for parents of willful children to ask themselves is, "Are we, through our actions or inaction, inadvertently encouraging more inappropriate willfulness in our child?" Parents must continually assess their own complicit behavior so they are not acting to make a child’s willfulness worse. How can you discover whether you are enabling your child’s willful behaviors? Go through a simple exercise. List ten things you could do or not do to make the child’s willful behavior worse. Then ask yourselves, "To what degree are we doing any of these things now?" This will help you see areas where you can start reducing your complicity in the willfulness of your child. Finally, remember that although a strong-willed child is hard to handle, he or she is actually easy to manage. The child is hard to handle because his wants are so strongly felt and delay or denial of wants creates so much frustration. But she is easily managed because parents control so much of what the child wants and so learn to hard bargain accordingly "For you to get what you want, you must do what we want first." © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use, contact the author. His new book, THE EVERYTHING PARENT’S GUIDE TO THE STRONG-WILLED CHILD (from Adams Media) will be available September 2005. JULY 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: THE DANGER OF OVER PARENTING It’s a risk parents run particularly with a first child, an only child, a last child at home, a child in crisis, or a child with special needs: becoming so absorbed in, preoccupied by, and invested in that single child that they over parent to formative effect. Over parenting occurs when parents carry some concern or care-taking behavior to such an extreme degree that the child reacts with an extremely troublesome response. For example: parents who treat their child and that child’s happiness as number one priority in the family risk having a child who believes he or she is unduly self-important. "My wants and welfare matter most of all." Empowered by this sense of entitlement, not only may the child establish a tyranny of self-interest in the family, but may also seem incapable of playing and socializing on other children’s terms, and so have difficulty making and keeping friends. What’s called for in this case, of course, is for parents to moderate their absorption, preoccupation, and investment so that the child learns to live in two-way relationships that honor everyone’s importance, and not just in a one-way relationship that ministers to his or her needs alone. Parents who place undue importance on the child can encourage the child to claim undue importance in the family. Consider some other common examples of over parenting. In response to over solicitous parents, a child can become extremely sensitive and easily upset. "I get treated so carefully by my parents that I get easily hurt when not treated with that degree of consideration by other people." In response to over critical parents, a child can become extremely judgmental and self-critical. "I can never do well enough to satisfy my parents, am really hard on myself and other people say that I am too hard on them." In response to over giving parents who keep setting their own self-interest aside for their son’s or daughter’s sake, a child can become extremely obligated. "My parents do so much for me and so little for themselves, I feel that I owe them the same return, even if it means sacrificing what I want for myself." In response to over ambitious parents who treat their child’s achievements as their own, a child can become extremely driven. "My parents always want ‘the best for me’ which really means ‘the best from me,’ so I work very hard not to disappoint their expectations, putting myself under a lot of stress." In response to over protective parents who continually restrict their son or daughter’s freedom out of worry of worldly harm, a child can become extremely anxious and cautious. "I don’t feel safe taking risks or going on adventures like my friends because all I can think about is how I might get hurt." In response to over controlling parents who want involvement in all the child’s choices to ensure good decisions are made, the child can become extremely dependent and passively resistant. "I’ve learned to let my parents take responsibility for me, and when I don’t like their choices I agree with what they say, but take forever to do what they want." In response to overindulgent parents who love giving their child what is wanted and can’t stand displeasing the boy or girl by saying "no," a child can become extremely wed to immediate gratification, acting very willful to that end. "Because I’m used to getting my way with my parents, I don’t let them refuse what I want." In response to over praising parents who can’t say enough good to their child about that boy or girl, the child can come to believe these rave reviews from parents and develop a degree of arrogance. "I know I could do better at most things than other children because my parents always tell me so." In response to over permissive parents who want their child to have maximum freedom of self-determination to grow, a child can become intolerant of outside authority and the demands and restraints that are in force outside of the home. "I was allowed to live by own rules and can’t stand being told what I must and cannot do." In response to over strict parents who enforce absolute compliance to their severe behavioral agenda, a child can become rigidly obedient and demanding of others. "I always act ‘right’ according to the rules I’ve been taught to follow, and I expect others to do like me." In response to over enabling parents who continually keep the child from confronting consequences of unwise or wrongful choices, a child can act with irresponsible abandon and impunity, confident of parental rescue should bad outcomes occur. "If I get into trouble I know my parents will get me out." There is also an implication for discipline here. A lot of times, the more extreme a child's behavior, the more extreme measures parents take in response, the more extreme the child feels justified in acting, as a bad situation becomes worse. Thus the more obstinate the child acts, the more punitively the parents react, the more stubbornly resolved the child becomes to remain resistant. So parents would probably have been better served by softening or becoming more flexible in their approach to give the child room to consider different choices for moving off his or her obstinate stand. So what’s the point of all the above examples? Simply this: there’s a caution that over parenting has to teach. If you find your child to be extremely characterized by a trait that has more harmful influence than good, check out your parenting. You may be over parenting in some complicit way to your child’s cost. Moderate your own behavior and you may be able to help your child moderate his or her own. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use this article, contact the author. Series on adolescence continues. JUNE 2005 PSCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: Trial independence (ages 18-23) Not only do the hardest years of parenting, adolescence, come last, but the hardest period of adolescence, trial independence, also comes last. Now the young person is likely living away from home for the first time (usually with roommates) at a job, pursuing further education, or both. Although equipped with sufficient will for independence, the young person often does not possess sufficient skills. Trial independence demands more responsibility than most young people can handle, at least right away. Just think about the seemingly simple challenge of having with a roommate – a lesson in interdependent living. Now young people have to learn to share expenses and joint use of space, cooperate with each others needs, depend on mutual commitments, tolerate differences, communicate about disagreements, resolve conflicts, and get along with someone whose behaviors one does not always like. And all this is only one challenge among many at this more independent age. There’s so much freedom, and it is all the young person’s choice. There’s so much responsibility, and it all depends on the young person. There’s so much distraction, and all around are people of a similar age out for having a good time. Among her cohort of friends, few seem to have a clear direction in life, and when it comes to finding a firm footing in independence, many are slipping and sliding and breaking commitments to their detriment. There are broken romantic relationships, broken job obligations, broken credit arrangements, broken leases, broken educational programs, and even broken laws. What young people discover, usually to some degree of cost, is that assuming responsible independence is very diificult. In addition, they may have no clear direction in life, no job path into the future they want to follow. "I don’t know what I want to do!" Anxieties abound in the face of challenges that often feel overwhelming, because they often are. Then, there is lifestyle stress. Many young people at this age do not take good care of themselves as power of want triumphs over power of will, as impulse overrules judgment, and as temptation overcomes restraint. They stress themselves with sleep deprivation, with poor dietary habits, with task procrastination, with indebtedness from credit spending, with nonstop socializing, with maximum availability of alcohol and other drugs, and with low self-esteem from feeling developmentally incompetent—unable to get their lives together at such an advanced age. In consequence, many young people in this last adolescent passage go through periods of despondency, confusion, uncertainty, guilt, shame, anxiety, exhaustion, and may resort to substances to escape their cares. The three to five years after high school, is a period of extremely heavy and varied substance use, interpersonally and personally disorganizing the lives of many young people at this vulnerable age. Unprotected by family, young people at this age are an open market. So if your child gets into serious difficulty from poor judgment at this time, always assess the role of substance use in the unhappy events unfolding. If there had been no drinking or using, would the same choices have been made? For parents who are committed, engaged, settled down, and practical, it is hard to empathize with a child in his or her early twenties who is uncommitted, disengaged, unsettled, and unrealistic. But their impatience, criticism, and anger will only make matters worse. Better to express confidence in the child’s capacity to learn from mistakes and to support the will to keep on trying. At this last stage of adolescence, parents must change their role from being MANAGERS (providing supervision and regulation) to becoming MENTORS (providing consultation and advice—when asked). Barge in and try to control the adolescent’s troubled life at this late stage (when a job has been lost and bills are past due), and parents risk either rescuing their child from learning life lessons that responsibility has to teach or reducing communication with a child who refuses to be managed anymore. Make themselves available as mentors, however, and parents offer the benefit of their experience and ideas if they can be of service as their last-stage adolescent tries to figure out how to choose her way out of the difficulty she has chosen her way into. To effectively discharge this new parenting role, they must let go of all corrective discipline. They are no longer in the business of making decisions for the young person or bending the conduct of his or her life to their will. Facing real world consequences will provide discipline enough. To be an effective mentor means that parents are emotionally approachable. They express faith, not doubt ("You can do it"); patience, not anger ("Keep after it"); consultation, not criticism ("You might try this"); understanding, not disappointment ("It’s hard to manage independence"); confidence, not worry ("You have what it takes!"). Many adolescents in this last stage before young adulthood lose their independent footing and must be encouraged to learn after the fact, from sad experience, what they did not learn before, learning the hard way by profiting from mistakes and taking responsibility for recovery. Even the most mature adolescents can lose their footing in trial independence. The job of parents, through mentoring, is to support the will to keep trying, and to be accessible so the young person can avail herself of their understanding and advice. What about the young person who really loses his footing in life and wants to come home to recover? That’s fine, and in fact is very common. In response, parents do not rescue from unmet obligations. They simply provide a mutually agreed upon time-limited period at home for the child to regroup—to return to rethink, and then to reenter the world and struggle with the challenge of trying to claim independence again. There is a major self-esteem drop in trial independence, a painful sense of developmental incompetence. "I’m old enough to be adult but I keep messing up!" Tell your son or daughter: "Most young people don’t find their independent footing without first making some slips because there are so many new responsibilities to learn." Do not abandon your adolescent during trial independence. He’s outgrown your corrective discipline, but he still needs your instruction. Remember, the disciplinary power that parents can now provide is mentoring, not managing. You can offer counsel as a mature source of life experience that your young person can freely come to for support, understanding, and advice when the going gets tough. As mentors, your role is not tell your young person what to do or to "make" him or her do anything. You role is not to bail your child out of difficulty. Your role is not express disappointment, criticism, frustration, anger, worry, or despair. Instead, listen empathetically, advise if asked, let go of any responsibility for fixing whatever is going wrong, and offer faith that your young person, having chosen his or her way into trouble, has what it takes to choose his or her way out. You are non-evaluative, non-interfering, respectful, constant, and loving. As mentors, experienced with your own trial-and-error education in life, let your son or daughter know that mistakes are one foundation for learning, and the only real failure in life is the failure to keep on trying. copyright 2005, Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. For permission to use this article, contact the author. MAY 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: Late-adolescence (Ages 15–18) Late adolescence generally encompasses the high school years, beginning with entering as an unworldly freshman awed by the size of the institution, intimidated by older and more experienced students, and excited by growth possibilities that did not exist before. Wanting to catch up with what older students are able to do usually increases the push for more independence. An enormous amount is taught in high school, but most of it is not from classroom instruction. It is derived indirectly from the experiences of other students and directly by acting more grown up and learning from playing the part. Most discipline problems in late adolescence are "speed violations" from wanting to grow up too fast. So the parents’ job is tricky: you want to support more grown up behaviors, but at a "reasonably" slow pace, governed by judgment and responsibility, not driven by pressure and impulse. How does the teenager learn in high school? From direct experimentation with new and different experiences, and from vicarious learning about the exploits of others. The more your freshman teenager (through looking older his or her age, or through acceleration based on academic, athletic, or other ability) is thrown into the company of juniors and seniors, the steeper and swifter this learning curve becomes. Therefore, as much as possible, during freshman year in high school, support social association with same-age friends. At the same time, so that he or she can get a social foothold, insist that your teenager join some extracurricular group that first year. Being on an entry class athletic team or being in band can immediately provide a group to which he or she can belong. The more disconnected and lonely an entering student is, the more likely it is that he or she will be befriended by students already on the social fringe with adjustment problems of their own. There’s a lot of pressure to grow up fast when you’re at the bottom of the age heap. Being told that you are "only a freshman" is hardly a compliment. No wonder growing up fast, by gathering knowledge and experience, is what many freshmen try to do. THREE ROCKETS TO INDEPENDENCE Come high school, three "grown up" activities are now within your teenager’s reach, each one of which empowers your son or daughter, like a rocket, to be able to act in a more adult ways. His or her desire for more independence is dramatically increased, particularly if two or more of these "rockets" fired off at once. Now you have a more headstrong teenager to deal with than you had before. What are these rockets, and why are they so powerful? 1.Being old enough to drive a car, causing the teenager to believe that this independent mobility means "I can come and go as I desire!" 2.Being old enough to hold a part-time job, causing the teenager to believe that earning independent income means "If I make my own money, then I can make my own choices!" 3.Being old enough to socially date and party, causing the teenager to believe that going out means "If I can go out and take someone out, then I can act socially grown up." Although parents want their teenager to be able to do all three adult activities, they want these new freedoms (because freedoms are what they are) to be kept within responsible bounds. Thus you let your adolescent know he or she can do none of these activities without your permission which will only be given so long as he or she is responsibly taking care of business at home, at school, and out in the world. What you don’t want is for your teenager to put all three grown up freedoms into a lifestyle that takes over the young person’s life. Thus a part time job pays for a car, a car enables dating, dating is expensive, and so more hours must be spent upon the job. Who has time to spend with family or for chores and schoolwork now? You only allow your teenager the freedoms to act more grown up if he or she is taking care of all responsibilities that go with still being your child. DRIVING A CAR Ask any teenager. A car is the "freedom machine." No longer dependent on parents to drive you where you want to go, when you want to go, it gives you the freedom to "drive" your own life. For the young person to rein in all that freedom so it is not abused to harmful cost to self or others takes enormous attention, judgment, and responsibility (all of which substance use alters for the worse.) It takes being reminded that a car is not a toy to have fun with, it is a transportation device for getting around. The best way for parents to consider whether they want their teenager to drive is to evaluate if their son or daughter is mentally and emotionally equipped to manage the worst degree of risk that driving brings, and is soberly committed to that responsibility. Parents should ask themselves: "In our judgment, is our teenager sufficiently mature to be entrusted with the freedom to use a potentially deadly weapon?" At worst, they are turning their teenager loose on the world with an instrument of destruction. If their son or daughter shows signs of only being out for a good time and has a record of acting impulsively, heedless of consequences, parents should not allow this young person behind the wheel of a car. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Just because he or she has reached the legal driving age does not mean parents are now under some social obligation to let their teenager drive. That decision is up to the parents, not the state. You decide your teenager’s readiness to drive based upon how the rest of his or her life is being conducted. Responsible parents do not allow an irresponsible teenager to drive at any age. Your teenager’s safe driving record supports continuation of your permission to drive. Any moving or other violations will cause you to reevaluate. And any costs arising from such violations will be your teenager’s to pay. In general, having your teenager invest earned money to support some of the monthly financing payment (if a car is purchased), insurance, maintenance, inspection fee, license fees, and gas that are all required for operating a care is helpful. Assuming these responsibilities can cause the teenager to appreciative how expensive this freedom is, and to drive carefully so more expenses from irresponsible driving are not incurred. HOLDING A PART TIME JOB Entering the workforce feels like an adult thing to do, and it is. Exchanging labor for money is what the teenager will be doing throughout his or her adult life. You want your son or daughter to learn the discipline of being able to secure and sustain employment. It takes initiative to find a job opening. It takes assertiveness to interview for a position. It takes responsibility to hold a job. It takes obedience to work for a boss. It takes cooperation to work with co-workers. And it takes patience to work with the public (which is what most entry-level jobs require a teenager to do.) It also affirms self-worth to know that one has skills for which the world of work is willing to pay money. All of this is on the plus side of the ledger. On the negative side of the ledger can be investing time at the job at the expense of education because now making money feels more rewarding than making grades. Also negative can be what is learned from workplace associations, more access to substance use and older socializing, for example, than existed before. Jobs can grow teenagers up in a hurry as they work alongside older employees. So parents have to see part-time jobs for what they are – an opportunity for growth experience and possibly harmful exposure. Their job is to monitor the mix so the good outweighs the bad. Since for many teenagers a cashed paycheck lasts about as long as a lit match, parents may also want to encourage the habit of saving – banking some salary now for spending needs and wants later on. Becoming a wager earner does not reduce the teenager’s need to spend; it increases it. As income rises, so does the desire to do and have more things that cost money. DATING AND PARTYING Late adolescence is the time when dating becomes more common and partying becomes the socially grown up thing to do. In general, dating at first can create discomfort, the teenager feeling awkward, anxious, even embarrassed about how to act and what to say. This is why going out with a group is usually a more comfortable, and less pressured, than going out with a single person. In addition, casual dating is less pressured than serious dating. Casual dating tends to focus on fun without loss of freedom from significant involvement. Serious dating tends to focus on enjoying a single relationship and coming to know another person deeply and well. When serious dating becomes exclusive dating, it can tie a teenager down and can be conducted at the expense of social time with same-sex friends. Now the serious couple must manage tensions around mixing togetherness and separateness, and if infatuation develops they must also manage tensions from possessiveness and jealousy. Loss of social freedom, distrust of commitment, and fear of betrayal can create a lot of discomfort when teenagers fall in love. Being in-love usually means being unhappy a lot of the time. It puts the couple out of social step with most everyone else who are just casually socializing for fun, and it increases the likelihood of becoming sexually active (so explain risks, declare your parental position, encourage delay, and advise about sexual protection should it appear that sexual intimacy will occur.) In general, parents want to encourage low pressure socializing – group and casual dating, keeping sufficient social freedom to have recreation time for same-sex friends. If serious attachment occurs, however, make sure you get to know your teenager’s girlfriend of boyfriend because that will maximize your chance to influence the conduct of that relationship. Oppose this attachment on principle that they are "too young" to be so serious, and you risk driving them even closer together in response to your opposition. Parties are a problem for most teenagers (and many adults) because they lack the social confidence and communication skills to meet and greet and chat with people they may or may not now. That’s where the "get-to-know-you drug," alcohol, comes in, providing the liquid courage to loosen up and feel less self-conscious about how one looks, and what one says. Smoking cigarettes give nervous hands something to do. Partying for the sake of partying can be very hard for many teenagers (and many adults) to do without the support of substances, particularly alcohol and cigarettes. If, when asked what he or she is going to do at a party, your teenager says "I don’t know, just hang out and have fun," that means he or she is probably attending a social occasion at which substance use will be required for social comfort’s sake. SENIOR YEAR Given all the grown up freedoms to be experienced in high school, it’s no wonder senior year is glamorized as the pinnacle of social power and sophistication. Seniors are supposed to "know it all" because they have experienced so much and "rule the school." Except, when students do get to senior year, the anticipated glamour is tarnished by the harsh reality. The greatest year in high school usually does not live up to its reviews. Now there is letting go to deal with – of childhood friends, of high school, of home. In all likelihood, he or she will never live in such a large community of friends again. He or she will never do as well or achieve the relative prominence in the larger world than was true in the much smaller world of high school. And it will be many years before he or she is able to create an independent sense of home and family to supplant the one being left behind. Late adolescence ends for many young people with a mixture of triumph, loss, anxiety, and regret. There is triumph from knowing that one has actually completed high school. There is loss as one’s community of friends begins to disband and disperse. There is anxiety about managing the next step into a larger world or job or further education. And there is regret that the simpler time of living at home and going to school is over, and now the true complexity of finding one’s way in the world begins. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use article, please contact the author. Next Psychological Update: Trial Independence (ages 18 – 23) APRIL 2005 PSYCHOLOGICAL UPDATE: Mid Adolescence (Ages 13–15). Mid adolescence is often when the hardest push against parental demands and limits occurs. In early adolescence, restriction on personal freedom was primarily a theoretical issue for the young person to argue about, establishing a grievance against the unfairness of parents in order to justify actively and passively resisting their authority. In mid adolescence, by contrast, the young person really wants to be out in the world, exploring, experiencing, experimenting in the company of friends. The push in mid adolescence is for more freedom than is often safe. Parental restraints are seen as exaggerated worries: "You’re being overprotective!" Risk taking is protected by denial: "Nothing bad is going to happen to me!" At this extremely urgent, adventurous, and self-centering age, when the anarchic messy room comes into full glory, parents need to be prepared for more conflict, more manipulation, and more lying, all engaged in by the mid adolescent to get more worldly freedom to grow. Conflict is used to intimidate. Manipulation is used to pressure. Lying is used to deceive. To varying degrees, a mid adolescent will use all these techniques to secure more independence. During this harder-pressed stage, parents with low tolerance for opposition must be on guard against losing control to get control, lest by overreacting they provoke their teenager into more impetuous behavior. "You’re grounded for the next six months!" declare the angry parents, not about to be pushed around by a teenager who is pushing strongly back. "Take all my freedom, and I’ve got nothing left to lose!" replies the teenager, and goes on an extreme run in response to protest the extreme restriction. Being firm, specific, and reasoned is the order of the day for effective parental authority during mid adolescence, and understand that you will not be thanked for applying your restraining influence. In response to this willful age, parents with no tolerance for conflict (or unpopularity with their teenager) can sue for peace at any cost. "We just give in because we’re tired of arguing." Parents who succumb to manipulation become easy to tool around. "We’re easy to get by." While parents that let lying go only encourage its continuation. "We can’t believe she’d lie to us again." (For specifics on how to cope with lying, scroll down to two earlier Psychological Updates on the subject.) Understand the deception of the age. How should you respond when you sense that your mid adolescent is not being straight with you for freedom’s sake? When in doubt, delay giving permission to create time to think, question for more information, confront with concerns, check arrangements, search for evidence, push for more accountability, or simply say "no." Better to be disliked than to allow your child to be unsafe. Beware persuasion by extortion. A mid adolescent can be expert in pressuring parents into giving in when they have reservations about a request for freedom or might even refuse. Consider four common kinds of tactics at this extortionate age. 1) Time extortion. The teenager waits until the last minute to ask permission. "I can’t wait, there’s no time to talk, I’ve got to know now!" To which effective parents reply, "If you’re telling us it’s now or never, then the answer is no. When it comes to asking us permission, you must give us adequate time to think and to discuss with you." 2) Social extortion. The teenager asks permission in front of several friends who have all (apparently) been allowed to go, creating a socially awkward situation if you delay for discussion or refuse. "Come on," insists your teenager, "it’s getting late and it’s okay with everybody else’s parents!" To which effective parents reply, "We need to discuss this matter with you by yourself in the next room. Your friends can wait while we do if they wish. We discuss family business only in private." 3) Emotional extortion. The teenager makes a scene, the way a little child would throw a tantrum to get her way. "If you don’t let me go you’ll ruin my life, I’ll hate you forever, and I’ll do something terrible to myself that you’ll really be sorry for!" To which effective parents reply, "When you are through acting so emotionally upset and want to reasonably discuss what you want to have happen, we are happy to talk with you. But threats will not get you your way." 4) Contractual extortion. The teenager makes extravagant offers or unrealistic promises to buy his way from his parents. "If you let me go tonight, I won’t even ask to go out for the next month!" To which effective parents reply, "Our decision is based upon evaluating your present request, not on what promises for later you are offering to make." And beware a very common manipulation at this age: overloading the opposition. Instead of starving parents for information, the teenager gives them so much data to process, they don’t notice what is missing. With so much information about what doesn’t matter, parents lose interest and energy to pursue what does matter. In telling them a lot, the teenager gets away with telling them very little. Or at the other extreme, the teenager becomes so abrasive to talk to, parents avoid adequate communication to avoid an irritable encounter, waiting for a "good time" to raise a difficult issue. Better to accept that there is no good time. When it comes to raising hard issues for discussion with a mid adolescent, the best time parents are going to get is a bad time being given a hard time, so choose the time that works for you. Don’t be shy about using the protective power of your prohibitions at this more defiant age. "You can’t make me and you can’t stop me!" brags the mid adolescent, to emphasize how free he really is and how powerless his parents really are to take that freedom away. Of course, the adolescent is correct. Parents are running a home, not a jail. And yet, even the most willful adolescent’s freedom boast is also a statement of fear. "There’s nobody to make me or to stop me or to protect me but myself! Getting hurt or getting in trouble, it’s all up to me!" It’s a peculiarity of the mid adolescent push that parental prohibitions can provide invaluable support. In early adolescence, a parental prohibition will often encourage the child to disobey for rebellion’s sake; "I’ll do the opposite of what I’m told!" In late adolescence, a parental prohibition will often be disregarded for independence’ sake. "I’m too grown up to put up with being told what I cannot do." But in mid adolescence, the young person is often as overwhelmed by freedom’s possibilities as he or she is excited by them. So your fourteen-year-old daughter gets a phone call from a high school senior inviting her to a college party. You are in the room when she receives the invitation. "Wow!" she says into the phone. "That sounds really cool. I’d love to go." Then, cupping her hand over the receiver, she silently mouths to you the word "no" several times. Taking your cue, you loudly announce, "No way! There’s no way we are going to let you go to a college party with a high school senior." At which point, she flies all over you. Into the phone she lets her anger out: "Can you believe it? My parents won’t let me! They never let me do anything! I wish I could go, but that’s how they are!" And hanging up, she storms out of the room, slamming her bedroom door shut to emphasize her upset. But what is really going on? Parents have given her the protection of their prohibition. She didn’t want to go into a scary situation for which she felt socially unprepared, but she didn’t want to refuse because that would make it look like she wasn’t as grown up as the boy took her to be. So she relied on her parent’s prohibition to get her out of a situation she didn’t want to get into, blaming them for her refusal and thus saving social face. Finally, mid adolescents often sneak out after hours when parents are asleep. They also make "end runs," staying overnight at friends’ houses where greater latitude for social freedom is allowed. Or they make "double end runs," where each teenager gets permission to sleep over at the other’s home, and then both meet to enjoy an adventurous night out. So, keep your supervision up and check all sleepover arrangements out. Good luck! This is a challenging age of adolescence to parent. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use this article, contact the author. Next month: Late Adolescence (ages 15 – 18) March 2005 Psychological Update: EARLY ADOLESCENCE (ages 9 – 13) Early adolescence. In the vernacular of the age: "Get used to it!" First comes the negative attitude, with its litany of criticisms and complaints; then comes rebellion, with its active and passive resistance; and then comes early experimentation, with its testing of limits. Parents must not take any of these unwelcome changes personally. These behavior changes do not represent actions the child is taking to purposely upset the parents. They are actions the child is doing for himself or herself to separate from childhood and to begin the journey toward more freedom and independence. Put other parents in your place, and, to varying degrees, your child would still be going through the same transformation. Phase one: THE "BAD" ATTITUDE The opening salvo of early adolescence is the negative attitude, the birth of the "bad attitude," as parents often call it. What happened to the child who was full of positive energy all the time and a pleasure to live with? Now a turn for the worse seems to have taken place. It’s like someone has pulled the plug on the young person and all his or her positive energy to do anything has been drained away. He has entered a phase of what one parent poetically described as "developmental lumphood." All the early adolescent seems to want to do is lay around and complain about having nothing to do. But when parents suggest some work around the place that needs doing, the adolescent just gets angry: "Oh, leave me alone, you don’t understand, I’m too tired!" Tired of what? Of doing nothing, of being bored, of being frustrated, of not knowing what to do with himself. He knows what he doesn’t want to do, but he has no clear vision of what he does want to do. When it comes to motivation and direction, he’s riding on empty, and he doesn’t like it. Then, as positive energy drains away, negative energy begins to build. All of a sudden, it’s like having a critic in the family. He’s critical of positive suggestions, of family activities, of other members of the family, and of what parents often don’t see—critical of himself: "I hate being just a child!" He seems to be in a mood to reject everything and everyone. Why? Because he is rejecting the child he was, rejecting himself, and angry at that rejection, he turns anger at self-rejection into criticism of those around him. What particularly attracts his anger are parental demands and limits, rules and restraints, which now stand in the way of the increased freedom he wants. So a sense of grievance, a chip on the shoulder, develops: "What gives you the right to tell me what I can and cannot do? You’re not the boss of the world!" But parents are the boss of his world, and now he doesn’t like it. As a child, he didn’t mind their authority that much, but as an early adolescent wanting more freedom to grow and room to become different, but not yet knowing how to achieve these objectives, he resents their direction and opposition. The birth of the "bad attitude" begins early adolescence because people do not change unless they are dissatisfied with who and how they are. And the early adolescent is developmentally dissatisfied. He doesn’t want to be defined and treated as a child anymore. This attitude change that provides the motivation for adolescence to begin can coincide with puberty, but it doesn’t have to. When it does, the release of growth hormones only makes the process more emotionally intense and urgent to live with. Phase two: REBELLION. People do not rebel without just cause, and now the negative attitude has given the adolescent adequate grievance. Now resentment at "over protective" restriction and "unfair" treatment by parents is used to justify objecting to their demands. Rebellion is not primarily against parents. It is actually directed against the old compliant and dependent definition of being a child. To outgrow this definition, the adolescent rebels out of childhood. Early adolescent rebellion is opposition against old self-definition acted out against parents for transformation’s sake. Rebellion takes two forms in early adolescence: passive and active resistance. Active resistance has to do with debate and disobedience. Passive resistance has to do with procrastination and delay. The more strong-willed your child, the more of each type of resistance you will likely receive. Ultimately, both kinds of resistance serve the same growth need: to help the adolescent gather the power to change. And resistance works. To some degree, on some occasions, parents will be too distracted or too tired to follow up on a demand. They will allow the adolescent’s resistance to back them off for some period of time, or entirely. "More freedom" then becomes the name of adolescent power gained. By actively resisting, the early adolescent expresses more disagreement and complaints about parental demands, questions the rightness of rules and the parental right to make rules, and endlessly argues about most anything for argument’s sake. "It’s like we’re training a trial attorney," parents will complain, weary of the unremitting verbal challenge to their authority. By passively resisting, the early adolescent will put off obligations and requests until it takes repeated reminders for the young person to do what she was supposed or told to do. "I will, in a minute!" she promises. But by now, parents know that a teenage minute can drag on for over an hour. "Now!" they command in irritation. "Well, you don’t have to get upset about it!" retorts the teenager, and finally does as asked, but not completely. And the parent feels back to square one. What’s going on? It’s a compromise called delay. It’s like the adolescent is saying, "You can tell me what and I’ll tell you when. When I get enough when, I’ll do what you want—partly." It takes power of parental insistence (supervision) to wear this resistance down: "I will keep after you and after you and after you until what I asked is done." Phase three: EARLY EXPERIMENTATION With new freedom gained from rebellion, the early adolescent now has room to experiment with more risk taking, to learn about the forbidden, and to test limits to see what he can get away with. Where the negative attitude had to do with gathering the motivation to change, and rebellion had to do with gathering the power to change, early experimentation has to do with gathering the experience to change, experience that lies outside the prohibitions that parents and other social authorities have prescribed. "Which rules are firm and which are not?" That is the question the early adolescent wants to answer. The only way to find out is to do some limit testing to see what he can get away with. Where no adverse consequence occurs, that is a place where more social freedom is apparently allowed. The more illicit freedom an early adolescent is permitted to get away with, the more unmindful of social rules he becomes. This is the age when experimentation with trying substances can begin, particularly inhalants, tobacco, and alcohol. This is the age when experimenting with not doing homework can begin—"I forgot it," "I did it at school," "I’ll do it in the morning," "There wasn’t any." And this is the age when three common kinds of social violations can occur: pranking, vandalizing, and shoplifting. Some parents write this early experimentation off as innocent mischief and leave it at that, but such permissiveness is not a good idea. Better for parents to close the loop of responsibility by causing their early adolescent to face the consequences of what he did -- to encounter the victim and confess, hear the victim’s emotional response to what was done, clean up any damages done, and make some kind of restitution. Let violations go, and worse limit testing and rule breaking are likely to follow. Don’t lose faith in the foundation of family values you have laid in childhood just because your early adolescent seems to be rejecting them now through criticism, rebellion, and experimentation, believing and behaving differently than you have taught. These differences are more trial in nature than terminal, temporarily adopted for experimental and developmental use. Hold to your rules and values. Come adulthood, your son or daughter will reclaim that early instruction and end up more similar to you than different. © Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. 2005. For permission to use this article, contact the author. Next Psychological Update: Mid Adolescence (ages 13 – 15) February 2005 Psychological Update: THE JOURNEY OF ADOLESCENCE Although confusing both for parents and for child, adolescence is a lawful process. Certain changes, tensions, and conflicts unfold in a predictable progression as the young person separates from childhood (around ages 9 – 13) and enters young adulthood ten to twelve years later, empowered by trial-and-error life experience, and lessons from responsibility, to assume self-sufficiency and self-support. Four Stages of Adolescence. To establish your expectations for the larger process of adolescence, here is a brief outline of common problems and the order in which they typically appear. Consider four sta

Web Sanayi ©2005 Site Map