If you take an objective look at just how much quality time you spend with your teens−getting to know who they are actually becoming rather than projecting who you believe they are—you will be pleasantly surprised at their appreciation of your interest in their hopes, dreams, ambitions and disappointments. Instead, some of you think that because you have spent exorbitant amounts of money on your kids’ clothes and activities, or because their social calendar is penciled in for the rest of the year, you have fulfilled your parental duties. You have not. Because your children attend an activity after school every day does not mean they are not being neglected. There must be a balance between activities and home life, between signing up for activities and interacting with family members, between being an integral part of a club and being an integral part of a family. The rules which must be obeyed in school or sports are meant to avoid chaos and keep the activity organized and running smoothly; the rules that children learn at home are valuable lessons in life skills and understanding the human condition. The former cannot be substituted for the latter. Exposure to your heritage and culture, making memories, and bonding are the life lessons your teenagers will take with them and pass on to their children someday.
Responsibilities and the Teenage Brain
Some of you have unreasonable expectations regarding your children, acting as if they have disappointed you and squashed your dreams. You feel they have embarrassed you by problems they cannot seem to solve or poor choices they have made. Statistics now prove what we have all assumed for quite some time: Our teenagers are unable to consistently use good judgment in making decisions. There is actually a segment of brain matter which remains immature and underdeveloped until at least the age of twenty-three, meaning that even the most responsible of your offspring will make a really bad decision some of the time, and some of them may make consistently poor decisions almost all of the time.
Your children should not be given responsibilities in areas where poor choices may impact the rest of their lives. They should not, for example, be left to watch younger siblings if those children need supervision; this includes babysitting other people’s children, where the teenager certainly must exercise good judgment and attentiveness at all times.
Many parents believe that the task of babysitting will teach their teenager the fundamentals of childcare as well as responsibility. This is not only dangerously faulty thinking on the part of the adult, but a careless disregard for human life. Ask any teenage babysitter and they will tell you that most of their time is spent raiding the refrigerator, rifling through drawers and cabinets, watching television, and talking on the telephone. Should an avoidable accident occur under the watch of your child, not only they, but you, will have to carry the legal and emotional burden for quite a long time, if not forever.
Every parent wants to get to the bottom of a problem, and when your child messes up, one of the first things you are likely to ask is, “What were you thinking?” The most frequent response to that question is, “I don’t know.” This infuriates parents, who expect their child to come up with a better explanation than that. This is generally when the parent banishes the teen to his or her bedroom to think up a better answer, promising they will not gain freedom from solitary confinement without one. The truth is, your child really doesn’t know what they were thinking, anymore than they weighed the possibilities of disaster, or anticipated the outcome.
However, if you insist on an answer to “What were you think-ing?” your teenager will come up with one that may satisfy you, not because they have been evasive all along but because they have the power of imagination and creativity and know this is the only way they will ever be let out of their room.
In fact, the realistic bottom line in their messing up is simply this: Your teenager cannot consistently make good decisions and, moreover, rarely thinks about the consequences of any decision they have made.
Responsible Rose
Rose had always been a responsible young lady. She was community-minded, helping to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, and did her part to recycle paper and plastic to preserve the environment. She was exceptionally compassionate to the elderly, spending half the day on Saturdays delivering “meals on wheels” to homebound senior citizens. She had always been an exceptional student and had recently been chosen to tutor others who were having difficulty grasping algebra and geometry. Rose was selected to be a foreign exchange student and represent her school and community. She planned to go to college, and gathered community service points whenever she could. She had had one steady boyfriend, who excelled in both academics and sports. For Christmas the previous year she had sold crafts at a local craft fair in order to purchase a much-needed clothes dryer for her parents.
Rose had always made good decisions with forethought and planning, which is why it was such a shock when she told her parents she was five months pregnant. Rose planned on having the baby and did not want anyone to attempt to persuade her to end the pregnancy, which is why she waited so long before confiding her news. Her steady boyfriend was not ready for the constraints of marriage, and certainly not for fatherhood, so Rose came into therapy for guidance and support. Her parents accompanied her, wanting to know how this could have happened to such a responsible girl, who knew everything about abstinence, birth control and safe sex. The answer did little to lighten their burden, but it was the only answer there was: “Your daughter is only seventeen, and seventeen-year-olds do not make consistently good decisions.”
Friend or Parent? Don’t Confuse Your Role
Some of you might exercise your parental right to teach a lesson by withholding privileges; others might try to “buddy up” to your child, to be his or her friend, sharing stories of your own drug problems or sexual activities. Please don’t do that! Befriending your teenage children is not going to correct their difficulties but rather will add to them. Your teens do not need you to be their friend; they need you to be their parent. The two are not interchangeable.
A friend is someone who shares intimate confidences, who expects to be treated fairly without judgment or disloyalty, who will offer objective advice and be a shoulder to cry on. A friend is someone who supports ideas with enthusiasm and is not afraid to come forward with admonishments when your thinking is off base. Your child is neither emotionally equipped, nor mature enough, to be any of these things to you, nor should they be. We’re sorry to tell you this, but during their adolescent self-serving years, the only way your child wants to include you in his or her circle of friends is if you’re supplying the party house and the beer.
In a newspaper article run by the Associated Press (01/08), Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor from Temple University, said, “The teenage brain is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.”
The article described Steinberg’s history, noting that “He helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18. That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid 20’s.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority in the case, wrote that “juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure,” which determines their decision making and impulsivity in their out of control environment.
Your teens have their own friends, people their age whom they can “hang” with, cut