Rituals Help Ground Kids
Rituals
A basic part of relationship infrastructure, especially for 21st-century kids, is the creation of dependable rituals that anchor adult-child discussions. Millennium teens love rituals, in part because they live in either an overscheduled vise or virtual chaos. It is surprising how much that sophisticated kid sitting across from you needs rituals so badly. Rituals had their place in how early analysts conceived of treatment. They helped create a safe container, soothing enough to counter the pathological force of the family at home. The idea, especially with teens, was to help a pry a child away from the neurotic maw of his mother or father. Routines were part of creating an alternate emotional space. This aspect of Old World psychotherapy is a valuable carryover into the 21st century. But the rationale for postmodern rituals is different.
· Today’s kids do not need to be pried away from oppressive family routines. As my interviews with children of all ages revealed, far too few rituals go on in their day-to-day lives. Just about every child, regardless of age, brought up the lack of simple routines, “pizza and a video, hanging out, watching TV together.” Modern life is so frenetic, parent and child are headed in different directions during the day and well into the evening. Even when today’s family is home, family members rarely inhabit the same space – one is in kitchen, one is online, one is surfing for a TV show to watch – and a teenager may be doing all of these at the same time.
· The second family creates rituals that are missing in the homes of many kids. If anything, the competing force we face is the second family, not home life. Creating a place in which a child shares personally meaningful rituals with an adult may be a unique experience for teens. Rituals strengthen the unusual: a grown-up anchor and an alternative force to the grip of peers and tractionless homes. Rituals also provide comfort for kids, a welcome pause in their daily schedules. Familiar treatment routines create comfortable predictability in a teen’s life. And “comfort time” is exactly what the second family offers. This is in stark juxtaposition to everyday family life that often seems to be running off the tracks.
Old Can Be New Again
Twenty-first-century reasons for establishing old-fashioned rituals in treatment:
1. Makes kids feel less in the spotlight, less self-conscious.
2. Helps teens multitask-talk while doing something else.
3. Offers a path to their hidden concerns.
4. Allows kids to leave personalized “marks” on the relationship.
5. Provides the remnants of play for “grown-up-too-soon” teens.
6. Allows nonverbal communication for kids with language processing issues.
· The content of rituals offers clues about what is going on in kids’ lives. Kids create specific rituals that matter to them. Rituals are not only a way of collaborating, but a way to express oneself. Significantly, a teen can express him- or herself not only through language, but nonverbally, which for many adolescents is much less demanding. Through rituals we learn about issues that are not easy to discuss, about secrets and second-family life that may be hidden by casual or careful lying.
Rituals are as varied as is the imagination. The best way I can illustrate the idiosyncratic genius of kids is through examples. Following are some routines that kids came up with themselves or that we created together. In preparing this chapter, I saw, again, how routines express security needs for a frazzled generation, while revealing issues that are hard to bring up in words.
(there are about ten different stories here as examples of different kinds of rituals that I left out but let me know if you want me to put them in)
A ritual is a work of creativity, interpersonal graffiti, so to speak – the ritual bears a child’s mark. It expresses the uniqueness of the relationship, the comfort and predictability of your space together. It is an anchor in an essentially chaotic life, not nearly predictable enough for the boy or girl you see in your office. It is often a concrete way to open up discussions, almost always leading to troublesome issues in the first family at home or the second family or peers.
Details
Adults in treatment try to get into the details of their lives. After all, grown-ups have chosen to be with you, to focus on certain problems, though not necessarily the ones they need to focus on. Decades of invisible habits, unconscious motivation, addictions, and rigid character armor bury truth. But at least the choice to work on problems is the client’s.
Paradoxically, while teens see their issues more clearly than most adults, they choose to be secretive with the prying grown-ups who have forced them into treatment. Except in rare cases, the decision to seek help is made by parents, the school, or the court. Your existence in the room is a reminder of a world they cannot control. And, even if a teen is less wary about opening up, they usually haven’t developed what school consultant Michael Nerny calls “emotional literacy.” Words to describe experiences don’t easily come. So, conversation about what really matters may be difficult.
Therapist: How did you feel about the weekend?
Teen: It was okay.
Therapist: Didn’t you go to that party?
Teen: Yeah.
Therapist: Well, how was it?
Teen: Your know, we hung out and stuff.
Not a pretty picture, but common with teenage clients. We have words to describe the phenomenon: defiance, therapy refusal, selective muteness. But that’s about the normal level of detail you’re spontaneously going to get. It is nowhere near enough for your client to feel as if you’re really in there with him or her – or for you to feel that the material is meaningful to the work.
Of course, the same practically mute adolescent is capable of revealing endless details to friends. In fact, I have come to understand that kids live in the details; teens, especially, are obsessed with them. But adults, even child professionals, often consider ordinary teen detail to be meaningless. This is a basic clinical dilemma; it is exactly the kind of endless detail we’ve been taught to evaluate as defensive that builds a strong connection. In work with adolescents, the nitty-gritty about what happened is the most direct pathway into a meaningful experience. “I can’t believe you’re interested in this stuff,” one teen after another remarks. I am. Seemingly trivial, insanely boring details tell me what he is actually doing, thinking, and feeling –and the high-risk decisions that must be made every day.
RemoCounseling.com
Teen Friendly and Family Counseling
Adolescent and Family Therapy
Southbury, Connecticut
.
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I am a licensed marital & family therapist (LMFT) specializing in adolescent issues. I currently have a private practice located in Southbury, CT. I have worked with teens and their parents for the past 14 years in varying capacities. During this time I have come to appreciate the difficulties that parents and their kids endure as they try to negotiate through life's challenges. One of the things I most enjoy in working with young people is that they are often more motivated to change than the adult world might suspect. They're moodiness, self-absorption and focus on the external world is par for the course for young people. But what they often have is a level of resiliency and desire to overcome their pain and make positive changes in their lives. The stories that are shared have been an invaluable assest to better understanding the frustrations and needs of contemporary adolesecents.
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Teen Friendly and Family Counseling
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from Linda Eyre
Monday, August 16, 2010
Rituals Help Ground Kids
RitualsA basic part of relationship infrastructure, especially for 21st-century kids, is the creation of dependable rituals that anchor adult-child discussions. Millennium teens love rituals, in part because they live in either an overscheduled vise or virtual chaos. It is surprising how much that sophisticated kid sitting across from you needs rituals so badly. Rituals had their place in how early analysts conceived of treatment. They helped create a safe container, soothing enough to counter the pathological force of the family at home. The idea, especially with teens, was to help a pry a child away from the neurotic maw of his mother or father. Routines were part of creating an alternate emotional space. This aspect of Old World psychotherapy is a valuable carryover into the 21st century. But the rationale for postmodern rituals is different.
· Today’s kids do not need to be pried away from oppressive family routines. As my interviews with children of all ages revealed, far too few rituals go on in their day-to-day lives. Just about every child, regardless of age, brought up the lack of simple routines, “pizza and a video, hanging out, watching TV together.” Modern life is so frenetic, parent and child are headed in different directions during the day and well into the evening. Even when today’s family is home, family members rarely inhabit the same space – one is in kitchen, one is online, one is surfing for a TV show to watch – and a teenager may be doing all of these at the same time.
· The second family creates rituals that are missing in the homes of many kids. If anything, the competing force we face is the second family, not home life. Creating a place in which a child shares personally meaningful rituals with an adult may be a unique experience for teens. Rituals strengthen the unusual: a grown-up anchor and an alternative force to the grip of peers and tractionless homes. Rituals also provide comfort for kids, a welcome pause in their daily schedules. Familiar treatment routines create comfortable predictability in a teen’s life. And “comfort time” is exactly what the second family offers. This is in stark juxtaposition to everyday family life that often seems to be running off the tracks.
Old Can Be New Again
Twenty-first-century reasons for establishing old-fashioned rituals in treatment:
1. Makes kids feel less in the spotlight, less self-conscious.
2. Helps teens multitask-talk while doing something else.
3. Offers a path to their hidden concerns.
4. Allows kids to leave personalized “marks” on the relationship.
5. Provides the remnants of play for “grown-up-too-soon” teens.
6. Allows nonverbal communication for kids with language processing issues.
· The content of rituals offers clues about what is going on in kids’ lives. Kids create specific rituals that matter to them. Rituals are not only a way of collaborating, but a way to express oneself. Significantly, a teen can express him- or herself not only through language, but nonverbally, which for many adolescents is much less demanding. Through rituals we learn about issues that are not easy to discuss, about secrets and second-family life that may be hidden by casual or careful lying.
Rituals are as varied as is the imagination. The best way I can illustrate the idiosyncratic genius of kids is through examples. Following are some routines that kids came up with themselves or that we created together. In preparing this chapter, I saw, again, how routines express security needs for a frazzled generation, while revealing issues that are hard to bring up in words.
DetailsAdults in treatment try to get into the details of their lives. After all, grown-ups have chosen to be with you, to focus on certain problems, though not necessarily the ones they need to focus on. Decades of invisible habits, unconscious motivation, addictions, and rigid character armor bury truth. But at least the choice to work on problems is the client’s.
Paradoxically, while teens see their issues more clearly than most adults, they choose to be secretive with the prying grown-ups who have forced them into treatment. Except in rare cases, the decision to seek help is made by parents, the school, or the court. Your existence in the room is a reminder of a world they cannot control. And, even if a teen is less wary about opening up, they usually haven’t developed what school consultant Michael Nerny calls “emotional literacy.” Words to describe experiences don’t easily come. So, conversation about what really matters may be difficult.Therapist: How did you feel about the weekend?
Teen: It was okay.
Therapist: Didn’t you go to that party?
Teen: Yeah.
Therapist: Well, how was it?
Teen: Your know, we hung out and stuff. Not a pretty picture, but common with teenage clients. We have words to describe the phenomenon: defiance, therapy refusal, selective muteness. But that’s about the normal level of detail you’re spontaneously going to get. It is nowhere near enough for your client to feel as if you’re really in there with him or her – or for you to feel that the material is meaningful to the work.
Of course, the same practically mute adolescent is capable of revealing endless details to friends. In fact, I have come to understand that kids live in the details; teens, especially, are obsessed with them. But adults, even child professionals, often consider ordinary teen detail to be meaningless. This is a basic clinical dilemma; it is exactly the kind of endless detail we’ve been taught to evaluate as defensive that builds a strong connection. In work with adolescents, the nitty-gritty about what happened is the most direct pathway into a meaningful experience. “I can’t believe you’re interested in this stuff,” one teen after another remarks. I am. Seemingly trivial, insanely boring details tell me what he is actually doing, thinking, and feeling –and the high-risk decisions that must be made every day.
RemoCounseling.com
Teen Friendly and Family Counseling
Adolescent and Family Therapy
Southbury, Connecticut
.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Helping Teens
Foundation
What’s necessary to Build a Helping Relationship with Teens
Without rules there’s chaos. I need easy times—pizza, watching a video, hanging out together. They don’t listen enough to stuff that matters to me! Get them to show their feelings – without bossing me.
–What 250 kids told me they need more of from parents and other adults
Adolescents in the 21st century do not often have in-depth experiences with adults, yet the success of treatment rests squarely on the relationships you are able to create. Building this relationship with modern teens, however, must differ from narrowly conceptualized treatment paradigms.
First, working with adolescents in the ways I suggest is the most dramatic, edge-of-your-seat experience a therapist can have. In play therapy with younger children, for example, the therapist maintains a soothing tone and a comfortable, warm distance. The therapist observes and participates, often lulled into an almost trance-like state of fantasy engineered by the child. The purpose of this quiet acceptance is to help a child express his or her inner world as safely as possible.
In psychodynamic psychotherapy with adults, regardless of orientation, therapists maintain a variation of Freud’s “evenly hovering attention,” a process of letting one’s experience float along with the patient’s. Inquiry, reflection and interpretation are essential aspects of the work-which hopefully create an expansion of awareness, healthier ego functioning, and a relative balance in one’s psychic life.
In self psychology, the therapist is “a mirroring self-object,” which is multifaceted effort to understand the patient as fully possible. Treatment creates an empathic relationship that was previously missing in the individual’s life. The inevitable “repair” of a fragile empathic connection is based on a sense of respectful attunement and is central to the work of building more resilient self-esteem.
* * *
Unlike these inherently modulated approaches, the school of thinking that is most useful with 21st-century teens is the “relational” approach, derived from a synthesis of interpersonal and object relations schools. As I discuss later, a highly modified relational frame is particularly helpful with teens – the emphasis is on highly modified.
What the interpersonal-relational writer Darlene Ehrenberg calls “the intimate edge of relatedness” is a most helpful concept with adolescents (though Ehrenberg writes primarily about adults; The Intimate Edge: Extending the Reach of Psychoanalytic Interaction, 1992). By this term Ehrenberg means the ways the two participants in the room actually feel each other, the place where they touch each other consciously and unconsciously. The quality of this “edge of relatedness” is what differentiates relationships, because the edge varies so distinctly in feel and action from one person to the next.
Nowhere in clinical practice (except, perhaps, with certain affective disorders and borderline clients) is the edge as vital and demanding as it is with adolescents. Because of roller-coaster developmental changes, ordinary high-risk decisions, intense cultural pressures, and the chaos of teen living, adolescents demand a level of responsiveness that makes most of the approaches described earlier seem stodgy. They are, to use a favorite adolescent term, “old.”
The relationship necessary is profoundly different from the quiet acceptance of play therapy, from the evenly hovering attention of analysis, from the inquiry of interpersonal psychoanalysis and from the empathic mirroring of self psychology. It is certainly different in its centrality from contemporary techniques, such as PTSD protocols, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, coaching and cognitive-behavioral therapy, to name just a few.
Your active participation in building a three-dimensional relationship is essential for teens to feel. They need to “get” that you are right there, in the room, fully engaged and responsive. No wonder therapists report that, when working with adolescents, you must always be on. The edge of relatedness needs to be focused, flexible, heartfelt, and multidimensional. Nothing less can create a relationship substantial enough to cross the teen-adult divide, to contain the volatile nature of 21st-century teen life.
And, in order to build such a vital relationship, a number of surprisingly basic conditions are necessary.
Rules
“I’m sorry I’m late. Everyone was talking after school, I lost track of time…” “The bus broke down and I wasn’t near a phone, so I couldn’t call…” “We went to the pizza place and just hung out…” “I thought insurance was paying you directly…” “There’s a big reading test tomorrow and I have to stay home and study…” “You mean I have to pay even though he had fever last night…”
These are just a few of the stories we hear from kids and parents about their therapy obligations. How do we respond? Not well. For various reasons, most child professionals are progressive and antiauthoritarian. In fact, when many of us began doing this work, we believed our young clients’ anxieties often resulted from too many rules and too much rigid authority. Our training taught us that a warm, fuzzy embrace was a godsend for children. At the same time, many of us are again sensitized to constricting rules, feeling over controlled by managed care, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), and our own agency’s bureaucracy.
Put it all together, and we are uncomfortable being rule enforcers. But today’s kids are in trouble partly because in their world there are few rules that actually matter. We need to recognize that despite our discomfort, a laissez-faire relationship is indistinguishable from the everyday chaos many of our young clients now experience.
Establishing clear rules creates the secure frame that teens and parents need to begin managing disorder in their lives. Addressing the concrete issues of commitment, setting priorities, and seriousness about the process brings to the surface issues that might otherwise undermine the relationship. Instead of skipping appointments or prematurely terminating, families held accountable start talking about financial concerns or other fears that are threatening to devastate the home. When professionals challenge a family’s casual attitude about showing up on time, parents may begin to discuss the everyday chaos that can be so frightening to children. In addition, almost without fail, when a preteen or teen is late to therapy, the missed appointment time is used for the very problem that the adolescent has trouble with – substance use, after-school acting out, and so forth.
LATENESS, NO-SHOWS, CANCELLATIONS
When kids toy with the edges – lateness to sessions, missing a meeting –one traditionally thinks, “It’s grist for the mill” –what teens are expected to do anyway. Exactly the opposite is true. I’ve discovered, to my surprise, that kids are pretty much on time, often more so than adults. For the most part, they like to come to sessions. When that is not the case, our failure to address the issue almost always comes back to haunt us in serious ways.
If an adolescent who is usually on time is late for a session, I ask about it, reminding him or her of the rules: “How come you’re late? It’s not part of our bargain…So, what was going on?” Rather than letting kids off the hook, I’ve learned to regard lateness as is a signal that something is being held back. Invariably, I discover that these few missed minutes of our session were the exact moments he or she was smoking up with friends, doing a quick drug deal, vandalizing property, or having sex for the first time. More often than we realize, kids arrive a little late and a little high – but not so much so that they can’t carry off the meeting brilliantly. Again, this is the tip of the iceberg, a sign worth noting and discussing. Playing with the edges of treatment is often a way to tell us something extremely important is going on just out of sight.
When kids miss sessions, it is critical to address the issue – not just because of what it might mean in terms of resistance or an unconscious process. Sophisticated teens even use unconscious process in their own defense: “Didn’t you learn in school that people forget stuff sometimes? Everybody forgets, it’s just a Freudian slip. Go ahead – ask questions about my deep, dark unconscious!” Despite such bravado, chances are something was going on that caused him or her to skip a session. And, that something is often the exact reason the client is with you in the first place.
One boy, Marv, came in on a Friday afternoon saying he had to cut the session short and leave early to meet his parents for a family get-together. Instead of holding him to our time, I was the understanding therapist and said, “Okay, we’ll end a little early.” Next week I learned from Marv that he had arranged to meet several of his friends in the afternoon to go out and drink. They wanted to get a buzz in preparation for a concert that evening, where they planned to get totally trashed. The short session was a telling indication of his extracurricular life – if I had paid attention. Friday afternoon? Meeting parents, not his friends? And what about that huge concert in the park just about everyone in town had heard about?
Treatment parameters need to be discussed and processed. During moments of dialogue around specifics, kids start to open up about what’s really going on. Ten minutes addressing lateness leads to a discussion that opens doors behind the façade.
(there were more similar stories here that I left out)
Concrete rules and your willingness to stand by them run counter to incessant contemporary messages about instant gratification. Rules protect the frame and provide reassurance that the relationship will not simply melt into thin air.
What’s necessary to Build a Helping Relationship with Teens
Without rules there’s chaos. I need easy times—pizza, watching a video, hanging out together. They don’t listen enough to stuff that matters to me! Get them to show their feelings – without bossing me.
–What 250 kids told me they need more of from parents and other adults
Adolescents in the 21st century do not often have in-depth experiences with adults, yet the success of treatment rests squarely on the relationships you are able to create. Building this relationship with modern teens, however, must differ from narrowly conceptualized treatment paradigms.
First, working with adolescents in the ways I suggest is the most dramatic, edge-of-your-seat experience a therapist can have. In play therapy with younger children, for example, the therapist maintains a soothing tone and a comfortable, warm distance. The therapist observes and participates, often lulled into an almost trance-like state of fantasy engineered by the child. The purpose of this quiet acceptance is to help a child express his or her inner world as safely as possible.
In psychodynamic psychotherapy with adults, regardless of orientation, therapists maintain a variation of Freud’s “evenly hovering attention,” a process of letting one’s experience float along with the patient’s. Inquiry, reflection and interpretation are essential aspects of the work-which hopefully create an expansion of awareness, healthier ego functioning, and a relative balance in one’s psychic life.
In self psychology, the therapist is “a mirroring self-object,” which is multifaceted effort to understand the patient as fully possible. Treatment creates an empathic relationship that was previously missing in the individual’s life. The inevitable “repair” of a fragile empathic connection is based on a sense of respectful attunement and is central to the work of building more resilient self-esteem.
* * *
Unlike these inherently modulated approaches, the school of thinking that is most useful with 21st-century teens is the “relational” approach, derived from a synthesis of interpersonal and object relations schools. As I discuss later, a highly modified relational frame is particularly helpful with teens – the emphasis is on highly modified.
What the interpersonal-relational writer Darlene Ehrenberg calls “the intimate edge of relatedness” is a most helpful concept with adolescents (though Ehrenberg writes primarily about adults; The Intimate Edge: Extending the Reach of Psychoanalytic Interaction, 1992). By this term Ehrenberg means the ways the two participants in the room actually feel each other, the place where they touch each other consciously and unconsciously. The quality of this “edge of relatedness” is what differentiates relationships, because the edge varies so distinctly in feel and action from one person to the next.
Nowhere in clinical practice (except, perhaps, with certain affective disorders and borderline clients) is the edge as vital and demanding as it is with adolescents. Because of roller-coaster developmental changes, ordinary high-risk decisions, intense cultural pressures, and the chaos of teen living, adolescents demand a level of responsiveness that makes most of the approaches described earlier seem stodgy. They are, to use a favorite adolescent term, “old.”
The relationship necessary is profoundly different from the quiet acceptance of play therapy, from the evenly hovering attention of analysis, from the inquiry of interpersonal psychoanalysis and from the empathic mirroring of self psychology. It is certainly different in its centrality from contemporary techniques, such as PTSD protocols, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, coaching and cognitive-behavioral therapy, to name just a few.
Your active participation in building a three-dimensional relationship is essential for teens to feel. They need to “get” that you are right there, in the room, fully engaged and responsive. No wonder therapists report that, when working with adolescents, you must always be on. The edge of relatedness needs to be focused, flexible, heartfelt, and multidimensional. Nothing less can create a relationship substantial enough to cross the teen-adult divide, to contain the volatile nature of 21st-century teen life.
And, in order to build such a vital relationship, a number of surprisingly basic conditions are necessary.
Rules
“I’m sorry I’m late. Everyone was talking after school, I lost track of time…” “The bus broke down and I wasn’t near a phone, so I couldn’t call…” “We went to the pizza place and just hung out…” “I thought insurance was paying you directly…” “There’s a big reading test tomorrow and I have to stay home and study…” “You mean I have to pay even though he had fever last night…”
These are just a few of the stories we hear from kids and parents about their therapy obligations. How do we respond? Not well. For various reasons, most child professionals are progressive and antiauthoritarian. In fact, when many of us began doing this work, we believed our young clients’ anxieties often resulted from too many rules and too much rigid authority. Our training taught us that a warm, fuzzy embrace was a godsend for children. At the same time, many of us are again sensitized to constricting rules, feeling over controlled by managed care, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), and our own agency’s bureaucracy.
Put it all together, and we are uncomfortable being rule enforcers. But today’s kids are in trouble partly because in their world there are few rules that actually matter. We need to recognize that despite our discomfort, a laissez-faire relationship is indistinguishable from the everyday chaos many of our young clients now experience.
Establishing clear rules creates the secure frame that teens and parents need to begin managing disorder in their lives. Addressing the concrete issues of commitment, setting priorities, and seriousness about the process brings to the surface issues that might otherwise undermine the relationship. Instead of skipping appointments or prematurely terminating, families held accountable start talking about financial concerns or other fears that are threatening to devastate the home. When professionals challenge a family’s casual attitude about showing up on time, parents may begin to discuss the everyday chaos that can be so frightening to children. In addition, almost without fail, when a preteen or teen is late to therapy, the missed appointment time is used for the very problem that the adolescent has trouble with – substance use, after-school acting out, and so forth.
LATENESS, NO-SHOWS, CANCELLATIONS
When kids toy with the edges – lateness to sessions, missing a meeting –one traditionally thinks, “It’s grist for the mill” –what teens are expected to do anyway. Exactly the opposite is true. I’ve discovered, to my surprise, that kids are pretty much on time, often more so than adults. For the most part, they like to come to sessions. When that is not the case, our failure to address the issue almost always comes back to haunt us in serious ways.
If an adolescent who is usually on time is late for a session, I ask about it, reminding him or her of the rules: “How come you’re late? It’s not part of our bargain…So, what was going on?” Rather than letting kids off the hook, I’ve learned to regard lateness as is a signal that something is being held back. Invariably, I discover that these few missed minutes of our session were the exact moments he or she was smoking up with friends, doing a quick drug deal, vandalizing property, or having sex for the first time. More often than we realize, kids arrive a little late and a little high – but not so much so that they can’t carry off the meeting brilliantly. Again, this is the tip of the iceberg, a sign worth noting and discussing. Playing with the edges of treatment is often a way to tell us something extremely important is going on just out of sight.
When kids miss sessions, it is critical to address the issue – not just because of what it might mean in terms of resistance or an unconscious process. Sophisticated teens even use unconscious process in their own defense: “Didn’t you learn in school that people forget stuff sometimes? Everybody forgets, it’s just a Freudian slip. Go ahead – ask questions about my deep, dark unconscious!” Despite such bravado, chances are something was going on that caused him or her to skip a session. And, that something is often the exact reason the client is with you in the first place.
One boy, Marv, came in on a Friday afternoon saying he had to cut the session short and leave early to meet his parents for a family get-together. Instead of holding him to our time, I was the understanding therapist and said, “Okay, we’ll end a little early.” Next week I learned from Marv that he had arranged to meet several of his friends in the afternoon to go out and drink. They wanted to get a buzz in preparation for a concert that evening, where they planned to get totally trashed. The short session was a telling indication of his extracurricular life – if I had paid attention. Friday afternoon? Meeting parents, not his friends? And what about that huge concert in the park just about everyone in town had heard about?
Treatment parameters need to be discussed and processed. During moments of dialogue around specifics, kids start to open up about what’s really going on. Ten minutes addressing lateness leads to a discussion that opens doors behind the façade.
(there were more similar stories here that I left out)
Concrete rules and your willingness to stand by them run counter to incessant contemporary messages about instant gratification. Rules protect the frame and provide reassurance that the relationship will not simply melt into thin air.
Self-Reliance and Potential
4. Self-Reliance and Potential
Individuality. Awareness and development of gifts and uniqueness. Taking responsibility for own actions. Overcoming the tendency to blame others for difficulties. Commitment to personal excellence.
Jekyll and Hyde? So many adolescents are. The challenge for parents is to encourage the Jekyll and help it win over the long run.
There are two separate but closely related principles involved here. The first is the self-reliance of accepting the responsibility for and the consequences of one’s own actions and performance, rather than blaming luck or circumstances or someone else. The second is trying to be one’s best self and asking the best from oneself – the conscious pursuit of individuality and potential – and the conscious rejection of avoidable mediocrity.
“Self-reliance and potential,” as we have called it, is a powerful value. Those who have it help others by accepting responsibility and doing their best in the world. Those who don’t have it hurt others by blaming them and by failing to develop the gifts and talents that could serve or enlighten or benefit other people. One who reaches his potential helps others in many ways as he develops himself. One who never seeks his full potential indirectly hurts others but not doing the good or setting the example he is capable of.
This value is about trying to know ourselves, to do our best, and to accept the consequences both of who we are and of what we do.
One way to think of self-reliance and potential is as two sides of the same coin. Self-reliance has a lot to do with taking the blame or the responsibility for negative things that happen. Potential has a lot to do with taking a little credit and taking the right kind of pride in what we are able to accomplish.
When we take blame and responsibility, we resolve and grow and improve. When we don’t we become bitter, jealous, and defensive. When we take positive pride in what we’re doing with ourselves and our gifts, we feel the growth of individuality and self-esteem. When we don’t, we tend to become followers or plodders in the standard ruts of life.
General Guidelines
Use yourself as the model and example. Show your shildren that you “value this value” and that you work for it. Take every opportunity to show your children how you are trying to improve. Talk about the things you think you’re good at and working to be better at.
Show pleasure in things you do well. Also, be obvious about taking the blame for mistakes you make. Say, “You know, that was my fault. Here’s what I could have done differently…”
Let your children see that you can accept responsibility and blame and let them see that you take pride in who you are and that you are working to be better.
Watch your children. Try to recognize their gifts and help them develop their unique individuality. We must know potential before we can reach it. Children are not interchangeable “lumps of clay” that can be molded into whatever we please. Rather, they are “seedlings” that have their own separate and distinct gifts and potentials. We can never change an oak into a pear tree. But we can watch and recognize as early as possible who they are – and then nourish and encourage them to be the best of whatever they are. As parents we must consciously commit ourselves to finding out who our children truly and deeply are rather than trying to conform them to who and what we wish they were or to extensions of our own egos.
It is tragic that, despite our professing that our children are our highest priority, the average parent spends only seven minutes per day with an individual child.
Praise. Reinforce your children’s self – image and individuality and build their self-reliance. Like flowers under rain and sunshine, children blossom and bloom under recognition and praise. “Catch them doing something good” and when you do, give effusive praise! When they make mistakes of fall short, help them accept responsibility for it and then praise that acceptance to the point that their pride in their self-reliance outshines their concern over the shortcoming.
Methods for Preschoolers
The “Repenting Bench” Revisited
This method helps small children take responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming others. The “repenting bench” (form month 3, “Peaceability”) is a technique to correct any form of fighting (from physical to verbal). It involves sitting the two “opponents” on an uncomfortable bench and allowing a child to get off only when he can tell you what he (not the other child) did wrong. In addition to being a way to end fights, this is also an exercise in self-reliance and in accepting responsibility rather than blaming others.
Natural-Consequence Punishments and Rewards
These can help preschoolers understand that their actions produce good and bad consequences. Try to set up a system in your family that fosters self-reliance by relating rewards and punishments directly to performance. The example that follows may not fit for you, but it may help you adopt a system that works in your family.
Set up your own family system for responsibility. Keep in mind that the simpler your system is, the better it will work. Be conscious of helping children to see that it is their actions that determine both the “good” and the “bad” that happens to them.
Give Your Children Opportunities to Do and Decide Things for Themselves
This will help small children gain the beginning sprouts of self-reliance and self-confidence. As much and as early as possible, let children dress themselves, do small household jobs, decide which shirt to wear or which color of juice to drink, get themselves in and out of cars, highchairs, and so on, and help you even when it would be easier without their help. As they accomplish even the smallest things, praise them and emphasize their ability to do things for themselves and by themselves.
Keeping “Records”
This is a good way to help young children feel the joy of improving on their own. Competitive instincts generally begin to run high in four- and five-year-olds. If these drives are too focused on winning over or beating others, lots of insecurity as well as intolerance can result. Help children learn the concept of competing with themselves by setting up some simple “personal records” (anything from how fast they can get ready for bed to how far they can throw a ball). Let them try to beat their own record – not to compare themselves with others. In this type of activity you will find many opportunities to talk about doing one’s best, practicing, trying, improving, and so on. With older preschoolers you can even introduce the term potential and help them understand that the word means looking for our own best.
Praise Creativity and Emphasize Individuality and Originality
Help your children to like their own unique selves. Just as small children need to hear the sound of letters over and over and over again before they learn to read, so also they need to hear their own unique abilities praised time after time before they actually believe in themselves and increase how much they like who they are. Simple as it sounds, the key “connection” of this chapter is that children who like themselves become capable of relying on themselves, of accepting responsibility, and of reaching for their full potential. Praise every effort you see them making – from drawing a picture to trying to tie their show. Look constantly for new things they learn to do or for any sort of aptitude at which they seem particularly good.
Help a child see that he is unique by making up an “I am special” book with a front cover tracing his silhouette, and with his height, weight, eye color, favorite food, most fun activity, best skills, and so on written inside. Help him understand that there is no one, anywhere, who is exactly like him.
Help children to learn to say, when they face something they can’t do, “I can’t do ––––, but I can do––––.” This will help them later on to accept their weak points with their strengths.
“The Good-Sport Game”
This game helps teach small children the principles of sportsmanship and of not blaming others. To set up this simple game, you will need a pair of dice – actually one die will do; a kitchen pan with either a bean bag or some other soft object to throw into it, and any game-board with markers that move around it from start to finish. (A Monopoly board will work, or you can make up a simple board on cardboard or paper that has about fifty spaces from start to finish.)
Each child on his first turn tosses the die and moves his marker the number of spaces (from one to six) that comes up. On his second turn a child tries to toss the beanbag into the pan from a few feet away. If it goes in, he moves his marker six spaces. If it hits the pan, but doesn’t go in, he moves four. And if it comes close, he moves tow. On his third turn he rolls the die again; on his fourth he tosses the beanbag again and so forth.
Individuality. Awareness and development of gifts and uniqueness. Taking responsibility for own actions. Overcoming the tendency to blame others for difficulties. Commitment to personal excellence.
Jekyll and Hyde? So many adolescents are. The challenge for parents is to encourage the Jekyll and help it win over the long run.
There are two separate but closely related principles involved here. The first is the self-reliance of accepting the responsibility for and the consequences of one’s own actions and performance, rather than blaming luck or circumstances or someone else. The second is trying to be one’s best self and asking the best from oneself – the conscious pursuit of individuality and potential – and the conscious rejection of avoidable mediocrity.
“Self-reliance and potential,” as we have called it, is a powerful value. Those who have it help others by accepting responsibility and doing their best in the world. Those who don’t have it hurt others by blaming them and by failing to develop the gifts and talents that could serve or enlighten or benefit other people. One who reaches his potential helps others in many ways as he develops himself. One who never seeks his full potential indirectly hurts others but not doing the good or setting the example he is capable of.
This value is about trying to know ourselves, to do our best, and to accept the consequences both of who we are and of what we do.
One way to think of self-reliance and potential is as two sides of the same coin. Self-reliance has a lot to do with taking the blame or the responsibility for negative things that happen. Potential has a lot to do with taking a little credit and taking the right kind of pride in what we are able to accomplish.
When we take blame and responsibility, we resolve and grow and improve. When we don’t we become bitter, jealous, and defensive. When we take positive pride in what we’re doing with ourselves and our gifts, we feel the growth of individuality and self-esteem. When we don’t, we tend to become followers or plodders in the standard ruts of life.
General Guidelines
Use yourself as the model and example. Show your shildren that you “value this value” and that you work for it. Take every opportunity to show your children how you are trying to improve. Talk about the things you think you’re good at and working to be better at.
Show pleasure in things you do well. Also, be obvious about taking the blame for mistakes you make. Say, “You know, that was my fault. Here’s what I could have done differently…”
Let your children see that you can accept responsibility and blame and let them see that you take pride in who you are and that you are working to be better.
Watch your children. Try to recognize their gifts and help them develop their unique individuality. We must know potential before we can reach it. Children are not interchangeable “lumps of clay” that can be molded into whatever we please. Rather, they are “seedlings” that have their own separate and distinct gifts and potentials. We can never change an oak into a pear tree. But we can watch and recognize as early as possible who they are – and then nourish and encourage them to be the best of whatever they are. As parents we must consciously commit ourselves to finding out who our children truly and deeply are rather than trying to conform them to who and what we wish they were or to extensions of our own egos.
It is tragic that, despite our professing that our children are our highest priority, the average parent spends only seven minutes per day with an individual child.
Praise. Reinforce your children’s self – image and individuality and build their self-reliance. Like flowers under rain and sunshine, children blossom and bloom under recognition and praise. “Catch them doing something good” and when you do, give effusive praise! When they make mistakes of fall short, help them accept responsibility for it and then praise that acceptance to the point that their pride in their self-reliance outshines their concern over the shortcoming.
Methods for Preschoolers
The “Repenting Bench” Revisited
This method helps small children take responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming others. The “repenting bench” (form month 3, “Peaceability”) is a technique to correct any form of fighting (from physical to verbal). It involves sitting the two “opponents” on an uncomfortable bench and allowing a child to get off only when he can tell you what he (not the other child) did wrong. In addition to being a way to end fights, this is also an exercise in self-reliance and in accepting responsibility rather than blaming others.
Natural-Consequence Punishments and Rewards
These can help preschoolers understand that their actions produce good and bad consequences. Try to set up a system in your family that fosters self-reliance by relating rewards and punishments directly to performance. The example that follows may not fit for you, but it may help you adopt a system that works in your family.
Set up your own family system for responsibility. Keep in mind that the simpler your system is, the better it will work. Be conscious of helping children to see that it is their actions that determine both the “good” and the “bad” that happens to them.
Give Your Children Opportunities to Do and Decide Things for Themselves
This will help small children gain the beginning sprouts of self-reliance and self-confidence. As much and as early as possible, let children dress themselves, do small household jobs, decide which shirt to wear or which color of juice to drink, get themselves in and out of cars, highchairs, and so on, and help you even when it would be easier without their help. As they accomplish even the smallest things, praise them and emphasize their ability to do things for themselves and by themselves.
Keeping “Records”
This is a good way to help young children feel the joy of improving on their own. Competitive instincts generally begin to run high in four- and five-year-olds. If these drives are too focused on winning over or beating others, lots of insecurity as well as intolerance can result. Help children learn the concept of competing with themselves by setting up some simple “personal records” (anything from how fast they can get ready for bed to how far they can throw a ball). Let them try to beat their own record – not to compare themselves with others. In this type of activity you will find many opportunities to talk about doing one’s best, practicing, trying, improving, and so on. With older preschoolers you can even introduce the term potential and help them understand that the word means looking for our own best.
Praise Creativity and Emphasize Individuality and Originality
Help your children to like their own unique selves. Just as small children need to hear the sound of letters over and over and over again before they learn to read, so also they need to hear their own unique abilities praised time after time before they actually believe in themselves and increase how much they like who they are. Simple as it sounds, the key “connection” of this chapter is that children who like themselves become capable of relying on themselves, of accepting responsibility, and of reaching for their full potential. Praise every effort you see them making – from drawing a picture to trying to tie their show. Look constantly for new things they learn to do or for any sort of aptitude at which they seem particularly good.
Help a child see that he is unique by making up an “I am special” book with a front cover tracing his silhouette, and with his height, weight, eye color, favorite food, most fun activity, best skills, and so on written inside. Help him understand that there is no one, anywhere, who is exactly like him.
Help children to learn to say, when they face something they can’t do, “I can’t do ––––, but I can do––––.” This will help them later on to accept their weak points with their strengths.
“The Good-Sport Game”
This game helps teach small children the principles of sportsmanship and of not blaming others. To set up this simple game, you will need a pair of dice – actually one die will do; a kitchen pan with either a bean bag or some other soft object to throw into it, and any game-board with markers that move around it from start to finish. (A Monopoly board will work, or you can make up a simple board on cardboard or paper that has about fifty spaces from start to finish.)
Each child on his first turn tosses the die and moves his marker the number of spaces (from one to six) that comes up. On his second turn a child tries to toss the beanbag into the pan from a few feet away. If it goes in, he moves his marker six spaces. If it hits the pan, but doesn’t go in, he moves four. And if it comes close, he moves tow. On his third turn he rolls the die again; on his fourth he tosses the beanbag again and so forth.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Creating Peaceability with Adolescents
3. Peaceability Calmness. Peacefulness. Serenity. The tendency to try to accommodate rather than argue. The understanding the differences are seldom resolved through conflict and that meanness in others is an indication of their problem or insecurity and thus of their need for your understanding. The ability to understand how others feel rather than simply reacting to them. Control of temper. Children need calmness. It gives them a kind of security. Peace and the control of temper is a powerful and important value that is largely a product of love and of the atmosphere created in a home! Understanding is the key. We seldom lose our temper when we are trying to understand. Children who are taught to try to understand why things happen and why people act the way they do will become calmer and more in control. We have used the term peaceability to mean understanding, calmness, patience, control, and accommodation – essentially the opposite of anger, losing one’s temper, impatience, and irritation. Just as there are a lot of ways to be dishonest, there are a lot of ways to be peaceable. Peaceability does not mean the elimination or ignoring of emotions. Rather it means to control them and to prevent their causing hurt to other people. Calmness and peaceability are values because they help others as well as ourselves to feel better and to function better. In addition to being values, they are contagious qualities. As you develop them within yourself, they are “caught” by others around you, particularly by your children. General Guidelines Create a peaceful atmosphere in your home. Try to enhance the setting in which you live and teach this value. Improve calmness of your home by: a) playing restful music – much classical music creates a feeling of refinement, order, and peace; b) controlling the tone and decibel level of your own voice – yelling accomplishes little and instantly punctures a peaceable atmosphere; c) touching others in your family – we talk more softly when we touch; put a hand on a shoulder or arm as you speak to someone. Set an example of and have an advance commitment to calmness. Demonstrate the practice and the benefits of peaceability to your children and take advantage of the quality’s “contagiousness.” It is natural, as a parent, to say, “I have a right to get upset,” of “They needed that.” But no matter how much “right” we have, getting upset with children simply doesn’t work very well, and children really don’t “need” to see us lose our temper. There is occasionally a place for “righteous indignation” – when children willfully and flagrantly do something they know is wrong. But too often our anger comes from our own frustration and sets negative and even dangerous precedents. Unfortunately anger, volatility, and impatience are as contagious as calmness. Children frequently exposed to it inevitably become frequent expressors of it. Teach by praise. Try to develop a “contagious calm” in yourself and to build it in children through positive praise. Besides working to stay calm within ourselves, and trying to respond in a peaceful way, parents need to learn that “praise is peaceful” while “negative is nervous. ” Methods for Adolescents The “Analytical-or-Angry” Discussion Help young teenagers conceptualize the benefits of trying to “understand” rather than trying to “win.” At dinner or some other natural conversation time make the statement that we have many situations in which there is a choice between two A words – arguing or analyzing. In other words, when someone does something to us or says something with which we disagree, we can either fight back and argue or we can try to analyze why he did or said it. Point out the second choice is better because we learn something whenever we try to figure out why, and we keep our cool and keep our friends. Story and Follow-up Discussion on the Theory of “Win-Win” Situations This exercise will help adolescents begin to see the world not as constant competition and “win-lose” but as a place where understanding can help everyone win. Tell this brief incident: Holly and Mary had been friends for years, but they were both strong-willed, so they had frequent disagreements. In their history class one day the teacher asked students to pair up and then choose one of the topics listed on the board for a dual report given by the paired students that would count for half of their grade. Holly and Mary teamed up but couldn’t agree on a topic. Holly wanted one and Mary wanted another. They began to argue about it, and then Holly, remembering something her mother had told her, decided just to listen to Mary. It turned out that Mary had a very good reason for wanting a particular topic – and that she had some special information that would help make a good report on it. As Holly listened, she thought of some ideas she could add. The girls agreed on a topic and ended up getting an A on their report. Ask what the difference is between “win-lose” and “win-win.” Define “win-win” (finding a way to agree – a way where no one is hurt and where everyone benefits). Think of others examples. Share Your Method of Prethought Flatter adolescents by suggesting that you and they adopt the same method for becoming peaceable. Discuss the “preprogram” idea (from the general methods section of this chapter). Help kids develop their own way of deciding in advance to be calm. Explain with Cander the Natural Moodiness Caused by Puberty, Hormones, and So On It’s important to help adolescents better understand and accept their moods. Young people’s ability to be peaceable is often affected not only by their physiology but by their concern over it. A candid discussion about how the hormones of adolescence can affect moods can help children better accept their own change and emotions. Explain that it is natural in adolescents to feel great one moment and lousy the next. Explain that it’s all right – and that the only thing to worry about and work on is being sure that our moods don’t hurt others unduly.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The following information, published by Lima, discusses the different ways that parents can connect with their adolescent children, first by remembering their own adolescence, by being a good role model, providing opportunities for them to practice independence, showing appreciation for the things they do well, being willing to give instructions as opposed to demands, being willing to learn from teenagers, enjoying their sense of humor, expecting mutual respect, listening and hearing, and accepting who they are. This cannot always be an easy task especially when teenagers engage in high- risk behavior.
It is interesting how many people find it amazing as therapists why we would want to work with adolescents when I do not perceive them as any more difficult to work with than other populations. In fact, they are not only tolerable, they can be quite enjoyable, entertaining, insightful and candid. When given the right space to express how they feel, it is no surprise, at least to those who work with this population, that teens can be wonderful clients to work with. When parents participate and begin to show the same level of reverence for their teen as the therapist does, it often sets the stage for great possibilities within families.
Remembering Your Youth
Working with adolescents is really just a part of every day living. After all young people make up a large,visible and usually very audible segment of our population. Even if you just go out to the store, go to the movies, go to church, go anywhere you are going to have to deal with adolescents just in passing. All of my working life, which now totals more than 30 years , it has been my privilege and many times my pleasure to work with adolescents. First as a camp director, then as a high school history teacher and finally for many years as a religious education director, I went to work each day knowing that I would be either teaching , directing or leading young people. It wasn't always easy and there were times when I really wondered why I took these jobs, but in the end I always came back to the real joy that generally came from working with adolescents. Over the years I have found that these ten keys make up a pretty good survival kit for anyone working with adolescents.
1, Remember your own adolescence. One of the most important keys for working with adolescents is definitely to think back to your own youth and remember what it was like. Bringing your own past behaviors to mind can often make some of what you see adolescents do today seem more understandable. The more you can connect their actions and words with your own from by gone days, the smoother the sailing will be for everyone. Adolescents are not monsters or mutants, they are young people in the process of growing up, just like you were . Their styles of dress, music, language and manners may not measure up to adult standards and they may seem like they have a subculture all their own. That's because they do, they need it to survive the in between feeling they have being no longer children and not yet adults. Remembering your own teen days will help to build some compassion and understanding into your attempts to work with adolescents.
2. Give adolescents a good role model. Teens can be as judgmental as any other age group, and perhaps more so. Teens often feel that everyone is coming down on them and judging them, or that they can never live up to
what is being asked of them in school, at work or at home. You can help teens to deal with the world around them by placing before them each day a good role model as an adult. You don't need to be the "Teacher of the Year", the best youth director ever or a flawless boss. But what you can do is show young people by your words and actions a good human being trying to do their best each day. Giving young people an everyday example of honesty, integrity, fairness. and humanity will help to set the tone for your relationship and your work together. It may also be an example which quietly has its own effect on the way the young person tries to live and work as well.
3.Give them independence and a chance to show what they can do. In my experience, one thing was frequently visible in working with adolescents. They often feel constrained by adult ways of doing things. They feel too structured and too controlled by the adult system in place around them. Lots of teens feel the desire to break out, to do their own thing. A great key to working with adolescents is to turn the desire of young people for independence into a asset rather than a liability. Find ways within the context of your relationship to let young people have a little independence, to make decisions and in effect to show both you and themselves what they can do . More often than not you will be rewarded with better work, more enthusiasm and a cooperative feeling that will carry over to all of the work that you do with a group of adolescents. They know that there have to be rules and that adults are in charge but will often flourish if allowed to step around the rules and take responsibility in some defined areas .
4. Show appreciation for their unique abilities and qualities. Whether you are working with adolescents as a teacher, youth leader or boss it is still a relationship between two human beings. While the relationship is not an equal one, it still can be one in which you, as the person in charge, can show young people how much you appreciate who they are and the skills and qualities they possess. Too often I have found that adults working with teens forget how much we all like to be recognized for what is special in our makeup. This feeling doesn't just develop when we become adults, it is part of being human beings. Telling a young person that you appreciate their punctuality, cooperative spirit, enthusiasm, good example, kindness, sense of fair play , or pleasant nature can change the whole dynamic between you and the adolescent. They will begin to take a bit more pride in who they are and you are likely to see a whole lot more of whatever you complimented them on. You may begin to notice other positive aspects of the young person's behavior and better manage those times when they don't quite measure up.
. Give instructions, not orders. Young people are often at that point in their lives when they can be highly sensitive to a tone or the way in which communication is handled. If you are looking for a key to working with adolescents , remember to give instructions to them that are clear, concise and most important not condescending. Directions that are short and to the point instead of repetitive make the young person feel as if you know that you get the point, you respect their intelligence. You need also to make sure that when you give directions they are not given in a condescending way. No one likes to be talked down to, especially teens who already feel as if they are some kind of underlings. Speaking from one human being to another is the approach that will get you the best results and will create the best atmosphere.
6. Be willing to learn from an adolescent. One thing that for me always helped to cement relationships with teens under my direction was working at my own willingness to learn from teens. Adults too often start from the presumption that naturally we know the best and quickest way to accomplish a task. The truth may be altogether different. In today's technology heavy world, young people often have a real edge in working with equipment and as I often said to my charges "anything that has lots of buttons". Adults who stubbornly insist on doing it their way or the old fashioned way make a mistake by not including young people in the process. Adolescents love a chance to teach, just as adults do. There are lots of instances when the very best thing you can do is invite in the expertise of a teen and be willing to listen respectfully to the knowledge he or she can impart.
7. Enjoy their humor. Some of the very funniest things I have ever heard or seen acted out in front of me have come from adolescents. Their is an innocence and an enthusiasm in their humor that adults cannot reproduce. Allowing kids occasionally to be funny and to show their funny side allows them to be themselves and to be creative. You don't want to work with a bunch of teens who are out of control and spending all their time joking around. You do want humor to be part of your relationship, it's a vital part of our humanity. Stifling adolescents and their humor is a bad idea all the way around.
8. Insist on their respect and reciprocate. A very important key to working with adolescents is insisting that they treat you with respect. No adult is comfortable working with teens in any capacity who are rude or disrespectful. But while you should insist on their respect you will find it easier to achieve if you reciprocate the deal and give them respect as well. Kids don't like to be treated without respect any more than do adults. As the person in charge one of the best keys to working with adolescents needs to be developing, not just individual respect for you as the leader , but a climate of respect that embraces everyone.
9. Don't just listen, hear. Adults are busy people . Too often our fast moving schedule gets in the way of really understanding what is said to us. This can be disastrous when working with adolescents. In conversations with teens there is often lots more going on than the individual words indicate. So it may not be enough to stand and listen to what a young person is saying word for word. It may be necessary to go a step further and as the adult in charge really hear what the words are trying to say. "I don't feel like doing this" for example might not just be laziness but may give a hint that something isn't going well in this young person's life that is turning him or her away from what you have planned. If you work with teens. you really have to develop a second level of hearing that goes beyond the words and works on translating the hidden meaning that sometimes is there.
10. See adolescents as who they are. Perhaps the most important key to working with adolescents is really one that applies across the whole gamut of our human relationships. It's just that some times we forget to include teens in that group. The most important thing that you can do in working with adolescents is to see them for who they really are. They are not just part of a huge stereotype of all teens . They are individuals who may like hanging out with other teens but who also have their very own hopes, dreams and problems. Seeing them as individuals with names and addresses, parents and siblings can make working with them a much more personal and pleasant task.
As adults working with teens, we all have a responsibility not only to see them as individuals but to recognize that, like the rest of us, teens after all are people in the act of becoming. They, like we, are are works in progress . Knowing how fortunate we are to have a chance to foster that development can make remembering all the other keys to working with adolescence well worth the effort
learn from them
It is interesting how many people find it amazing as therapists why we would want to work with adolescents when I do not perceive them as any more difficult to work with than other populations. In fact, they are not only tolerable, they can be quite enjoyable, entertaining, insightful and candid. When given the right space to express how they feel, it is no surprise, at least to those who work with this population, that teens can be wonderful clients to work with. When parents participate and begin to show the same level of reverence for their teen as the therapist does, it often sets the stage for great possibilities within families.
Remembering Your Youth
Working with adolescents is really just a part of every day living. After all young people make up a large,visible and usually very audible segment of our population. Even if you just go out to the store, go to the movies, go to church, go anywhere you are going to have to deal with adolescents just in passing. All of my working life, which now totals more than 30 years , it has been my privilege and many times my pleasure to work with adolescents. First as a camp director, then as a high school history teacher and finally for many years as a religious education director, I went to work each day knowing that I would be either teaching , directing or leading young people. It wasn't always easy and there were times when I really wondered why I took these jobs, but in the end I always came back to the real joy that generally came from working with adolescents. Over the years I have found that these ten keys make up a pretty good survival kit for anyone working with adolescents.
1, Remember your own adolescence. One of the most important keys for working with adolescents is definitely to think back to your own youth and remember what it was like. Bringing your own past behaviors to mind can often make some of what you see adolescents do today seem more understandable. The more you can connect their actions and words with your own from by gone days, the smoother the sailing will be for everyone. Adolescents are not monsters or mutants, they are young people in the process of growing up, just like you were . Their styles of dress, music, language and manners may not measure up to adult standards and they may seem like they have a subculture all their own. That's because they do, they need it to survive the in between feeling they have being no longer children and not yet adults. Remembering your own teen days will help to build some compassion and understanding into your attempts to work with adolescents.
2. Give adolescents a good role model. Teens can be as judgmental as any other age group, and perhaps more so. Teens often feel that everyone is coming down on them and judging them, or that they can never live up to
what is being asked of them in school, at work or at home. You can help teens to deal with the world around them by placing before them each day a good role model as an adult. You don't need to be the "Teacher of the Year", the best youth director ever or a flawless boss. But what you can do is show young people by your words and actions a good human being trying to do their best each day. Giving young people an everyday example of honesty, integrity, fairness. and humanity will help to set the tone for your relationship and your work together. It may also be an example which quietly has its own effect on the way the young person tries to live and work as well.
3.Give them independence and a chance to show what they can do. In my experience, one thing was frequently visible in working with adolescents. They often feel constrained by adult ways of doing things. They feel too structured and too controlled by the adult system in place around them. Lots of teens feel the desire to break out, to do their own thing. A great key to working with adolescents is to turn the desire of young people for independence into a asset rather than a liability. Find ways within the context of your relationship to let young people have a little independence, to make decisions and in effect to show both you and themselves what they can do . More often than not you will be rewarded with better work, more enthusiasm and a cooperative feeling that will carry over to all of the work that you do with a group of adolescents. They know that there have to be rules and that adults are in charge but will often flourish if allowed to step around the rules and take responsibility in some defined areas .
4. Show appreciation for their unique abilities and qualities. Whether you are working with adolescents as a teacher, youth leader or boss it is still a relationship between two human beings. While the relationship is not an equal one, it still can be one in which you, as the person in charge, can show young people how much you appreciate who they are and the skills and qualities they possess. Too often I have found that adults working with teens forget how much we all like to be recognized for what is special in our makeup. This feeling doesn't just develop when we become adults, it is part of being human beings. Telling a young person that you appreciate their punctuality, cooperative spirit, enthusiasm, good example, kindness, sense of fair play , or pleasant nature can change the whole dynamic between you and the adolescent. They will begin to take a bit more pride in who they are and you are likely to see a whole lot more of whatever you complimented them on. You may begin to notice other positive aspects of the young person's behavior and better manage those times when they don't quite measure up.
. Give instructions, not orders. Young people are often at that point in their lives when they can be highly sensitive to a tone or the way in which communication is handled. If you are looking for a key to working with adolescents , remember to give instructions to them that are clear, concise and most important not condescending. Directions that are short and to the point instead of repetitive make the young person feel as if you know that you get the point, you respect their intelligence. You need also to make sure that when you give directions they are not given in a condescending way. No one likes to be talked down to, especially teens who already feel as if they are some kind of underlings. Speaking from one human being to another is the approach that will get you the best results and will create the best atmosphere.
6. Be willing to learn from an adolescent. One thing that for me always helped to cement relationships with teens under my direction was working at my own willingness to learn from teens. Adults too often start from the presumption that naturally we know the best and quickest way to accomplish a task. The truth may be altogether different. In today's technology heavy world, young people often have a real edge in working with equipment and as I often said to my charges "anything that has lots of buttons". Adults who stubbornly insist on doing it their way or the old fashioned way make a mistake by not including young people in the process. Adolescents love a chance to teach, just as adults do. There are lots of instances when the very best thing you can do is invite in the expertise of a teen and be willing to listen respectfully to the knowledge he or she can impart.
7. Enjoy their humor. Some of the very funniest things I have ever heard or seen acted out in front of me have come from adolescents. Their is an innocence and an enthusiasm in their humor that adults cannot reproduce. Allowing kids occasionally to be funny and to show their funny side allows them to be themselves and to be creative. You don't want to work with a bunch of teens who are out of control and spending all their time joking around. You do want humor to be part of your relationship, it's a vital part of our humanity. Stifling adolescents and their humor is a bad idea all the way around.
8. Insist on their respect and reciprocate. A very important key to working with adolescents is insisting that they treat you with respect. No adult is comfortable working with teens in any capacity who are rude or disrespectful. But while you should insist on their respect you will find it easier to achieve if you reciprocate the deal and give them respect as well. Kids don't like to be treated without respect any more than do adults. As the person in charge one of the best keys to working with adolescents needs to be developing, not just individual respect for you as the leader , but a climate of respect that embraces everyone.
9. Don't just listen, hear. Adults are busy people . Too often our fast moving schedule gets in the way of really understanding what is said to us. This can be disastrous when working with adolescents. In conversations with teens there is often lots more going on than the individual words indicate. So it may not be enough to stand and listen to what a young person is saying word for word. It may be necessary to go a step further and as the adult in charge really hear what the words are trying to say. "I don't feel like doing this" for example might not just be laziness but may give a hint that something isn't going well in this young person's life that is turning him or her away from what you have planned. If you work with teens. you really have to develop a second level of hearing that goes beyond the words and works on translating the hidden meaning that sometimes is there.
10. See adolescents as who they are. Perhaps the most important key to working with adolescents is really one that applies across the whole gamut of our human relationships. It's just that some times we forget to include teens in that group. The most important thing that you can do in working with adolescents is to see them for who they really are. They are not just part of a huge stereotype of all teens . They are individuals who may like hanging out with other teens but who also have their very own hopes, dreams and problems. Seeing them as individuals with names and addresses, parents and siblings can make working with them a much more personal and pleasant task.
As adults working with teens, we all have a responsibility not only to see them as individuals but to recognize that, like the rest of us, teens after all are people in the act of becoming. They, like we, are are works in progress . Knowing how fortunate we are to have a chance to foster that development can make remembering all the other keys to working with adolescence well worth the effort
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Teaching Children and Adolescents Self-Discipline and Moderation
Self-discipline and moderation
Teaching kids the importance of moderation is one the keys to helping them learn self-discipline; and that we often don’t need as much in our lives as we think. Moderation with food, exercise, speaking, money, time spent online or texting, television, and on an on. The ability to balance self-discipline with some spontaneity is a skill that needs to be taught to young people.
Self-discipline means many things: being able to motivate and manage yourself and your time, being able to control yourself and your temper, being able to control your appetite, etc. Self-discipline and moderation are profound and universal values because their presence helps us and others and their absence inevitably causes short or long term pain.
Creating a personal example regarding the value of discipline and moderation in all areas is a way to model that which parents desire for their adolescents. Example is the main method of learning for children. Make up your mind to control your temper, to save a percentage of your income, to live within your means, to not be a couch potato, to eat moderately and so on. Talk about the successes you have with your kids so they begin to notice that living a life of moderation is a happy and content place to be.
One way to help children appreciate moderation is by teaching them the simple practice of learning to count in their head to slow down their thinking. Helping them create a space for alternative thoughts gives them the abiity to decide whether or not a decision may or may not be in their best interest. Challenge children to count to ten whenever they begin to get angry or frustrated and remind them that it is designed to help them regain control of their thoughts and actions.
Having a family calendar can give children the security and comfort of certain things being predictable in their lives and providing a framework for the discipline needed to accomplish such things. Having a set breakfast or dinnertime at reasonably consistent time periods helps adolescents develop an internal sense of constancy in their life despite all the ambiguity that will come their way in the outside world.
Using the terms discipline and moderation frequently will help children understand them and connect them to everyday behavior. When you pass up a second helping of potatoes, say, “I’m going to use moderation and not eat too much- it will help be feel better. When you notice a child getting his homework done comment on his self-discipline. Make the words the “theme” of your communications and activities for a significant period of time.
Adding motivation to your child’s efforts to discipline himself by setting goals will help him/her feel that these virtues are worthy of reward. Having children set up certain objectives and attaching a reward to the accomplishment of those goals can give parents added opportunities for praise and can make children.
With adolescents, teaching the idea of work before play is really important. Encourage and award kids for looking around to do things to help the family without being asked. It wasn’t that long ago where it was commonplace for boys to wake up alongside their dads and join em from sunrise to sunset on the farm.
A family bank is a great way to help kids see the need for a collaborative effort to accomplish a goal. Giving older kids old checkbooks that they can practice writing in and having them write checks out to themselves whenever they accomplish a task that goes beyond what’s expected is a great way to help kids recognize that money is earned not just given out. Eventually having teens establish their own checking or savings account helps them inch closer to adulthood with some supervision and goals for saving and maintaining responsible finances.
Help kids bank the concept of discipline and moderation to memory by helping them create mantres or short sayings such as, “Mind over mattress” to overcome laziness or to avoid procrastination or “Seize the day” or anything that resonates with them.
Music is often an area of life that gets overlooked in significance. However, research has emerged in recent decades about the calming and nurturing impact it has on the mind and ability to stay focused. This gift can be transcended into all areas of life when problem-solving or trying to manage emotions during times of distress.
Teach your children how to set and reach goals. Kids often express their desire to become famous or to travel to expensive lands as the adult world smirks and sarcastically grins how it’s a great idea if you save your money. They don’t really believe it attainable but why not? Often the difference between a dream and a goal is simply planning, discipline and moderation. When a dream gets conversted into action steps it begins to look plausible. And with the right balance of motivation, discipline and moderation, kids will often reach their goals with the right support in place.
Praise, praise, praise. Kids are able to hear and respond to negative feedback. However, when inundated with praise, kids are more likely to feel a greater sense of self-worth and more of a willingness to respond to criticism when it comes their way. Instead of expressing irritation to children for not getting household jobs done, express honest praise and delight every time they do. Instead of saying to yourself, “I can’t believe Johnny is doing the dishes without being told,” say something out loud like, “I can’t tell you how much it lightens my load to have you see the dinner mess and get it cleaned up without even having to ask you to do it. You are getting so good at seeing what needs to be done and doing it on your own initiative!” the chances of the child repeating the act of self-discipline increases tenfold on the spot. The next time you walk through the family room and see two children playing nicely together, stop and tell them how it makes you feel, instead of getting angry at them when they argue. Every attempt to give honest praise is a solid-gold investment.
Teaching adolescents to fast is a way to help them recognize that indulgence is wasteful and that life often goes through changes that are unpredictable which means that although we have plenty now, there is no guarantee this will continue. It is also important to help them understand what feeling hungry really is like. I’m not talking about cutting off their food supply for a week but instead limiting kids food for weekend to the bare essentials like trail mix and water. This will often be an exciting experiment for kids who may emerge more appreciative of the abundance they enjoy.
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