Parenting an Adolescent

Parenting an adolescent is like giving birth and going through the baby years all over again, except that now the stakes are higher. Giving birth is scary, painful, and unpredictable; waking up one day to find your child in full-blown puberty is no less so. Giving birth is a physical tearing away of your own flesh and blood; going through adolescence is an emotional cleaving, a long, drawn-out process of separation. Emotional pain can be much more difficult to bear than physical pain, and takes longer to heal.

When our kids are newborns, babies, and toddlers, they challenge us with sleepless nights, communication difficulties (is that a hungry scream or a tired scream? Is he hot or cold? Sick or just fed up?), and constant uncertainty. We wish they came with an instruction manual, but alas, they don’t. All we have to rely on is the well-intentioned but often aggravating advice of others, or the many books catering to parental desperation, all of which give conflicting advice (remember Ferber?). When kids hit puberty, it’s the same set of issues all over again: nights sleepless with worry or with wondering when your kid will stop haunting the kitchen and actually go to sleep; major communication difficulties (was that a “yes” grunt or a “no” grunt? Did he move his head sideways or up and down? Did she not hear me or is she just ignoring me?); and constant uncertainty (is my kid normal? What strange thing will he do today?). And again, no instruction manuals, just the parenting section at your local bookstore, full of contradictory and often insufficient advice: set limits, but don’t control behavior; keep the lines of communication open, as long as you don’t mind communicating by grunting and subtle head movements.

The difficulties of the first few years of life are regularly offset by our children’s cuteness, their unadulterated love for us, and the enormity of each accomplishment: he slept through the night! She sat up by herself! A laugh, a first word, a first tooth, a first step. Adolescents can be cute, but let’s face it, that’s not the first adjective that comes to mind. Adolescents certainly reach major milestones, but they’re not always the ones we were hoping for: He smoked his first cigarette! Broke up with the nice girl from the good family, all by himself! Look dear, he can ride his bike without a helmet now! And the list can get much, much scarier. And in terms of their love for us, I’m sure it’s there somewhere, but gone are the days hugs and cuddles. We are now the enemy.

So what’s a thinking parent to do? I’m still in the early stages of this painful journey, so my advice is minimal, but here’s what I’ve gathered so far:

1. Do not respond to your child’s situation, behavior, or attitude while your emotions run high. So far this is the most important thing I’ve learned. Michael Bradley, in his book Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!, encourages parents to practice being dispassionate. He says that when we over-react, as we inevitably do when our kids do something that shocks us, we only reinforce the behavior, hard-wiring it into our child’s rapidly expanding brain. Recently, after a day during which I received not one, but two phone calls from my child’s school, my husband advised me not to discuss the issues raised (a skipped detention, problems in math class) with my child until the next afternoon. This was the best advice he could have given me. Instead of attacking him, I let him tell me what was going on, and how he was feeling, which brings me to my next point.
2. Let your child speak. This may sound ridiculous if your child speaks only in grunts and subtle head movements, as does mine (occasionally he also shouts), but in this case it worked. I calmly told him about the phone calls and the teachers’ concerns, and asked him what he thought, and he actually responded openly and emotionally. I could tell that he was expecting to be criticized or chided; when I assured him that we wanted to help him and that we weren’t blaming him we actually were able to make a plan. Which he didn’t stick to. But just being able to have this conversation where he did most of the talking was still worthwhile.
3. Balance your child’s need to develop independence and autonomy with his ongoing child status, inability to manage his life like an adult, and dependence on you. I have no idea how to implement this one, but it sure seems important. If I make any progress I’ll make this the subject of later posts.
4. Carve out time for yourself; do things that make you happy. Don’t become miserable with worry and frustration 24/7; it won’t help matters. You still need to model good behavior and a healthy emotional life, which means taking care of yourself, your relationship with your significant other, your other children, and so on.
5. Speaking of which, don’t forget to pay attention to other children you may have. It seems that negative behavior draws much more attention than positive behavior; avoid falling into this trap. If you have another child who isn’t as difficult as your adolescent, spend time with him or her, and try to use that time to take a break from your preoccupation with your difficult child. (Otherwise you may start to wonder why you had kids to begin with!)
6. Listen to everyone’s advice, but only apply it if you think it will work for your child; every child, and every parent-child relationship is different. Just because an expert says a 10:30 curfew is appropriate doesn’t mean that you have to adapt that as a rule if you’re OK with your kid coming home at 12:00.
7. Don’t hesitate to consult a professional if you feel you’re out of your depth. Not only can they help your child, but they can also help you cope with this trying period.
8. Have faith. This too shall pass.

It seems to me so far that parenting a teen is going to be an exercise in failure. Every day there is a new challenge, and every day I go to bed wondering if I dealt with it properly, and feeling deep down like I didn’t. I try to stay flexible and adaptive, but it’s not easy walking a tightrope day in and day out. I can only hope that the reward at the end—a fully-fledged adult—is commensurate with the amount effort and worry invested now.

Debbie's Story

Debbie was 41 when she first started paying attention to the recurring chant in her head: “I can’t live like this anymore, I can’t live like this anymore…. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying.” She was doing laundry at the time, but the chant was also there when she was doing dishes, or making dinner, or cleaning, or doing any of the myriad tasks one performs over and over again throughout the day, day in day out, when one is mother to four young children and one’s husband is constantly traveling. Being so busy, always doing and never just being, Debbie was not able to make wise connections, and continued living her life to the deadening and repetitive chant in her mind.

Over the course of that year, Debbie started experiencing worrisome physical symptoms: dizziness, stomach problems, severe exhaustion and weakness. As her symptoms progressed, she was overcome with fear, anxiety, and negativity, and for good reason: twenty years prior, she had been diagnosed with MS. At that time her doctor had prophesied that she would be fine until age 40 or 50, so she dismissed the diagnosis and got on with her life.

But here she was, approaching 42, feeling truly terrible, and unable to find a diagnosis. She made the rounds of doctors, spent a small fortune on naturopathy and underwent a barrage of tests. No-one would confirm MS or any other disease, until her neurologist, who had already told her that she was in perfect health, found brain lesions on her MRI scan that indicated MS. He suggested medication, including an anti-depressant but Debbie (a trained nurse) felt that the meds would not help her. Her intuition told her that her failing health was not purely a physical matter; rather, it was a spiritual and emotional crisis. She refused the meds and turned inward for guidance.

Within a month after the diagnosis, Debbie had hit rock bottom, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She felt like her head was disconnected from her body, like it was floating above while her body felt heavy as a rock, to the point where she couldn’t move. She felt such extreme weakness that she couldn’t bring herself to do anything whatsoever. She felt that her heart was barely beating, barely keeping her alive. She had lost weight. She could not function. She was falling into an emotional pit of despair and hopelessness, making it seem like her heart would literally stop beating. She felt like her marriage, rocky at the best of times, was continuing to crumble.

The realization that she was dying came to her on her daughter’s 12th birthday. In her heart she said good-bye to her family and hello to God. But, Debbie says, God spoke to her, telling her that even if she were ready to come, her 12-year old daughter would never recover if she left her. After a few days, Debbie knew that indeed her time hadn’t yet come, that she had a choice, and that she would choose life. The truth of this decision was confirmed in the weeks that followed when one day she opened her bible and her eyes read the words, “This day I give you life and death, and I desire that you choose life.” The message was clear.

Choosing life is no simple matter when your own has been clouded over by death. Only a year earlier Debbie’s brother had committed suicide: images of his suffering, in both life and death, overtook her mind. When her father also killed himself within the same year Debbie felt overwhelmed. She sought guidance, and learned to see these terrible events “through spiritual eyes”: in the case of her brother she learned to see not the visual, physical horror of his hanging, but rather the child entering the divine and thus ending his unbearable suffering. For her father, she knew that in having asked God to forgive him for the harm he had done to her, he too would find some kind of peace. Seeing with the eyes of forgiveness, love, and light—with spiritual eyes— helped her to overcome these tragedies. Yet grief continued to weigh on her heavily, making it that much more difficult to cope with life, especially as she fought some of the same demons that had plagued her brother and father.

While she was at the bottom of her pit of hopelessness and despair, other realizations came to Debbie. She realized, for example, that she could choose hope, that she could choose gratitude, that she could choose health and happiness. Gratitude became a healing power, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Healing, Debbie says, must be walked out in faith, and is there for the asking. Asking is the key.

Debbie also realized that the thinking mind can be destructive, especially when it leads us to overthink, to dwell on issues, to mentally tear ourselves and others apart. The real art of living involves turning the mind off and seeing the world as children do. Reconnecting to who we were as children is absolutely essential to nourishing the garden in our heart, at our spiritual core.

When she was at her lowest point, Debbie’s husband, somewhat estranged to her by this point, picked her up off the floor, sat her down on the sofa, looked her straight in the eyes, and told her that she would get better. “One grain of sand at a time,” he said, “but one day you’ll be standing on the beach.” This unexpected voice of love somehow touched her, and she’s been building her sand castles ever since.

The Ten Things I Learned From Fibromyalgia/Burnout (Rules for Living): Number Four

BALANCE "DOING" AND "BEING"

In the Western world there is an enormous emphasis on doing: accomplishing, achieving, aspiring, and striving. We value goal setting and linear thinking, and we often judge ourselves and others by our achievements and accomplishments, by what we can do and what we have done. The problem with this way of thinking is that we come to believe that we are only as good as our latest accomplishment; we don’t realize that we have intrinsic worth. It’s fine to strive to reach our goals, but if the attainment of goals is our primary defining quality, we’ll be in trouble if we ever decide to take a break or to focus on helping others attain their own goals.

It’s not easy for some of us to realize that it’s OK to just be, that we have intrinsic worth just by virtue of being human, regardless of what we are able to do. You can sit on the couch and watch TV and eat chocolate all day, and still be a good person. In fact, many chocoholic TV addicts are happier, better people than a few super-accomplished over-achievers I've come across!

Some of us need help learning how to stop doing and start being. One way is to start meditating. Another is to reconnect with something you enjoyed doing as a child—but here you have to be careful. Don’t tell yourself that you’re going to start playing piano again with the aim of becoming a concert pianist! Try doing it just for fun, and more importantly, just for yourself, not to impress other people. Walking is another great way to just be. So is hanging out with friends. Developing daily rituals, spiritual or otherwise, can give us a break from the constant drive to do. The key is to slow down when possible (there are many excellent books on this topic, including In Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré). The added bonus is that not only do we learn to love and respect ourselves for who we are, but we also stop making unrealistic demands on the people around us. Children in particular are vulnerable to the pressure to accomplish, and can easily end up believing that they are loved only for what they can do and achieve, not just for being who they are (Eckhart Tolle discusses this in A New Earth).

Obviously we can’t all become monks and stop participating in modern life; but we can all balance the non-stop demand to constantly do with daily periods where we’re happy to just be who we are and trust that people will love and respect us for nothing more than that.

The Ten Things I Learned From Fibromyalgia/Burnout (Rules for Living): Number Three

HONOR YOUR SCARS

This is one of my favorite lessons. For years I tried to hide the painful, unsavory parts of my past that I didn’t like to think about. I enjoyed the feeling of assuming a constructed identity, an identity that I put together from the bits and pieces that I chose, all the while discarding other bits and pieces. For an entire year I read only spy novels, because I loved the way the main characters so easily assumed false identities. (I admit that I started to get worried when the two main characters in one novel by John Le Carré had severe back problems!)

During this same period, however, I had the impression that I was carrying around a big, sealed box that contained all the hidden sorrows and pain that I had tucked away. I really didn’t know what to do with the box, and it sure was heavy. I had no interest in taking the lid off to look inside; I had a good idea what was there, as I had put the box together myself. The box seemed to become heavier and heavier as time went on, and its contents didn’t seem content to stay put inside.

The truth is, you can’t keep pain tucked away in a corner of your psyche. Nor can you hide those things you did in the past that you regret now. They’re part of you, and they probably make you stronger, more interesting, more insightful, and more able to help others. Why be bland? Incorporate the ugly stuff into your identity, honor it, it is part of you and you can’t change it. I don’t mean you should repeat the mistakes you made when you were younger, or constantly relive the pain you went through. Rather, if you’ve learnt from the mistakes and grieved over the losses, you have no need to hide the scars that remain and pretend that these things never happened. Once you acknowledge this, you are well on your way to being true to yourself. You can start to unpack your own box of secrets and find a spot for each one in your psyche. Don’t hide your scars; they have their own beauty.

Scars can serve as early warning systems. Think of Harry Potter. When Lord Valdemort is near, his scar starts to ache. Is he happy that he has a scar on his forehead that marks him as different? Is he happy that his parents were killed when he was a baby? Of course not! But if it weren’t for that scar, he too would be dead. It confers on him a serious responsibility. Not only does it warn him when danger is near, it also serves as a reminder that love, his own mother’s love, saved him; she sacrificed herself so that he would live.

Of course we’d all prefer to have no scars and sail blissfully through life never knowing what it is to suffer, but let’s face it, that’s not realistic. People die. People do stupid things that have a negative impact on those around them. People make dumb decisions for reasons they don’t fully understand. If you keep beating yourself up for the things you did that you wish you hadn’t, and if you keep feeling sorry for yourself for things that were done or happened to you, you’ll never be able to love yourself and you certainly won’t be able to really love and have compassion for others who may be doing the same dumb things. And these others may well be your own children. Learn to have compassion for the you you’d rather hide, and you’ll be better able to help your kids or others you care for when they’re going through the same things.

The Ten Things I Learned From Fibromyalgia/Burnout (Rules for Living): Number Two

PACE YOURSELF

When we were young we thought we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. Our energy seemed limitless. Some people manage to continue into adulthood and old age with this kind of energy. My mother-in-law, for example, had more energy at age 70, even though she was struggling with cancer, than my entire young family put together. Still, even she paced herself: she always took a power nap in the afternoon, and enjoyed her down time as much as her “on” time.

Most of us don’t have that kind of energy, though, especially if we are suffering from some kind of illness or chronic pain, or if we are recovering from physical or emotional trauma. For those of us who fall into this category, the notion of pacing can be a hard but important lesson to learn. Ironically, the lesson can be even more difficult when we’re feeling good: on days that I wake up feeling great and full of energy, I have to monitor myself more than ever. My instinct on good days is to take advantage of my energy level and get things done. But I always end up paying for this later in the day when I find myself exhausted or in pain. I literally have to treat myself like a child, and say to myself, “OK, I know you feel you can continue to work, but why not sit for half an hour before you start the next activity?” Or, “You can work in the garden, but only for 5 minutes today. If that works out well, tomorrow you can try 8 minutes.” Usually I don’t want to listen to my “inner adult,” but now, after learning the hard way, I realize I have to. I think when you pace yourself your chances of getting stronger and building up your energy reserves for those days when you have no choice but to expend a lot of energy are much higher than they would be if you pushed yourself to the limit all the time.

Acknowledge that your resources are limited. You can build up your resources, but you can also deplete them. Balance is the key. If you don’t refill your car gas tank, it will run out of fuel and leave you stranded on the highway; if you don’t change your oil and maintain your car regularly, it will break down and be that much more expensive to repair. Humans are no different. Human maintenance includes eating well, sleeping well, exercising, resting, and replenishing by regularly doing things we enjoy. When we are well maintained we function better and last longer. If we deplete our resources we begin to break down, and if we ignore those signs of breaking down we run the risk of not being able to fix ourselves so easily. Maintenance is replaced by repair, which can be costly financially, time-wise, emotionally, physically, and so on.

I’ll end with a couple of examples of how I’ve adapted my daily life to this lesson. On Mondays I get up at 6:00, leave the house before 7:00, commute to work, teach from 8-11, and meet with students or do other work-related activities from 11-12. By that time I’m usually quite tired. If I need to stay at work for some reason I do, and if I don’t, I’m usually gone by 12:30 or 1:00. When I get home I may go for a walk and/or take care of household business. Sometimes I can continue to run errands or deal with correspondence and so on until my kids get home at 3:30 and 4:00, but if I find I’m yawning a lot and having trouble thinking, I force myself to lie down and take a 20-30 minute nap, because I know that I’ll need the energy I get from my nap to deal with the evening routine of homework and my adolescent son who recently has decided to push all the limits I try to enforce, including going to bed at a reasonable hour. I can’t deal with him effectively unless I’ve replenished my energy and centered myself during the afternoon, between work and the second shift.

Last week was particularly stressful: not only was I dealing with a limit-testing adolescent, but my younger child had stomach aches that made him cry every single night before going to bed. After a few days of that, you can imagine that I started to fear the worst (it turned out to be nothing, of course). On top of all that my husband needed an emergency root canal. By Friday I was quite a disaster: stressed, panicky, anxious, and full of tension. I said to my husband, “So much for all my meditation and deep breathing, I’m totally unable to deal with this.” He responded with wisdom, “Imagine if you hadn’t been taking care of yourself; at least now you have the resources to get through these few stressful days.” So true.

Remember, your resources are limited, so you have to pace yourself, which means always balancing the demands you make on yourself (or that others make on you) with activities that replenish and restore.

The Ten Things I Learned From Fibromyalgia/Burnout (Rules for Living): Number One

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

We all have a desire for others to take care of us, and we’re often disappointed when they don’t. The way we set ourselves up for this form of disappointment often reflects a certain lack of caretaking in our past. If we weren’t well looked after as children, physically or emotionally, we may continue to harbor a deep need to be looked after well into adulthood, always subconsciously searching for something crucial that we didn’t receive as children. If we weren’t well looked after as kids, we never learned what it feels like to take care of ourselves, and we don’t really know how to do it.

Well, now is the time to learn. Ironically, the more we look after ourselves, the more the people around us will care for us. Once we acknowledge, deep down inside, that we are entitled to and deserve to take care of ourselves, to feel good, to pursue our passions, and so on, the people around us recognize that and either act accordingly or go looking for someone else to treat badly.

When I was very sick, I went to a naturopath, who prescribed various vitamins and minerals that cost a fortune. I was, and still am, somewhat skeptical, but what I noticed was that there was something healing about spending several hundred dollars on my health, and thinking about my health daily as I almost ritualistically took my various remedies. The fact that I was actively taking care of myself, more than the pills themselves I think, helped get me better.

So how do adults learn the basic skills of taking care of themselves? One step at a time. Start with the physical: Sleep. Eat well. Exercise. Keep your goals tiny: if you don’t exercise now, go for a walk around the block three times a week, or less if that’s too much. One minute of walking or moving is better than none. If your diet consists of junk food and beer, gradually introduce one healthy item per day or week or month and omit one unhealthy item. Give yourself loads of time to adjust to each change, and don’t have unrealistically high expectations. Consider this a life-long process.

Once you’re on track with the physical, proceed to the emotional. Do you actively work to achieve happiness? Do one thing per day that makes you happy. Not high, not ecstatic, just content: smile at one person. Express yourself. Take up a hobby. Meditate. Drink a cup of tea and stare out the window. Five minutes a day, or alternatively one activity per week, is all it takes. Again, the idea is that you're actively pursuing happiness. (Note: the pursuit of happiness may involve making other changes in your life that are more difficult.)

Expect to fall off the wagon often. Don’t despair. If you feel like you’re too busy to take care of yourself because you’re too busy looking after everyone around you, remember the lesson of the airplane: in an emergency you have to put your own mask on first before helping the person next to you. Work on putting yourself first, if only in small doses, so that you can take care of and improve the lives of those around you.