Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

Effective punshment for the adolescent.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:48:05 +0000

(Punishment, Part three.)
When it comes to punishing their adolescent, the number one choice of parents seems to be DEPRIVATION - temporarily removing something of value in the young person's life in consequence of him or her committing some serious misdeed.

The "game of take away", as one teenager called it, is played by parents when their teenager doesn't play by basic family rules. Resources that seem to be most commonly denied in this electronic age are cell phones, messaging devices, and the computer.

Without the means of communication, the young person is handicapped in his contact with peers at a time when being in constant touch with them feels all-important.

Of course, the most common deprivation that parents use to punish major infractions is the loss of social freedom -- grounding. For most adolescents, freedom is the breath of life, so denying it can really hurt. Social circulation is cut off while the social interaction of friends keeps going on.

On the plus side for parents, their power of permission is amplified by their power to restrict. On the downside, however, they lose some freedom as well because now the jailers are forced to keep uneasy company with the unhappy person being jailed.

Because deprivation has considerable effect, parents need to use it judiciously. Here are four guidelines to consider.

1)Do not strip your teenager of every freedom, as parents who punish in anger can be prone to do. When you take every resource and freedom away, you have just liberated your adolescent because he or she has nothing left to lose. "Now you've got nothing else to take away!"

2)Do not take away a pillar of self-esteem. For example, do not prohibit participation in some activity like sports or a special interest through which the young person nourishes their development and good feelings about them self. To do so is destructive, not just corrective. Find some valued resource or freedom to temporarily deny that is not at the expense of the teenager's growth.

3)When grounding, do not cut off all social contact for your adolescent. Your purpose is to temporarily reduce full freedom of contact with friends, but not to cut that contact off entirely. So if you are keeping her in this weekend, don't disallow cell phone and computer communication. This way, she can be out of social flow but still be in touch with what is going on.

4)Keep grounding short term - a matter of days, not a matter of weeks or months. The longer you take your young person out of social action, the more you put her at risk of losing social position, the lower her social standing among friends when she returns, the more subject to peer pressure she may be as she struggles to re-establish herself.

When some parents think of grounding they make a distinction between ‘grounding in' and ‘grounding out.' ‘Grounding in' is what I have described so far - reducing social freedom by keeping the young person at home.

‘Grounding out' I've occasionally seen employed by parents with older teenagers who are on a freedom run - refusing to abide any household curfew, determined to keep their own hours, coming and going as they please. In this case, these parents have said something like this.

"We are keeping a home not a prison. If you choose to, even though it is against house rules, you are free leave whenever you want and stay out as late as you want. This is ultimately up to you. But when you return, that is up to us.

"The next time you break curfew, the house will be locked, you will be locked out, and you will have to make your own social arrangements about where to stay with whomever you are running with. You will not be allowed to return for 24 hours.

"Anything you have need of during that time that is at home you will have to do without. After that period, should you want to take up residence here again, you can give us a call.

"Later, at our convenience, we will meet with you at a place away from home to discuss the terms of your return. One of those terms is keeping curfew. Should you and we agree for you to come home and then you choose to break curfew as before, then you will be grounded out again, this time for 48 hours."

I haven't seen this kind of grounding invoked very often, but in some stubborn situations it seemed to be effective. Apparently, for an older adolescent who still wants to live at home, when following curfew becomes a residency requirement, it can catch the young person's attention.

Deprivation has a major drawback as a corrective. It is passive punishment because all that parents are asking the young person to do is do nothing or to do without. It makes no demands on the young person's energy or time.

This is why, a more effective punishment than deprivation is REPARATION. Reparation is active punishment because it prescribes tasks to be done to work off the offense.

Thus the parent says something like this. "In consequence of what you did, there's going to be some additional work to do around our home (or service to provide in the community) that will need to be completed before I set you free to do anything else you want to do. And that work must be performed to my satisfaction."

Not only do parents or the community get some benefit from the young person's sentence; while engaged in this labor, the teenager keeps in mind the rule violation he or she is working off.

Some parents even keep a list of household projects that need doing around the place tacked on the refrigerator in anticipation of the next infraction. "For starters, see these windows? Well they all need washing. Inside and out."

When a young person's serious rule breaking causes hurt or injury to another party, reparation takes on the added dimension of RESTITUTION.

Restitution involves meeting with the victim (if the victim is willing); getting to hear from the victim about all the material, physical, and emotional damage that was done; and then working out some actual amends to the person to compensate for the hurt.

Deprivation and reparation can both be effective punishments, with this proviso. After the terms of punishment have been duly accomplished, then parents need to consider the violation paid for "in full," which means they do not refer to it again. A parent who holds onto to past violations, who will not let them go, "keeping books against me" as one teenager called it, builds up a history of complaints that no young person can ever overcome.

"My parents remember everything bad I've ever done. And the next time I get in trouble, which sooner or later is bound to happen, they bring it all up against me. Nothing I do wrong is ever over with. It's just added to the list of all the wrong I've done."

I believe the best approach to correction, and punishment is the extreme corrective response, is a non-judgmental one. It recognizes that correction is criticism enough. The teenager already knows that parents are sufficiently concerned and displeased to take serious issue with his behavior, so they shouldn't couple correction with attacks on the young person's capacity or character. Better to simply disagree with the choice he or she has made.

Thus, rather than talk about "what a stupid and irresponsible thing that was for you to do," they make a non-evaluative corrective response instead. The punishment message they give is specific, explanatory, and compensatory. "We disagree with the choice you made. This is why. And, in consequence, this is what we need to have happen now."

For more about punishment, see the chapter on "Authority" in my book about parent/adolescent conflict, "Stop The Screaming." www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: Adolescence, wandering attention, and delayed maturity.

How NOT to punish your adolescent.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:19:26 +0000

(Punishment, Part two.)
When it comes to punishing their adolescent, most parents understand that even if they resorted to spanking (or other acts of physical hurt) when he or she was a child, now with a teenager this corrective response does more harm than good, as it may have done back then.

From what I have heard in counseling with young people, physical punishment creates enormous humiliation and anger in the teenager and deeply alienates the relationship.

Physical punishment which teenagers accepted as children, even though they didn't like it, they object to as adolescents because they feel they should have outgrown that kind of parental discipline by now. Not only does it seem inappropriate; it feels demeaning.

At worst, in those cases where the young person decides not to take it, stands up and physically fights back, it risks power struggles in which one or both parties can get seriously hurt.

Besides all this, spanking causes the adolescent to lose respect for parental authority as it teaches a formative lesson. If you are bigger or stronger or adult, are angry or want to get your way or need to be in control, using physical force to inflict pain is okay.

Spanking teaches hitting. And the lesson can stick. Used to getting hit at home by a parent can encourage more use of hitting with siblings or peers. How one was treated as a child can also influence how that grown child treats children of his or her own later on. And this aggressive inclination can even activate physical mistreatment when in dispute with a romantic or marriage partner.

As for the parent with teenagers who fear crossing him lest more physical reprisal comes their way, he may think that they respect his authority, but he is wrong. In reality he has become a bully in their eyes, an object of their resentment and contempt. Unhappily, his future relationship with his adult children is marked for evermore. Even if the treatment is forgiven, it is not forgotten.

One mistake that parents commonly make is punishing at the point of infraction. This is a mistake because they are often emotionally upset and so commit two errors. First, they express so much upset or outrage, for example, that the teenager entirely misses the point about why she is being punished.

So when I ask her in counseling why she is being kept home, her immediate response is, "because my parents are upset again!" When emotion becomes the message, the reason for punishment can slip away. (In fact. one more time she had left the back door open and the dog had escaped, perhaps to bite another stranger.)

Second, they are at risk of over punishing: "You're grounded every weekend for the next year for what you've done!" Then when they cool down, they reduce the sentence: "Well, stay in next weekend and do some work around the place." Now the teenager learns that parents don't always mean what they say, at least not what they say at first. Take time for rational consideration before deciding on a consequence, that's the rule.

In fact, delay of punishment is one of the most effective punishments of all because for an impulsive teenager, wanting to get on with her life, uncertainty about what parents will decide to do can feel excruciating. "Tell me now!" she impatiently demands. She hates not knowing. She hates having to wait to find out. She hates having to put her life on hold. Replies the parent: "We'll tell you what you're going to do when we have taken time to think about it. You'll have to wait and see."

Punishment needs to be free of parental anger. Otherwise parents can be emotionally encouraged to use punishment to get back at or to get even with the young person, hurting him or her to retaliate for being crossed.

At worst, coupled with punishment, anger can impel parents to release frustration through harsh words or extreme actions the parent may have later cause to regret, and the young person long remembers. "When I got caught, my dad made sure I'd never forget how angry he was. And I never have."

If they are going to penalize bad behavior, and punishment is the most extreme penalty they can impose, parents must also be sure to recognize and reward the incidence of good. Otherwise, the teenager may be left with the impression one young man shared: "My parents think all I'm good at is messing up. I guess they're right." Then accepting their discouraging verdict, he continued his errant ways.

In this case, it would have helped if parents had not fixated on the misconduct, but had acknowledged his record and capacity for good behavior as well. After all, a young person, no matter the difficulties he is creating, is far greater than the sum of his misdeeds, and parents must communicate their vision of this larger definition particularly when they are in punishment mode.

"Bad choices like this are not the only ones you make; good choices are most of what you do." They need to acknowledge his history of positive performance and his positive potentialities so, seeing them in him self, he can feel encouraged choose a more constructive way.

For more about punishment, see the chapter on "Authority" in my book about parent/adolescent conflict, "Stop The Screaming." www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: Effective punishment for the adolescent.(Punishment, Part three.)

Why violence?

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:03:54 +0000

We bloggers for Psychology Today were asked to write a something in the wake of the Ft. Hood shootings, perhaps in hopes our individual offerings might add a small piece to the puzzle of understanding the profound complexity of social violence. I can't answer the riddle about concerted social violence like war ("when is it rght to do wrong and when is it wrong to do right?") but thinking about individual acts of violence, here is what came to my mind.

I believe that most human violence is committed with a purpose in mind, for example:
To get what is wanted,
To make a statement,
To make a change,
To cause suffering,
To end suffering,
Or some combination of the above.

At the time, in the moment, violence makes emotional sense to the perpetrator because it feels "right." It also feels "free" because social restraints are suspended. And it feels satisfying to let angry impulse rule, anger the most common justification for violence. Why is that?

Anger is an emotion, and like all emotions it functions as part of an early awareness system that alerts and directs a person's attention to something significant going on in his or her felt world of experience. Emotion also mobilizes the person's energy to respond to whatever is going on.

Each emotion arises in response to a different kind of human experience. For example, fear warns of actual or imagined danger. Grief signifies that there has been some significant loss. Frustration shows that some want is being denied or some purpose is being blocked. And anger identifies some violation of one's wellbeing.

The awareness of anger is usually identified by such thoughts as, "this is wrong," "this isn't what I like or want," "this isn't fair," "this shouldn't be going on," "This must be stopped." So the function of anger is to patrol a person's wellbeing, identify possible violations, and energize some expressive, protective, corrective, or aggressive action in response.

Although emotions can be very good informants, they tend to be very bad advisors when people let feelings do their thinking for them. Feelings can prompt poor decisions that only make a hard situation worse. For example, fear can advise running away, which can intensify anxiety. Grief can advise preoccupying with loss, which can bring on depression. Frustration can advise forcing the issue, which can cause an overreaction. And anger can advise revenge, attacking back which can generate more violation and retaliation in the process. Or in a moment of rage the person can commit savage violence. Mental sets stir emotional responses that can have physical consequences.

Individuals who commit violence are often anger prone. That is, they have certain mental characteristics that encourage resort to anger.

They have a high need for control and get angry when control is lost or when using anger to get control.

They are highly judgmental, feeling easily offended when others don't meet their standards or don't do things their way.

They take personally what is not personally meant, assuming accidental slights or offenses were deliberate when that was not the case.

They are unforgetting and unforgiving of past injuries, storing grievances as resentments that can intensify current anger.

Mental sets are chosen, not genetic, and with help and practice they can be modified. In counseling and therapy people can learn to step back from the precipice of angry violence by revising their mental sets. For example they can practice being less controlling, being less judgmental, being less ready to take affronts and irritations personally, and being more willing to let old injuries and grievances go.

The silent partner in much social violence is isolation that condemns a troubled person to the solitary confinement of their own thinking, without recourse to the opinions and understanding of others that might keep distorted perspectives and desperate intentions in check.

To outsiders, acts of social violence seem inexplicable because we cannot get inside the perpetrator's head to understand the "sense" these horrific actions make to him or her at the angry time. We can only relate to the victims because it is with them we readily identify, and with the families grieving sudden loss.

May we hold them all in our hearts in their time of need.

The best help I have to offer is a book about nonviolent approaches to managing family conflict, "Stop the Screaming." Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: How NOT to punish the adolescent..

Punishment and the adolescent.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:47:32 +0000

(Punishment, Part One)

Punishing their adolescent is one of the more unrewarding parts of parenting. Not only does it add negativity to a temporarily strained relationship; it can provoke the adolescent to punish parents in return.

This payback is commonly done by acting mad, by complaining about mistreatment, or by refusing to talk to them for some period of time. This is kind of a "You showed me"/ "I'll show you" exchange of disfavor. Come adolescence, punishment is no fun for anyone.

A thankless part of parental discipline, punishment is NOT for minor infractions like leaving the refrigerator door open again or not turning out the lights. It is not for continuing aggravations like playing music too loudly or not picking up or cleaning up after themselves. It is not for resisting responsibilities like ‘forgetting homework' or delaying chores. These are supervisory matters. (See 9/16 blog on "Nagging".)

As an unwise use of punishment,think of the parents who ground their teenager for once again leaving dirty dishes strewn around the home because they are fed up with this ongoing aggravation and are tired of keeping after him about it. This restriction will show him that they mean business! But what are they to do next week when he takes the family car out for an unlicensed joy ride late at night? They have just wasted the power of punishment on his leaving dirty dishes in the sink.

The purpose of punishment is to discourage major rule violations by applying a consequence that is sufficiently impactful to discourage the young person from repeating that particular misbehavior.

The magnitude of the offenses that punishment is meant to address are such serious transgressions as sneaking out after hours for a night of adventure on the town, lying about where one really was, stealing from a family member, and the like. These are all infractions that either risk or actually commit harm.

Of course, punishment is not the primary or only way to deal with serious violations. First, try to use communication to hear out, talk out, and work out an agreement with the teenager so that any damages are dealt with and a lesson has been learned. Assuming there is no likelihood the violation will be repeated, then communication is enough and there is no need for the additional deterrence that punishment can provide.

The power of punishment to reform is vastly overrated. It often fails to motivate positive behavior because it only enforces what not to do, but it doesn't prescribe and instruct and encourage what to do differently instead. A punitive consequence has far less corrective power than thorough communication.

Reflecting back, a grandmother who had effectively raised four children of her own once testified to the power of pure talk. "When any one of them stepped out of line they all knew what was coming: a good old fashioned talking to, only they called it a lecture, and there was nothing they hated worse. For however long it took, and it could take a while, I'd get me a cup of coffee and we'd sit down to talk the trouble out until I was satisfied we both fully understood what happened, why it happened, and how it wasn't going to ever happen again. And it never did."

It's when communication fails to correct that punishment is called into play. Now, to get their message of across, parents use punitive actions because persuasive words have not conveyed - the violation continuing no matter what they say. At this point punishment is employed to make a corrective point by catching the young person's attention, causing her to rethink her actions, and hopefully to encourage her back into compliance.

Sometimes the natural consequences of the violation provide sufficient deterrence. Thus when the 12-year-old, against home rules, plays with fire that starts getting out of hand, the young person burning himself in the process of frantically patting it out, he may be cured of doing it again. In this case, just talking with him about the scary experience and ministering to the hurt may be all parents have to do. The violation itself has proved punishing enough.

In the same way, parents don't have to double punish for what has already been punished by outside authorities. If a school violation has occurred, with several days of in-school suspension ordered to pay for the infraction, then parents simply have to help their son or daughter connect the misbehavior with the consequence. "It sounds like school is really serious about not permitting that kind of behavior. So now you know."

Since outside authorities are willing to play the heavy, parents have the luxury of empathizing with their adolescent ("School must feel lonely when you're unable to see your friends"), while silently supporting the consequence that was justly given.

For more about punishment, see the chapter on "Authority" in my book about parent/adolescent conflict, "Stop The Screaming."
www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry -- Why violence?.

Criticizing your adolescent.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:08:56 +0000

It's tempting for parents to criticize their adolescent.

After all, normal developmental changes make the young person harder for them to live with as he or she breaks the boundaries of childhood to create more freedom to grow. Consider the three engines for independence that drive adolescent growth (separation, opposition, and differentiation) and the aggravation for parents that these changes can cause.

In service of SEPARATION the adolescent pulls away from nuclear family to form a new family of friends. Now the young person becomes less communicative to create more privacy about this separate social world. Now he or she wants less involvement with family and more in the company of friends. So parents criticize: "You never talk to us and you never want to spend any time with us!"

In service of OPPOSITION the adolescent pushes against the rules and restraints of parental authority to assert more power of self-determination. Now the young person tests limits to see what can be gotten away with. Now he or she may even decide that the punishment for taking unauthorized freedom is worth the crime. So parents criticize: "You ignore what we want and argue with everything we say!"

In service of DIFFERENTIATION the adolescent starts experimenting with new interests, images, and relationships in order to try on and off new identities. Now the young person fits less well into family. Now he or she is drawn to models and ideals of self-definition that are unfamiliar to parents, hard to understand, and often harder to accept. So parents criticize: "How can like that sort of thing and want to dress yourself that way?"

As the compliant and endearing child becomes the more resistant and more abrasive adolescent, parents miss the old communication, companionship, and closeness that has been lost. Now the adolescent suffers by comparison to the child.

In the words of one saddened parent, stricken by the loss: "Who stole my child, that's what I want to know?" At worst, from this comparison parental criticism can grow. They can resort to name-calling, using abstract descriptors to negatively characterize the adolescent.

Criticizing the adolescent's disorganized ways, parents may call the young person "messy."

Criticizing the adolescent's reluctance to do chores, parents may call the young person "lazy."

Criticizing the adolescent's forgetting about homework, parents may call the young person "irresponsible."

Criticizing the adolescent's self-preoccupation, parents may call the young person "inconsiderate."

Criticizing the adolescent's impulsiveness, parents may call the young person "thoughtless."

Criticizing the adolescent's argumentative ways, parents may call the young person "disrespectful."

Comparing the adolescent to the child, it is easy for parents to criticize unwelcome change. And it is a great mistake. Parents essentially blame the young person for growing up. Better for them to accept normal changes that come as part of the adolescent process, then hold the young person accountable for how he or she chooses to manage that change.

Do this is a non-evaluative manner. Instead of attacking character, take issue with decisions the young person has made.

"We know with so much growth going on, it is easy for you to become more disorganized, but we still need to have you keep your room cleaned up on a regular basis."

"We know that you dislike doing chores more now that you are older, but we still need to have them done."

"We know that you will want to argue with us more about freedom, but how you argue must be done in a civil way."

What most parents fail to understand is that their criticism catches the young person, particularly the early adolescent (ages 9 - 13), at an extremely vulnerable time. Why? Because she feels so insecure from having cast off the familiar role of child and not yet replaced it with an older definition that feels comfortable and right.

At a loss about how to be, the young person compares herself to popular friends and media models, and comes up lacking in the process. She accuses herself of deficiency - in appearance, social skills, in performance, for example. "I'm never going to look attractive!" "I'm no good at meeting people!" "I can't do anything well!" At this age, the young person is extremely self-critical and so extremely sensitive to criticism from others.

She definitely doesn't need more criticism from the most powerful people in her world, her parents, particularly in the form of any kind of teasing. This is the most destructive form of criticism there is. It is the kind that insecure young people now use more frequently with each other as the age of social cruelty begins. (See my next book, "Why Good Kids Act Cruel," out in January 2010.)

This is the age when young people put each other down to keep themselves up, when they cause others to feel worse to feel better about them selves, when virtually no one feels like they can afford to give compliments to anyone else for fear of empowering the competition. Developmental insecurity from early adolescent change can make potential enemies of them all as everyone becomes more self-critical and acts more critical of others.

Of course, when parents do criticize the adolescent, she takes pride in not letting the injury show, expressing that standard statement of bravado, "I don't care what you think!" This is a lie.

Pretending she doesn't care, she actually takes their criticism very personally, using their perception as a trusted mirror to reflect of how she is becoming. Now she gets more down on herself in response. "I don't care" really means, "I care too much to let my caring directly show."

Indirectly, however, she will let them know. Nothing that I have seen fuels adolescent rebellion like unrelenting parental criticism. So she takes the hurt received, turns it into resentment, and uses resentment to become more resistant to the powers that be.

At which point an angry parent compounds the problem by saying: "And I'm going to keep criticizing you until your attitude improves!" Not likely. As for parents who yell (criticizing at the top of their voice) "What's the matter with you!" that doesn't usually clear the matter up. It just makes matters worse.

When parental criticism rules, caring and cooperation from the adolescent is diminished. Criticism is nothing but negative, and for the adolescent it just reduces positive value of the relationship. Why comply with a parent when feeling bad is all you get for your efforts, when there's nothing good to work for?

To recover this relationship, parents must replace criticism of the young person with expressions of concern, affirmation of constructive behavior, and a willingness to talk about whatever is going on.

So my advice: don't criticize your adolescent. Not only will it hurt the young person more than she will ever let you know; it is counterproductive. Misguided parents think that criticism will correct adolescent misbehavior, when in fact the opposite is usually true.

For more information about adolescence, see my book. "The Connected Father," at: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry -- Punishing your adolescent: Part one of three.

Adolescence and the limits of parental responsibility.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:14:09 +0000

Some parents subscribe to the input/output theory of parental influence and responsibility. Put in "good" parenting and a healthy, successful child and adolescent will result.

Effort equals outcome, they believe, because quality of parenting makes most or all of the difference in how a young person "turns out." This is not exactly the case.

For openers, consider some "partly" facts of parenting during one's son or daughter's adolescence.
1)Adolescents lead double lives, growing up partly within and partly outside of parental rules and limits.
2)Adolescents are selective informants, telling a parent partly, but not entirely, about everything that is going on in their lives.
3)Adolescents are partly honest, not telling parents the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all of the time.

What these "facts" mean is that a parent of adolescents never plays with a full deck of cards. The dealer sees to that. And the best hand an adolescent deals a parent contains some good information, some missing information, and some false information. The result is, no parents know it all. And since they don't, they can't bear full responsibility.

Parents who assume responsibility for everything that happens to their child become bound by a false equation: parents = child. This linkage ties adequacy of parenting to performance of the child, how well or badly a son or daughter does becoming a measure of the parenting received. Bound by this belief, when the child makes a bad choice, parents must fault themselves, asking: "What have we done wrong?" Now they blame themselves for their adolescent's bad choices.

At worst, they even ask the teenager "what did we do wrong?" only inviting the young person to escape responsibility by blaming them. "If you hadn't have divorced, I never would have gotten messed up with drugs this way." No, the young person must be held accountable for her choices. Unlike younger children who often idolize their parents, unrelentingly critical adolescents can be hard on parental guilt and self-esteem.

Better for parents to break this equation and maintain a realistic perspective instead. To that end, here is a mantra worth repeating. "Good parents have good children who will sometimes make bad choices in the normal trial and error process of growing up. A bad choice does not make a bad child any more than a badly acting child makes a bad parent. Nor does a bad choice now guarantee a bad future for the child later on."

In counseling with parents who feel bound by the parent = child equation my first job, before I can even get to helping with the child problem of concern, is to first dispel them of these beliefs in "bad child" and "bad parents" and "bad future." Vilifying the child or guilting themselves or dooming the future does none of them any good.

A bad adolescent choice just means that a mistake or a misdeed has occurred, and that now parents have to help the young person learn from the error of his or her way. After all, some of the most important education in life for parents as well as teenagers is not before the fact in preparation, but after the fact in recovery, when facing hard consequences from an ill-advised choice become the best teacher.

The power of parental influence comes down to this. There is the example parents model (who and how they are). There is the instruction parents provide (what knowledge, skills, and values they impart.) There is the family structure they set (how parental rules, limits, and demands prescribe conduct at home and out in the world.) And there is the treatment parents give (how they choose to act and react with their child.)

Certainly parenting matters - the time and energy and loving dedication invested in one's mothering or fathering task. However, many other sources of influence also shape the course of a child's growth. Consider just a few of the more influential factors over which parents have no control.

Parents don't control the larger CULTURE and the onslaught of media messages that it sends - the experiences it glamorizes, the ideals it presents, and the motivations it encourages.

Parents don't control the child's inborn CHARACTERISTICS -- the temperament, personality, and aptitudes that genetic inheritance endows.

Parents don't control the CHOICES the child makes -- they can inform those choices, but final decisions are up to him or her.

Parents don't control the CIRCUMSTANCES to which a child is exposed away from home - the unfamiliar and challenging situations he or she gets into out in the world.

Parents don't control the child's COMPANIONS and the pressures they can bring to bear - inviting opportunities for risk taking, for experimenting with adventure and the forbidden.

And parents don't control CHANCE events - how luck can favor, spare, or victimize a young person's life.

Within the large array of significant influences affecting a child's growth, parenting is only one, and keeping that perspective is particularly important when traveling through the normal ups and downs of their son or daughter's adolescence.

Parents need to limit their sense of responsibility. They can never know enough. They cannot fully protect any more than they can fully prepare. They cannot do it all and they cannot always do it right. Just like their teenager, they will make mistakes.

Even giving a full faith effort, a mixed job is the best they can make of it, and a mix is mostly good enough. That's parenting. And from it a child has to grow - partly because of and partly in spite of what parents were able to provide. Partly, that's they key, because parents don't control that much to begin with.

So for those parents who tend to judge themselves harshly, it can be helpful to remember that not everything that happens in their adolescent's life, for good or ill, is to their credit or to their blame.

For more information about adolescence, see my book. "The Connected Father," at: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: Criticizing your adolescent.

Arrested development -- when adolescents run from responsibility.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:02:44 +0000

Engage with life or escape from life, that is the adolescent question?

Should the adolescent face another challenge in the long trial and error process called growing up, or avoid the encounter and seek temporary relief?

Work or procrastinate, attend or space out, admit or lie, show up or skip, get to work or get high, respond to daily reality or retreat into electronic entertainment, these are just some of the ‘engage or escape' choices adolescents have.

For the teenager who is mostly concerned with pleasure or comfort now, escape from challenge feels like a good short-term strategy; but when it comes to growing up this proves to be a bad long-term solution. Growing up was never made to be easy or to be without duress. No matter how much fun you have along the way, the challenges are always hard.

And hardest of all is this: only by engaging with these challenges, not running from them, can growing up occur. Escape engagement and an opportunity for growth is lost as development toward maturity is delayed, sometimes even arrested.

Why arrested? Because with each attempt at engagement, successful or not, comes a new measure of responsibility. And increments of responsibility are the building blocks of growing up. Escape is the enemy of responsibility.

Consider an extreme case of arrested development in a young person whose chronological age is eighteen, but whose operating age, based on his or her lack of responsibility and consequent immaturity, is maybe thirteen or fourteen. What forms does this persistent escape take?

When it comes to COMMITMENT, he keeps breaking promises to himself and others. By repeatedly not keeping his word, he has lost some faith in his capacity to be reliable and in his being self-reliant.

When it comes to COMPLETION, she rarely finishes what she begins. By starting much and getting little accomplished, she has lost some confidence in her capacity to follow through and meet personal goals.

When it comes to CONSISTENCY, he doesn't maintain continuity of constructive effort. By repeatedly being unable to keep up a healthy regimen, he has lost some capacity for self-discipline and self-care.

When it comes to CONFRONTATION, she avoids and puts off dealing with painful situations. By repeatedly choosing not to deal with emotional discomfort, she has lost some capacity to work through personal hardship.

When it comes to COURAGE, he hides from telling the truth by taking refuge in dishonesty. By repeatedly choosing to lie about what is really happening, he has lost some capacity for dealing forthrightly with reality.

When it comes to CONTROL, she lets impulse rule judgment. By repeatedly giving into the lure of immediate gratification, she has lost some capacity to resist temptation for the greater good.

When it comes to CONSEQUENCES, he disowns the results of his actions. By repeatedly denying the connection between bad choices and bad consequences, he has lost some capacity for personal accountability.

When it comes to CLOSURE, she decides by default (making no decision) when deciding gets hard. By repeatedly letting circumstance dictate difficult decisions, she has lost some capacity for mental toughness.

When it comes to COMMUNICATION, he shuts up about or acts out painful feelings. By repeatedly refusing to honor and speak about hard feelings directly, he has lost some capacity for open and honest emotional expression.

When it comes to CARING, she gives up what truly matters to herself. By repeatedly betraying what has had and still has core value for her, she has lost some capacity to maintain her sense of personal integrity.

So what can parents say to keep encouraging their adolescent to directly engage with the demands and challenges of life? They can offer some simple advice that, if consistently followed, can strengthen the young person's growth of responsibility.

1."Keep your promises and agreements."
2."Finish what you begin."
3."Maintain what's good for you."
4."Meet your problems head on."
5."Tell the truth about what is really going on."
6."Use good judgment to resist bad temptation."
7."Own bad decisions so you can learn from your mistakes."
8."Learn to choose between hard choices."
9."Admit hard feelings and talk them out."
10."Don't betray what you truly believe in or you will betray yourself."

During adolescence, engagement with the challenges of growing up is always in competition with the temptation to escape. In my novel about the adventures of adolescence, "The Helper's Apprentice," police Officer LaSalle explains this to the young boy who has been trying to escape his troubles.

"Running off or running from is all the same. Just running. Further you go never's far enough ‘cause there ain't no away. Whatever's chasing you keeps catching up. No...Running won't keep you from getting caught, not when it's you you're running from. I've seen a lot of runners and I know. Fastest man ain't been made that can outrun his self."

For more information about my novel that describes many trials of growing up, see: www.amazon.com/books and search for "The Helper's Apprentice."

For further information, see: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: Adolescence and the limits of parental responsibility

Parental pride and adolescence.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:49:38 +0000

Most parents want to be proud of their children, and most children want to make their parents proud. In fact, to a young child, parents saying, "I'm so proud of you" can be the most powerful praise of all.

Not only are the parents feeling pleased about you, they are feeling pleased about themselves based on how well you have performed. They like to bask in the reflected glory of your accomplishment by thinking that they had something to do with your achievement. Or as one parent proudly put it, "This just shows that we did something right!"

Parents can feel proud when a child has made them look good in the eyes of the world that conclude a well performing child must have well performing parents. This is why saying "I'm proud of you" can be like congratulating yourself - complimenting the child for reflecting well on you. Pride in you = pride in me. Now parental pressure on the child can build: "I have to do well for my parents so they can feel good about themselves."

Come adolescence, I have found in counseling that expressing parental pride this way can become even more complex. Early in adolescence it can connote obeying and complying with parents, something the rebellious young person may not want to do. And later in adolescence it can connote growing up to follow the example and fit the agenda of parents, which the independent-minded young person may not want to do.

So the 13-year-old, to make it clear that she no longer wants to be defined and treated as a child, acts differently and older by passively and actively opposing more of what her parents ask. It's like the young person is resolved not to do what parents want, not to please her parents, and not to act like the good child she used to be. For her to accept the "I'm proud of you" statement as praise would be admitting that she was doing what parents wanted, was acting to please them, and was trying to make them look good, just as she did when she used to be a child. No way!

Or the 17-year-old, to make it clear that he is going to lead his adult life his own way and not follow the way of his parents, in high school starts planning out an individually different path. It's like the young person is resolved not to allow what parents approve of or want to dictate what he chooses to do with his adult life. For him to accept the "I'm proud of you" statement as praise would be admitting that he is living out their agenda, wants his future life to meet their expectations, and is content to follow their example. Give up his independence? No way!

So does this mean parents should not praise their adolescent? No. It means they must find a way to praise the young person that does not include the statement "I'm proud of you." The simplest alternative I have found, and the one most teenagers seem to readily accept, is very simple: "Good for you!" This puts all the choice on the teenager and removes parents from appropriating or sharing credit for the young person's performance.

Of course, parents need to beware expressing a loss of pride in the teenager, that loss most commonly expressed by the statement: "We are really disappointed in you!" There are few criticisms as devastating as this.

Almost always I have seen young people interpret this statement as meaning, "You have lost loving standing in our eyes." No adolescent wants to let his parents down. Despite all bravado to the contrary, and even though direct statements of parental pride can be compromising, she or he always wants to shine in parental eyes.

So the next time your teenager does something you approve of or admire, instead of saying "I'm proud of you," put the credit and benefit where it belongs. Say, "Good for you!" And never say, "You've disappointed me."

For more information about adolescence, see my book, "The Connected Father" at www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Arrested development - when adolescents run from responsibility.

Adolescence and the loss of childhood.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:18:29 +0000

Whenever I think about a child's entry into early adolescence (around ages 9 - 13), I am reminded of the extraordinary title of Thomas Wolf's novel, "You Can't Go Home Again."

For me, these words capture the irredeemable loss that young people must endure and the daunting challenge that they must brave as they depart from childhood and face the great unknowns of growing up.

They can never "go home" to childhood again. They can never return to that simpler, sheltered, and supportive time. Growing up requires giving up because necessary losses must occur if necessary gains are to be made.

Now early adolescent apathy causes the separation from childhood to begin as young people start caring less about what used to matter most. Now they are set adrift in a sea of disaffection.

-- They care less about what they loved to do as children.

-- They care less about spending time with parents.

-- They care less about life in the family circle.

-- They care less about school performance.

-- They care less about social obedience.

-- They care less about pleasing parents.

They know what they care less about; but they don't yet have any good alternatives for investing their caring elsewhere.

No longer wanting to defined and treated as a child, they can throw childhood interests, activities, and enjoyments away to show how they have changed. Unhappily, this decision can leave them riding on empty. Boredom is the name for all the loss they feel: "There's nothing to do!"

As described in an earlier blog (8/2/09), boredom is really a state of loneliness. The young person is at loose ends. He or she can't find a satisfying way to connect to themselves, other people, or the world. Restless, frustrated, and discontent is how the early adolescent often feels.

Of course, the passing of childhood is not just painful for the young person; Parents have their share of loss to bear as well. They will never have their son or daughter as little child again. That golden period in their relationship that may have been so rich in closeness, communication, and companionship is passed.

The child who loved nothing better than to spend time with them, to play with them, to be proud of their company, to confide in them, and to please them has been supplanted. No more cuddling and rough housing.

Now they have a more aloof early adolescent who is more reluctant to be touched, who would rather spend time with friends, who feels too old to play with parents, who is embarrassed by their public company, who is more private and less forthcoming, and who seems to court their disapproval through deliberate resistance and opposition. In the words of one parent: "It feels like someone has stolen my child!"

As loss of the old relationship creates more distance and abrasion between them, the break with childhood is made. But now, early adolescent and parent can resort to blame to cope with pain.

Pulling away from parents to create more separation, the adolescent can blame parents for abandonment. Provoking more conflict with resistance, he or she can blame parents for becoming harder to live with. Communicating with parents less to create more privacy of operation, he or she can blame parents for becoming less understanding.

As for parents, the painful truth is that they feel lonely too. They miss the old sweet times with the child they had together, the glad company they kept and the precious history they shared. Gone is the "little buddy" who wanted to tag along everywhere with them and the "constant companion" who would tell them everything. Suddenly (it seems to parents) their little darling has been replaced by a more adversarial adolescent who doesn't act like he or she misses them the way they miss the child.

This apparent difference may even seem to them unfair. Doesn't the adolescent regret giving up the old way they used be together? Yes, but the young person is growing on with life, more inclined to looking forward to the future than to looking back at the past. The older, grown up world that beckons is filled with exciting possibilities. After all, the other side of loss is freedom - freedom from and freedom for. Now the young person anticipates more freedom from parental restraint and more freedom for new experience.

While the adolescent eagerly anticipates the new, parents can feel bereft of the old. It's hard for them to appreciate their son or daughter's growth when the cost of this progress for them is a very painful letting go.

And if they turn pain to anger, they can criticize the change. "You used to be such a great kid, what's happened to you?" Now parenting takes more effort and yields less positive return when the early adolescent starts to complain about treatment, contest limits, resist demands, and pull away for social independence.

At this transition into adolescence the young person can feel in danger of having nothing stable to hold onto, caught between the trapeze of childhood that has been let go and the trapeze of growing up not yet within his or her grasp.

Now parents must be a safety net at a time when the young person feels naturally anxious and insecure. What is needed is not only their unwavering love and openness to communication, but their willingness to impose an unpopular structure of limits and demands he or she can protest and push against, but also to depend upon, to structure safe passage through these more risky years.

If you are being accused of being "over protective" at this time, you are probably doing the job that needs to be done -- acting as a drag against all the freedom the young person is now pushing for. When you slow permitted freedom, you moderate exposure to risk. Your restraint, however, will not be appreciated. You have become an object of complaint. The age of thankless parenting has arrived.

Instead of regretting or resenting the unwelcome changes of early adolescence, those parents who find them selves mourning the passing of their son or daughter's childhood need to celebrate that loss with gratitude. It signifies that they and their adolescent were given a precious period of compatibility, closeness, and companionship during those early years.

Parents should treasure the memories that this history has left behind, and then they should move on. When their child enters adolescence, the time has come for parents to grow up too.

For more information about my book about adolescence, "The Connected Father," see www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Parental pride and adolescence.

Emotional extortion: how adolesents can manipulate parents.

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:27:06 +0000

Little children do it all the time. Powerless when refused what they want by a parent, they may signify displeasure by communicating disappointment, hurt, or outrage. What happens next is formatively important, and in most parent/child relationships this response occurs some of the time.

Faced with the child's sulking, crying, or tantrum, the parent feels regret or remorse for saying ‘no,' or simply seeks relief from the emotional intensity and so relents. "All right, just this once, you can have it (or do it), since it matters so much to you. Just stop making such a fuss!"

Now the child brightens up, and learns how there is persuasive power in the strong expression of emotion, particularly unhappiness. It can be used to get his way.

In fact, one psychologist, John Narciso (see his book "Declare Yourself," 1975) called this category of behaviors "get my way techniques." Another psychologist, Susan Forward, wrote a book about this emotional manipulation ("Emotional Blackmail," 1997.) In one of my early books, "Keys to Single Parenting" (1996) I called it "emotional extortion." In counseling, I still call it by that name.

During adolescence, when getting freedom from parents becomes increasingly important, manipulation of parental authority through lying, pretense, and pressuring becomes more common. Emotional extortion can combine all three.

Thus when pleading and argument fail to win a parent over or back a parent down, the tactics of emotional extortion can come into play. The particular emotions exploited vary according to the emotional susceptibility of the parents, but the objective is always the same - to get parents to give in or change their mind.

Remember, from closely observing these adults who have so much power over their lives, children know their parents far better than parents know their children. Children, and particularly adolescents, are expert in the "pushing the buttons" of emotional susceptibility in parents, often using this knowledge in conflict to win their ways. Consider a few of the forms emotional extortion can take.

If a parent is sensitive to approval, then the teenager will express LOVE through appreciation, affection, or pleasing to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "How can I refuse when my teenager, who is usually so hard to get along with, is now acting so nice?"

If a parent is sensitive to rejection, the teenager, loudly or quietly, will express ANGER through acting offended, injured, or wronged to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand it when my teenager acts like she doesn't like me."

If a parent is sensitive to inadequacy, the teenager will express CRITICISM through attacking the parent's character, caring, or competence to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand being judged a failure in my teenager's eyes."

If a parent is sensitive to guilt, the teenager will express SUFFERING through acting unhappy, hurt, or sad to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand feeling responsible for my teenager's unhappiness."

If a parent is sensitive to pity, the teenager will express HELPLESSNESS through acting hapless or resigned to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand feeling sorry for my teenager when she just gives up and acts victimized by whatever decision I've made."

If a parent is sensitive to abandonment, the teenager will express APATHY through acting like the relationship doesn't matter any more and doesn't care in order to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand the loneliness when my child acts like there's no caring for our relationship."

If a parent is sensitive to intimidation, the teenager may express EXPLOSIVENESS, loudly talking or acting like he's going to lose physical control and threaten harm to soften the mother or father up. This emotional extortion works when the parent feels, "I can't stand being frightened of getting hurt."

To discourage these manipulations, parents must refuse to play along with the extortion. After all, your adolesent cannot emotionally manipulate you without your permision. You must resist your own susceptibilities to rejection, guilt, intimidation and the like and refuse to let these emotional vulnerabilities influence your decisions.

Give in to these tactics, and you will feel badly about yourself, your teenager, and your relationship, and more important may reluctantly allow what you know is unwise that could cause your adolescent to come to harm. "I know I shouldn't have let her go. I didn't want to. But she was so unhappy with me for refusing, I just couldn't say ‘no.' And now look at what has happened!"

Parents must not only hold firm in the face of this emotional manipulation, they must hold the teenager to declarative account. Thus when the teenager uses intense anger or suffering to overcome a parental refusal, the parent needs to be able to say and mean: "Acting emotionally upset is not going to change my mind. However, if you want to tell me specifically about why you are feeling so upset, I certainly want to listen to what you have to say."

Declaration creates understanding, but emotional manipulation creates distrust. At worst, when feelings are expressed for extortionate effect, then the authentic value of those feelings can become corrupted.

For example, the tired parent comes home at the end of the day and the teenager, genuinely wanting to express her love through an act of consideration, has the evening meal all prepared. But the parent, having been softened up by such acts before, is unwilling to act appreciative. Instead, he responds by asking a cynical question: "What do you want this time?" That's one consequence of emotional extortion; it can discredit the value of honest feeling.

Of course, just as the adolescent first learned the power of emotional extortion in childhood, so did you. Therefore, as parents do not resort to this manipulation with your teenager.

Declare what you want or do not want to have happen in specific terms, then discuss and negotiate the disagreement. Do not use the strong expression of emotion to get your way, or you will encourage that extortion from your teenager by your own bad example.

For a fuller discussion of emotional extortion, see my book about parent/adolescent conflict, "Stop the Screaming," Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Adolescence and the loss of childhood.