It’s a great adolescent question: “What do parents know?” In many cases, the young person will reply, “not much.” Why this response?
While the child believes parents know everything and wants to know all they know, in the process of detaching and differentiating from childhood, a young person during early and mid-adolescence (ages 9 – 15) can dismiss parental knowledge to diminish their adult authority and dismiss their understanding. “Since they don’t get my world, they’ve got no business trying to run my life!”
(Of course a prime reason for increased parental ignorance is young people, for freedom’s and independence sake, keeping parents more in the dark and taking more care of personal business on their own.)
And yet, when it comes to getting parental help on homework, knowing what parents know can be of use: “Mom is good at math, and dad is really interested in history.” Or: “When I feel sick, the first person I go to is my mother to figure out what’s wrong and what to do.”
What’s going on? How can the adolescent discount parental knowledge and still appreciate, even depend upon, what they know?
THE PARENTAL BRAIN TRUST
The answer is, parents are their personal Brain Trust, and even in adolescence, most young people are aware of this. What varies is how much they choose to avail themselves of the resource – whether by listening to what is said or asking for what they need to know.
From many more years of life experience, and from knowing the young person since birth, parents have a wealth of knowledge to offer through remembering, informing, instructing, advising, preparing, predicting, problem solving, helping, coaching, personal sharing, and the like.
I loved the broadcasting metaphor one dad used to explain the parental brain trust. “Think of us 24-hour a day, home radio, K-Parents 101.” According to him, the function of this parent station was to constantly send his children thoughts about their life – about what’s going well, about what might need some attending to, with lots of good information to think about as they made their way. “Of course, you can tune us out; but you can’t turn us off,” he’d say. For him, part of the parenting job was to constantly broadcast feedback and ideas for his children to consider. “And it’s call-in radio, remember that.” They could always call in with questions any time they liked, all questions taken seriously, with no questions answered by asking back “Just why are you asking that?”
Finally, he was careful to add that none of the programming was to make choices for them, only to help inform the choices they made. “We aren’t in the business of controlling your thinking. We just want to add our thoughts, like another head on your shoulders for you to use or not use as you see fit.”
Of course, for the adolescent to want to use the parental brain trust, the adult response offered needs to be safe – given free of criticism, worry, frustration, impatience, anger, disappointment, or despair, because tapping this resource comes with risks. For the young person, requesting information can be taken as statements of ignorance, asking for help can signify lack of capacity, and disclosing problems creates vulnerability.
So, what kinds of valued knowledge does the parental brain trust have to offer? Consider six.
HISTORICAL MEMORY
Having known the young person longer than anyone else, parents have this growth record in mind. “I know you feel that this high school breakup is too painful to survive, but we remember how you struggled and recovered when your neighborhood best friend from early childhood moved away in 5th grade. You had what it took to deal with hard loss back then, and we believe you have what it takes to deal with hard loss now. Let’s talk about how.”
SIMILARITY CONNECTIONS
Different parents have different similarity connections with different children, and those connections can be mined to useful effect. “I’m not saying you are me, but I believe we are alike me in this. Like me, you love being very busy and there is a great deal you enjoy getting involved in. This is why you do so much in high school, sometimes wearing yourself out in the process. So, just to share, let me tell you how I’ve come to deal with my temptation to take on too much. Over the years I’ve learned to hard prioritize and strategize for efficiency. Here is some of what I do to keep myself in check and on track.”
WORLDLY INFORMATION
Because parents have so many more years of experience, they have seen more of life than their adolescent, some of which can be helpful for the growing young person to know, particularly what they have been told by peers that may not be so. “I’m not saying what you’ve heard from friends about substance use is all wrong, only that it may not be entirely right. So you’ve heard that you can’t get drunk on beer; but I believe like drinking any alcoholic beverage you can get intoxicated if you consume enough. You’ve heard that as long as you only sniff a substance, it can’t hurt you; but I believe those fumes can go right into you blood stream and do your brain some harm. You’ve heard that no one can get addicted to marijuana, but regular use can be habit forming which is like addiction in that it can be very hard to stop.”
SELF-MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
All parents have had to deal with reverses and adversities in life and from that experience have derived ways of managing themselves that can be helpful for their adolescent to know. “I know you’re upset because of the mistake you made. All I can tell you is that dealing with my mistakes has always been a challenge for me. My problem: it’s easy to get down on myself and beat up on myself for what I should have known better not to do. So after I’ve paid the price of my mistakes and learned what not to do again, I don't punish myself afterwards because that just makes things worse and makes moving on harder to do. From my experience, after you’ve learned from the consequences, it’s best to forgive yourself, let the bad decision go, start afresh, and carry on.”
CAUTIONARY TALES
It can be valuable for parents to share some of the errors of their ways growing up so that, through this vicarious learning, their adolescent is spared committing the same unhappy experience. “Seeing you go off to college makes me mindful of one unhappy episode freshman year I hope you can avoid. It took me a lot of help to come to terms with what I did that was my responsibility and what happened to me that was not my fault. I’d never been to a college party before. Because I was nervous I drank too much too fast, and before I knew it I couldn’t think clearly about what was being done to me until too late. The one thing I can tell you about college drinking is that while it may help you feel more socially secure in the moment, it can definitely make you more socially unsafe at the time.”
PROBLEM SOLVING
It’s in the last stage of adolescence, what I call Trial Independence (ages 18 – 23), that having the parental brain trust comfortably accessible is most important because young people are away from home with more life management responsibility than ever before. At this time, most of them do not find their independent footing right away, but make all manner of miscalculations, causing significant life problems to ensue. Feeling overwhelmed, having access to the parental brain trust only a phone call away, the young person can describe the trouble they have chosen their way into and can get seasoned counsel about how they might choose their way out. “I accepted a multi-year health club membership without really reading it, that I now realize I can’t afford. What can I do?” There are so many ways a last stage adolescent can get in over their head, get behind in their obligations, get tempted by freedom loving peers, get crossways with adult requirements and laws, and get lost in all the demands that come with functional independence. At a time when they expect and are expected to be more self-reliant and less dependent on parents, they often need parental thinking more than ever.
Although parents are doing more letting go as the adolescent detaches and does more letting go of them, when growing up draws to a close and brings active daily parenting to an end, they are not abandoning the relationship or cutting off communication to the young person. Rather, they are affirming that the parental brain trust will always be available for the asking.
For more about parenting adolescents, see my book, SURVIVING YOUR CHILD’S ADOLESCENCE, (Wiley, 2013.) Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week’s entry: Adolescence and the Changing Reputation of Parents
