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“I worried about my oldest daughter keeping her virginity while
she was in high school. Now, just ten years later, I lay awake
nights, anxious that my youngest girl will be crippled by AIDS or
become addicted to life-devouring drugs.”
Mary Ellen Fitzsimmons, Single Mother
NEW
Vital Information about
your teenager.
Scientists are now gaining new insights into remarkable changes in teenagers’
brains that may help explain why the teen years are so hard on
young people -- and on their parents.
AN AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY
All normal parents love their children and want them to live
meaningful lives among loving people with whom the youngsters find
places to belong. We teach them to be as successful as we can.
Because of their love, parents normally have no intention of
crippling their children’s physical, psychological or spiritual
growth with inadequate guidance or with harsh discipline. It is
our intention to maintain loving and purposeful relationships with
our youngsters during their formative years.
Nevertheless, because we bring our own emotional baggage with us,
because many of us had less than ideal childhoods, the road to
disaster for many children is paved with the good intentions of
inept parents. For -- the fact of the matter is -- we make but one
journey through life with each child -- and although most adults
strive diligently to succeed, we can never control all society’s
variables and we do have difficulty compensating for our own
weaknesses. Even when we do the best we can, we spend years before
learning how well we have done with our most precious assets.
Despite the best of intentions, virtually all parents I
know (I spent yesterday afternoon with a group of friends,
honoring a recent high school graduate who is leaving home to
matriculate in Carleton College), readily admit that guiding their
offspring to emotional and spiritual maturity is an awesome
responsibility. Because of a combination of social, cultural and
financial changes occurring across our civilization, the
responsibilities each parent carries have indeed become more
difficult than they were when society was less complex. One
deeply concerned mother of several daughters shook her head and
lamented;
I worried about my
oldest daughter keeping her virginity while she was in high
school. Now, just ten years later, I lay awake nights,
anxious that my youngest girl will be crippled by AIDS or
become addicted to life threatening narcotics. What on earth
is happening to our children when eighty percent of high
school girls have already engaged in high risk sexual
relations and dangerous drugs are as available as soft drinks?
At one Parent/Teacher
Organization meeting, when my oldest son’s now adult daughters
were rowdy teenagers, a middle eastern father chided the group
that Americans were having discipline problems with their
children because they are too permissive. He continued to say
that he, as an Islamic father, had no problems maintaining
control of his daughters. The group pondered this for a moment
or two and someone suggested he share his methods with the PTO
members, many of whom were indeed being challenged. When he
offered some obviously simplistic, rather primitive religious
advice from the desert sands of Arabia, one woman grew
suspicious and asked how old his always obedient daughters
were. He answered, five and seven years. He then
became angry when the group burst out in laughter at his
advice. My son, for whom the Moslem man worked, took him aside
after the meeting and kindly told him that his daughters were
going to turn him inside out when they reached puberty -- unless
he switched from a controlling to a counseling relationship.
His said the daughters were surely going to grow up yearning to
be part of their high school society and the only way he could
block their desire for acceptance would be to stamp out every
iota of their creativity -- or possibly keep them locked in the
attic for ten years! And sure enough, I live across the
street from South West High School and the oldest Moslem
daughter, now fifteen or sixteen, ran past recently with a group
of girls training for cross-country competition. She was wearing
a traditional head scarf -- but was also clad in a T shirt over
an athletic bra and a pair of short shorts. The Moslem
Religious police in Saudi Arabia, who behead girls who so much
as touch the hands of any man except for their fathers, brothers
or husbands, would have stoned her for playing the harlot had
she dressed for a sporting event in her father’s homeland. Life
goes on and every generation must find its own way rather than
simply adopting the past as eternal wisdom.
In his delightful short story
The Reivers, William Faulkner wrote about a disobedient
son’s father who is preparing to thrash him for his boyish
transgressions. Before he can get his leather razor strap, the
boy’s grandfather steps in to block the whipping and the angry
father becomes disgusted with the older man. He grumbles,
Father, when I was a boy, you had no compunction about
whipping me! The elderly grandfather sighs and admits that
his son is right, that he did whip him too often when he was
growing up. But -- he adds, As a grandfather, I’m much
smarter now than I was when your age. Most of us do learn
something important while traveling life’s journey. To
paraphrase an old Pennsylvania Dutch quip:
Too soon we get old and
too late we stop hurting our kids. Or as H. L. Mencken griped,
Our parents ruin the first half of our lives and our kids ruin the
second half.
My own children are grown now and even my grandkids have kids -- several of whom are almost
grown, which shall likely make me a great, great grandfather
before many more years past. I have participated in my own
development, that of my children and my grandchildren and now my
great grand kids. Two weeks ago my wife Roberta and my youngest
son took two of our great grandsons to a fabulous Minnesota
Twin’s baseball bash for kids, where they could
eat all the hot dogs and drink all the pop they could manage
without throwing up and come home with prizes of all kinds.
It was a hoot for everyone -- unto the second and third generation
of our clan! I have also served as a pastor for seven years,
was Director of a learning and learning disabilities center in
association with the University of Wisconsin, professor of
psychology and department chair at Westminster College, leadership
professor in the Executive Development Conference at the University
of Arizona in Tucson and a leadership consultant from London to
Singapore. I have also researched and written more than a
score of books, seminars and psychology assessment instruments, of
which this is my most recent study course.
This study course is based in part on some of the concepts that were discussed in my
books such as Nice Guys Finish First, Lovers For Life, The
Psychology of Leadership, The Pastor’s Handbook On Interpersonal
Relations, Frontiers of Fulfillment, The Liberated Soul and
others. It isn’t a rehash of any of them but draws from my
ever-increasing maturity as I continue my life-long quest for
knowledge and wisdom. Parenting is written
specifically for mothers and fathers who are committed to guiding
their children and adolescents toward emotional, spiritual and
career maturity and to life-long satisfaction. It is based on
several psychospiritual principles that include these.
We must:
DEVELOP CONSISTENTLY LOVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR CHILDREN THROUGH KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM
AND FAITH.
SHARE THE REWARDS OF
GREAT SATISFACTION AND DEEP MEANING WITH THE KIDS WE LEAD TO
SUCCESS.
CREATE A FAMILY OF
DEEPLY COMMITTED PERSONS IN WHICH
EVERY MEMBER IS A
COMMITTED STAKE HOLDER.
Those three approaches
are best implemented through two principles of psychology that are
easy to remember and to apply.
They are:
THE BASIC PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN COOPERATION
THE PRINCIPLE OF INTERPERSONAL RECIPROCITY
The basic principle our children need to absorb from our attitudes and activities
is that all men and women, boys and girls continue holding the
attitudes and doing the things reward them or appear to reward
them and stop doing the things that deprive them in some manner.
The basic principle has these three elements to it.
Good things happen to people who do good things.
Bad things don’t happen to people who do good things.
Good things don’t happen to people who don’t do good things.
This is not necessarily the way the world functions, whether at school, on the playground,
on the job, in the criminal justice system or in politics, but it
can be our promise to those precious children whom we want to
mature as courageous, successful and loving adults. Of course you
are not all powerful or totally wise and we all grow weary,
frustrated and crabby at times. But, we are not discussing the
cosmic principles of good and evil here, but learning practical
ways of improving our interactions with our children so we can
guide them toward maturity and competence. Children grow ill and
suffer and friends move away and discretionary income may be lost
-- life has its downturns -- but to the best of your abilities,
you promise to live with a sound quid-pro-quo that is put
in simple words children can understand. You must communicate
clearly and consistently follow up with this commitment --
When you do what I need from you, I shall grant what you need from me.
In addition, I shall not treat you badly when you are doing
your best to cooperate with the people among whom we belong. And
finally, I shall not make any extraordinary effort to waste
my time, money and energy rewarding people who fail to cooperate
for the good of this family unless I see some hope for the future.
The reciprocity
principle is less cerebral -- is more instinctive in nature.
The positive, neutral or negative way you treat individuals and groups, comes
from your values, attitudes and expectations that are based on
your basic trust in humanity or in your basic distrust of
society. The way you relate to others determines the way the vast
majority of persons relate to you.
In other words:
I have just given you a very powerful interpersonal mechanism for creating a
positive psychological and spiritual climate within your home, on
the job and in virtually all of your relationships
I cannot take a great deal of credit for this fact of existence --
since both Aristotle and Jesus were teaching it long before I
arrived on the scene -- but it still works wonders in complex
situations today. Management psychologists now call this
principle behavior modeling, through which we demonstrate as
well as discuss the attitudes and activities that shall be
rewarded. I realize this principle of reciprocity will have little
value if your boss’ cousin is gunning for your job or when you are
being stalked late at night by a rejected lover, but it does work in
the vast majority of cases with people who are merely annoyed or
frustrated without nursing hidden agendas. Actually, we often
teach our children in this manner -- whether we recognize it or not.
Children learn much that is both good and bad from their parents,
from their attitudes and activities, although there is often a
great gap between the concepts we express and the activities
we pursue.
When we relate to other persons, each of us goes
through a series of spoken and unspoken transactions that play a
crucial role in how we manage relationships. If we demonstrate
love and trust -- normal men and women as well as boys and girls are
draw into our attitudes and activities. On the other hand: If
we are paranoid or psychopathic and are consistently distrustful,
people feel uncomfortable around us and likely deal with us
cautiously even if they cannot avoid us entirely. If we are
closed-minded and defensive in our relationships, our children
usually learn to behave in the same manner. One very good
psychologist, whom I shall call Fred to protect the guilty,
muttered one night after we’d quaffed a few beers too many:
I’ve studied Freud, Adler and Frankl and rejected most of Skinner’s simplistic stuff
and accepted Dugal Arbuckle’s existential approach, but one
concept keeps coming to me. I believe in nurture and nature or
nature and nurture -- or perhaps both! But after forty years of
assessment and psychotherapy, I have found a consistent factor to
explain sound mental health. Healthy and happy parents rear
healthy and happy kids. And nutty and frustrated parents rear
nutty and frustrated kids.
Well -- there are
exceptions of course, but I modify that to include the sad fact
that emotionally distressed parents usually rear psychologically
inept kids, which causes them to make serious mistakes that bring
suffering to themselves and to the next generation of children.
Of course, remedying that -- breaking the chains of ignorance --
is what this course is all about. What you give to your kids is
what you consistently receive in return, although you may go
wrong by not be giving them what you thought you were offering
them. I find great wisdom in something valuable Otto Rank wrote
and I paraphrase:
I was resting on my bed, pondering why so many parents put so much pressure on their
children, wondering why they cripple them with neuroses and
psychoses and I finally reached a conclusion. They do it out of
stupidity. They have no concept of sound mental health and so they
rear children in haphazard ways that fail.
I find Otto Rank one of the greatest of all the mental health scholars, but I prefer the
phrase, They do it out of ignorance, for while stupidity is
a life-long genetic disability, ignorance may be only temporary
and can be corrected. I suppose almost every teacher, professor
and counselor agrees or why work with students who are doomed to
repeat their parents’ blunders ad infinitum.
What parents, teachers and ministers really need to do with kids is to reverse the most
common child guidance system. Rather than watching like hawks to
catch the kids doing something wrong and then punishing them for
it -- we must watch them like mother hens, to catch them doing
something right and grant them appropriate rewards for their
maturing choices. Punishment -- whether physical, emotional or
spiritual, inevitably fails to accomplish what we expect as soon
as a child becomes old enough to resist -- first during the
terrible twos when kids learn to use the magic word -- NO!
that throws many young parents into confusion. And then
later, during adolescence. The only way abuse will deter a
determined child is by escalating the severity of the punishment,
which leads to a point of diminishing returns. In the first
place, a slap alongside the head teaches the child nothing except
how displeased the adult is -- he or she learns nothing about
improving one’s behavior the next time around. And even if the
adult follows the blow with correction, the child is usually too
frightened or resentful to listen and accept the appropriate
behavior. In the second place, escalating punishment either
crushes the child’s spirit, making boys vulnerable to bullies or
girls unable to resist abusive men, or it leads to a simmering
guerilla war that poisons the home climate.
Rather than being traumatic and conflict laden, childhood and adolescence can be a
grand experience for parents and offspring alike. Life remains
satisfying in many families and have been great within many
cultures across the world, although Socrates once wrote a bitter
diatribe about the impolite and narcissistic youngsters of ancient
Greece. Perhaps some rowdy boys had tipped his outhouse over!
The American Plains Indians, such as the Cheyenne, Sioux and
Absaroka, offered a striking example of family and community
congeniality. Juvenile delinquency was unheard of -- as was
theft, divorce, child or spouse abuse or even mental illness. The
Great Plains children were pampered beyond reason, were reared in
an atmosphere of permissiveness that would have shocked Dr.
Spock. There was virtually no physical, psychological or
spiritual punishment within the families or the clans and yet,
infants were taught not to cry within a few days after birth,
because crying could reveal the band’s presence to enemies. There
was no spanking, slapping or pinching and no emotional abuse of
any kind. Nevertheless, the Plains peoples reared children who
were obedient, loving and loyal to parents and elders and generous
to their clans for their entire lives. These stone age,
pre-literate people used the Basic Principle and the Law
of Reciprocity much more successfully than we industrial
world persons ever have.
If you consistently use
the concepts and techniques I teach in this course, you can make
the most of the years you spend with your children and
teen-agers. The processes learned here can mean the difference
between consistent success and disastrous failure in an age when
life is changing so swiftly that old traditions and worn down
ideologies can no longer serve our children well. For those who
haven’t seen through my approach yet -- this program is a
synthesis of phenomenological or existential and behavioral
elements in a child-centered guidance system.
Adolescents
Warning
-- Ignoring the
Following Paragraphs May Lead To Physical, Emotional and Spiritual
Disaster for Your Peace of Mind and Your Child’s lifelong Welfare.
Professor Ian Campbell, a neuroscientist at the University of
California at Davis, is a researcher who studies the near miraculous
aspects of the most remarkable organ of human existence. This magic
box is, of course, the incredible flesh and blood information
processor we carry above our shoulders. Our brains can be thought of
as our hardware, as the personal computer that runs ceaselessly
every moment of our lives from a few months after conception until
death. In fact, few physicians will declare any person dead until
his or her brain wave activity has ceased completely. On the other
hand, the activities of the brain -- the mind -- is analogous to
software that enables most people to live their entire lives with
seldom a thought about their breathing, temperature management,
disease defense, wound healing, the digestion of food and blood
flow. But while the autonomic system functions in a predictable
manner through its chemical solutions and electronic flows, the
information processing software of the brain has an entirely
subjective element to it. Professor Campbell has written a great
deal that is valuable for parents, teachers, psychologists, pastors
or police and prosecutors who try to persuade, cajole and even
browbeat young people to grow up and behave as adults. Some
youngsters get along reasonably well but others do indeed find it
quite difficult to bring these adult qualities into interaction with
each another and their parents, teachers and pastors.
When I was a young pastor, science teacher, psychology professor,
and clinic director, a red hot debate raged whether we should speak
of the brain or about the mind, when we were trying to understand,
teach and counsel children and adolescents. In my youth, some
behaviorally oriented psychologists who were disciples of B F
Skinner spoke of the brain as if it were a machine. Some of them
reduced all of human activity to a response to stimuli -- with
clearly predictable S-R behaviors. Some radical behavioral
scientists went so far as to call the mind as much of a myth as the
church‘s primitive teaching about the human soul. This led someone
with a devastating wit to quip -- Psychology first lost its soul and
then lost its mind. Many existential psychologists and scholars
thought of the mind as a subjective but virtually independent entity
that transcends the flesh and blood brain with its chemical fluids
and electrical currents that ran the autonomic processes such as
heart beat, breathing and so on. For decades the argument raged for
years. When I was director of a dyslexic or learning and learning
disabilities clinic in Wisconsin, I decided that we needed a middle
way in order to help our learning disabled but obviously intelligent
students to manage their lives and studies well enough to grow up
and function as adults. I taught my teachers, social workers and
psychologists:
The brain is the tangible instrument (the hardware of the system)
and the mind is what the brain does, (the software). And there is
nothing on the face of the earth that is more subjective and
self-serving than the human mind.
Since I taught this body/mind interaction to the
professionals that I led, at a time when no more than half a dozen
medical schools in America had body/mind department, a great
awakening has occurred. Now, three out of every five colleges of
medicine, have departments that deal extensively with the subjective
aspects of healing that can only be understood through mind/body
research such as Campbell and others now conduct. I am pleased that
the medical world has finally started catching up with this hard
working, back country clinic director and author!
Robert Boyd of the McClatchy News Service wrote:
“Scientists are now gaining new insights into remarkable changes in
teenagers’ brains that may help explain why the teen years are so
hard on young people -- and on their parents.”
Campbell reports that between eleven and fourteen years of age,
adolescents lose a significant percentage of the brain’s neural
connections that enable them to think wisely and well. And Boyd
writes that this loss in necessary because it trims unneeded
connections in order to prepare the youthful brain for more complex
adult thought processes. Boyd also quotes Alison Gopnic of the
University of California at Berkley.
Ineffective or weak connections are pruned in much the same way a
gardener trims a tree or bush, giving a plant the desired shape.
Jay Giedd from the National Institute of Mental Health was also
quoted by Boyd.
Neural connections or synapses that get
exercised are retained while those that don’t are lost. Teens appear
to process emotions differently from adults.
Campbell went on to say:
Normal adolescents who are experiencing these brain changes can
react emotionally. And girls start pruning their cells about a year
earlier that boys but the losses end up to be about the same. This
pruning is a case in which less becomes more. It causes an
improvement in speed in information processing and a greater ability
to build the long neuron chains required for complex problem
solving.
I am convinced that many of the parent and teacher conflicts with
older children and adolescents occur during this period in which the
youngsters are trying to understand and to readjust their emotions
without understanding anything about turmoil going on within. Many
seldom have a clue and neither do their parents -- the teen age
youngsters live as one researcher said, in a very small world of
their own hormonal and brain driven urges for esteem, acceptance and
admiration. They are so unaware of these confusing urges that kids,
who run amok -- like the teen shooters at Columbine School in
Colorado or at Red Lake School in Minnesota, are often unable to
explain their murderous rage and ruthless aggression. They simply
cannot offer a rational reason for their unspeakable violence. Some
have no way of understanding their angst and rage. This is why
Abigail Baird, a psychologist in Vassar College, insists that
teenage criminals should never be tried as adults and never, ever
executed for their crimes. It is much too easy for emotionally
burned out police and ambitious prosecutors to convince themselves
that they should meet the demands for ruthless revenge by an
outraged public regardless of the facts. It is a sad fact that our
ram-shackled criminal justice system puts one innocent defendant out
every twenty in long term confinement or on death row. And even when
a prisoner’s innocent is competently proven through evidence such as
DNA, virtually every prosecutor in the land will fight to the death
before releasing a prisoner mistakenly convicted of a felony.
As Professor Giedd concluded:
The teen-age brain is a very complicated and dynamic area, one
that is not easily understood.
Obviously, every parent must learn sound ways of
interacting with the vicissitudes of adolescent, must master
patience and stop expecting youngsters to behave as adults do. It is
good and usually productive to expect and plan well from the high
expectations you hold for your child, but your suggestions during
the years from about twelve to eighteen should be tempered by the
fact that human children are never simply little adults to be set on
course and then left to manage for themselves. They need your
understanding and your assistance until their brain/minds become
more adult. Of course, that is what this course and the book that
contains is all about!
Click
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button
to get your copy of
the Parenting Winning Children
course today -
using the concepts and
techniques in this course, you can make the most of
the years
you spend with your children and teen-agers.
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