Psychology 4-MAT Review : Dobson Assignment

Connectedness with your Teen 1

D r . M e g M e e k e r

ConneCTeDness

wiTh your Teen

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Connectedness with your Teen Dr. Meg Meeker

I have a deep belief that is based neither on psychological theory nor on studies, research, and experimental data, but rather on what my heart, my intuition, tells me. My belief is this: Relationships with other people are what make our lives worth living. We need friends to talk with when we’re lonely, people to care for us when we’re sick, spouses or partners to love us whether we’re rich or poor, fat or thin, ugly or beautiful, young or old. I believe this is true for everyone, even teens, who may seem to reject the love we offer and confound us with their antisocial behaviors and rebelliousness.

The fact is that when teens have close ties with family and friends, they are more productive, happier, and less likely to get into trouble. They develop a sense of belonging, of being part of a larger group, and feel an unspoken trust that the people who are important to them will always be there for them, no matter what the circumstance.

This unwavering sense of belonging and trust is the very substance of good relationships, and it is the strength that can keep them out of trouble or even save their lives. We have a word for it: connectedness.

Our Teenagers WanT COnneCTedness WiTh us

In 1997, one of the most complete studies ever conducted on teenagers and high- risk behaviors was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (the “Add Health Study,” funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and seventeen other federal agencies) set out to determine two things: What role family, friends, school, and community have in influencing teens to make healthy choices for themselves, and what role they have in encouraging unhealthy, self-destructive choices.

The fieldworkers interviewed 90,000 kids in grades seven through twelve from 145 different schools. They asked hundreds of questions and recorded thousands of answers. Then they went further, looking into the children’s lives, studying their environment, their parents, and where they lived.

They found that the two most important factors in keeping teens out of trouble were a sense of connectedness with parents and likewise with an adult figure at school, such as a teacher or counselor, who expresses care and concern for them. During a time when parents were repeatedly taught that peers were “everything to teens,” the results

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of this study blew the lid off of that notion.

The authors defined parental connectedness as having a “high degree of closeness, caring, and satisfaction with parental relationships, whether resident or nonresident, mother or father, feeling understood, loved, wanted, and paid attention to by family members.”

Among the factors that helped keep kids from making self-destructive or unhealthy choices such as having sex at a young age were teen/parent activities, parental presence at key times during the day (in the morning, after school, at dinner, and at bedtime), and parental expectations of high academic performance. Another important factor was the perception that parents disapproved of teenagers having sex, even with contraception.

In an age when politicians argue over sex education and educators war over condom distribution, this answer—connectedness—seems almost too simple, but my experience with my own patients has convinced me of the truth of these results. Parents and teachers who build solid relationships with teens have a far greater impact on them than do sex education programs and media messages.

Kay, the mother of one of my patients, is a good example.

Kay’s son Joe was one of those kids who probably had mild attention-deficit disorder. Since early elementary school, he had always been the class clown and did whatever he needed to do to get attention from friends and teachers. Naturally, this sometimes got him into trouble.

When high school came and Joe turned 16, Kay knew that the next few years could be rough. Joe didn’t like school. He liked painting and he wanted to be an artist, which made him feel different from the kids around him. Feeling different made him all the more anxious to please his peers and get their approval. He was a bright kid and it didn’t take long for him to figure out how to keep the kids liking him. He watched to see what the “cool” ones did, and then he imitated it, as most kids who feel insecure about themselves do.

Fortunately, Kay knew who Joe was. She had spent hours in his classroom helping out with various activities in elementary school. She had seen him interact with friends. She knew his weaknesses and his strengths. She had learned from watching him at an early age where he was vulnerable. Now, rather than backing out of his life, as many parents are prone to do during the teen years, she became determined to move closer in. She instinctively knew that staying connected to him during these very toughest of

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years was more important than ever before, because his personality would make him more vulnerable than other kids to unhealthy temptations.

During one period, he wanted to dabble with smoking dope. When he started to date, he struggled with his desire to become sexually active. How did she know he was struggling with these things? She kept talking with him, asking questions; she kept a close eye on him; and she created activities they could do together—even when he resisted.

When it came to sex, she was particularly keen and watchful. And she became strict in her home. She communicated to Joe that she really liked his girlfriend, but that sex was risky stuff. She told him that he needed to wait and talked to him about the benefits of waiting until he was older. Then, she clearly told him that he wasn’t to be home alone with his girlfriend because that might simply prove too tempting for him and she didn’t want him to have to struggle with that. While many parents might expect Joe to sneak behind his mother’s back, he never did. He told me that he thought his mother was right. Staying away from sex was hard for him and she had a point.

What worked was not the boundaries she set, but how she set them. He knew that she loved him, and she was very straightforward, honest, and firm. She also spoke to Joe as though she fully expected that he could abide by the rules. This made him feel good, he said.

Not everything ran smoothly, of course. Relationships rarely do. I’ll never forget Joe sitting in my office one day complaining about his mother. “She just drives me absolutely crazy sometimes. She makes me angry, and we fight. But I know she really loves me,” he said. In fact, when people have real love for each other, arguing can become another way to deepen their connection.

Joe is 19 now, and still a virgin. He credits his mom. Kay decided to stay emotionally connected to Joe and it worked.

develOping greaT relaTiOnships WiTh Our Teens

If you want to develop connectedness with your teen, start by getting to know the world he lives in. Where he goes at night and who comes home with him after school. Who his friends are, what they do when they’re together, what he likes, dislikes, his dreams, wishes, and wants.

It’s a tough line to walk because he may think you’re being suspicious of him rather than simply interested, but it’s a line we must walk. You can take solace in the fact that you’re not alone. Many of us have become confused about what to do, what to say, and

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when to say it when we’re talking with our teens. Perhaps we have backed off from our teens’ lives because we’ve heard too many “experts,” like Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton, talk about the dangers of failing to meet the needs of young kids. By the time they reach adolescence, we’re afraid to set limits, challenge them, or do anything else that might upset them. Maybe we’re afraid that if we push them too far, they’ll tell us they don’t really want or need us. Or maybe they seem so emotionally complex and challenging that we just don’t feel competent to deal with them. Whatever our fears, we need to understand that our kids need us, and we must have the courage to re-enter their world and their lives.

Fortunately, we don’t have to feel completely lost on the journey. There is a road map. It leads us through four major landmarks: communication, intimacy, love, and appreciation.

COnneCTing ThrOugh COmmuniCaTiOn

It’s no secret that teens want to communicate. They talk on the phone endlessly, instant-message each other for hours, and spend entire days hanging out with peers. The trick is getting them to communicate with you. It’s easier than you might think. Take the fundamental steps listed below, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly your teen will open up to you.

like Your Teenager

If teenagers think you like them, they will communicate with you. If they think you dislike them, they will shut you out. It is imperative that you let your teen know that you like the person she is. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything she does or says. Teens can deal with your disapproval, so long as they know that you accept and love them despite their flaws.

Understandably, liking your teen can be very difficult if you constantly argue with her, and you may feel estranged if your child is constantly away from home or online communicating with friends. Some parents just give up, and it’s hard to blame them. Teenagers can be bitter, walled off, and hostile. I know because I’ve worked with numerous kids who are like that. As the physician for a halfway house for girls, I’ve spent hundreds of hours talking with kids who have been raped, beaten, abandoned, and emotionally starved. They arrive in my office hissing like cornered alley cats, and believe me, it’s not easy to look past the cursing and obnoxiousness to the hurting, depressed girl underneath.

The key to liking unlikable teens lies in refusing to rise to the bait of their challenges. You have to remain calm and objective enough not to take their comments or attitudes

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personally. First of all, remember that you are not responsible for their obnoxious behaviors. When our children behave in ways we don’t like, we often blame ourselves and feel responsible for changing that behavior on the spot. Don’t. Let it go. It’s not your fault. Kids are who they are and you need to accept that—for your own sake as well as theirs.

It may help to simply remind yourself that obnoxiousness is a symptom of something that’s bothering your teen. If your child showed symptoms of diabetes, you would certainly be able to deal with him in a loving way. You can do the same in this situation.

You might also try picking out one or two qualities you admire in your teenager and then telling her what they are. If you’re uncomfortable saying these things face to face, write a note and put it on her desk or pillow. She may throw the note away, call you a liar, or simply refuse to acknowledge your effort. That’s okay. Wait a week and do it again. Don’t fight back. Be determined to communicate that you genuinely like her. If you have a particularly volatile or distant relationship with your teen, this could take a year, but you can’t give up. Your adolescent has a primal need to be liked and loved, and if you don’t break through, someone else will. Chances are, that person won’t be as nice as you.

Remember, time is on your side. Be determined to stay emotionally connected with your teen and don’t back off even though everything inside you wants to give him the emotional (and physical) boot. When he realizes that nothing he can do or say will shake you loose, he’ll begin to back off. After a while, he’ll circle back around to you and see the emotional cord tied between the two of you. He may try desperately to break it for a while, but if you refuse to let it break, he will come back to you. You may have to wait until he’s older to see this happen, but if you’re patient, it will.

listen to Your Teenager

Once your adolescent is willing to stay in the room with you for longer than 15 seconds (because he knows you really want to be with him), the most important principle in communication is to listen. Listening is important for two reasons: It gets you out of your own world and into his so you can learn what he sees, feels, thinks, and worries about. And if you’re a good listener, over time your teenager will begin to listen to you because he feels important to you and liked by you.

So stop talking. Listen. Even if you don’t like what you hear, listen. Somewhere in the words and sentences are reflections of what’s happening in your child’s heart. Is she bitter and angry all the time? Then she hurts. Does he continually talk about one or two people? Then there is a relationship you need to know about.

If your objective as you communicate is to teach them a lesson, give them “a piece of

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your mind,” or straighten them out, you will lose them. The only way to accomplish those things is to listen. Then listen again and again.

Here’s an experiment to try. For one week, every time you interact with your teen in conversation, keep your mouth closed and look him in the face when he talks. Rather than give your opinion, respond by asking why he feels the way he feels. You can ask any other nonjudgmental question that occurs to you—anything that comes out of genuine curiosity—but otherwise, be quiet. Your teen will be so thrown off, so excited that he is being heard, that he will return again and again for more conversation.

There are numerous ways to improve your listening skills.

Time your conversations well. Find a space in her world into which you can step. In the evening when your daughter is alone, approach her and ask simple questions about her life. Meet her for lunch away from school. Stay up an extra half-hour at night to talk with her.

make eye contact. As she talks, look her in the eyes. Close the magazine, turn off the television, stop cooking. Eye contact is very intimate and hard to ignore. When you make eye contact, you connect.

Don’t interrupt. I live in a family of talkers. This is good for me because I love to listen. People reveal everything about their desires, quirkiness, secret wishes, and vulnerabilities when given an opportunity to be heard. But the members of my family like to talk so much that they constantly interrupt one another. This drives me crazy, because as a listener, I want to hear the end of a person’s sentence. When you interrupt your teenager, you’re saying: “I don’t want to hear the rest of what you’re saying because either it’s not important enough, or what I have to say is more important.” Remember, teens are more emotionally sensitive than we. No matter how badly you want to interrupt and correct, wait. It will pay off.

sit down. Sitting while you talk communicates that what your teenager is saying is important to you, that you really want to hear it. So when the two of you begin a conversation, pull up a chair. If you’re standing in the kitchen, sit up on the counter. If your child is sitting on the floor, don’t be shy about joining him there.

Ask personal questions. Teens are egocentric and think about themselves constantly. So the best way to begin communicating is to ask them questions about themselves. Ask what they were doing after school, not because you’re suspicious, but because you want to know them better. Find out what movies they’ve been watching lately. Ask who they like to be with and why. If you persistently, gently, and sincerely ask

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questions, your child will respond and open up. It might not happen in two days or even two weeks, but it probably will within a couple of months.

COnneCTing ThrOugh inTimaCY

Communication opens the door for relationships. Intimacy cements them together. A psychologist friend of mine once explained intimacy in this way: “Intimacy means ‘INTO-ME-SEE.’ ” How simple and true. Essentially, there are three types of intimacy— physical, emotional, and spiritual. We will examine the first two.

The magic Touch Some parents roll their eyes when they learn that teens need physical intimacy. Personal experience has taught them the opposite. A father retreats the first time his 13-year-old daughter shudders and stiffens when he gives her his usual hug. The body language of most teens toward parents seems to say, “Get away, your touch is creepy.” Some parents liken hugging their teen to hugging a tree or a telephone pole. My own prepubescent son aims the top of his head toward my face when I ask for a goodnight kiss. Discomfort with their own bodies and with their sexuality makes them feel naturally awkward around their parents.

But teens still need physical intimacy as badly as ever. Just stand outside your local high school when the bell rings and watch the kids pour out. They hang all over each other. Boys paw at girls (no, it’s not all sexual) and girls braid one another’s hair or hug each other. My 18-year-old attends a youth group, where they are constantly hugging. Sometimes 20 or so kids will form a circle, hold hands, and yell “group hug!” Then all 20 run to the center of the circle for a giant hug. It’s not sexual satisfaction they’re looking for through this touching, but intimacy.

Touch lets teenagers know that someone sees them, someone likes them. So when a parent—still the most important person in a teen’s life—touches them, it affects them deeply. Through physical contact, teenagers also learn self-respect, appropriate touch, body boundaries, and modesty.

If the teen in your home really is averse to hugging, start with safer touch. Touch her shoulder or her hair. Do it quickly, gently, and repeatedly. Be respectful and understand that some kids need to learn how to accept touch. Needless to say, never allow anyone to touch your child in a sexual way. This will confuse them deeply, cause them to reject healthy physical intimacy, and profoundly confuse their sexuality. If you find out that an adult friend or family member has touched your teen in a sexual way or even talked to him or her in a sexually provocative manner, deal with it immediately.

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One other note: If you’re a mother, it may feel more natural to hug your daughter, but it’s equally important that you reach out to your son. Teen boys have a special need for a mother’s love, and healthy touch keeps them connected to that love. If you’re a father, it’s just as important that you keep hugging your daughter. She needs to learn that she is to be handled gently and respectfully if she is to develop a healthy sexuality.

COnneCTing ThrOugh emOTiOnal inTimaCY Emotional intimacy occurs when a teenager feels a parent has “seen into” her true self and accepted what is there. If your teenager anticipates that she’s going to meet with disapproval or rejection by mom or dad, she will hide that part. For example, if a girl is upset about excess weight gain but has heard her mother make critical remarks about overweight girls, she’s unlikely to bring the subject up for discussion. But when she hides a portion of herself in that way, intimacy cannot occur.

The key to establishing emotional intimacy with your kids is creating an environment where they feel safe about expressing their feelings. Parents who yell a lot, who constantly criticize, who are unpredictable, or who get drunk will have difficulty establishing this emotional intimacy, particularly if they make their kids feel stupid or defensive. Teens with these types of parents naturally assume that exposing deeply personal thoughts and feelings is like asking to get trampled.

So how do you create a safe space? By spending more time with your kids, for one thing. Teens need our presence. When we give our kids time, it powerfully communicates that we love them. When friends, work, or anything else takes too much time away from our kids, they feel less loved. Try to be there for them when they leave for school and come home in the afternoons. Be there for meals and bedtime. Set aside a couple of hours every week that you can devote totally to them, with no interruptions. Think of activities you can share, like playing a sport or going to a movie. And the benefits of spending time won’t fall only to your teen. You may find that your own child will turn out to be one of the best companions you could imagine.

In addition to time, you must provide a safe location for emotional intimacy, a place where your child feels comfortable expressing his thoughts and feelings without interruptions or eavesdropping. Maybe it’s his bedroom, or the family den, or the back porch. So long as your teen feels at ease, protected, and secure, anyplace will do.

I met a gentleman recently who told me how he connects with his kids. Every year, he rents a house in Europe for one month, and he, his wife, and their two teenagers spend the time together. No friends. No television. No work. Just one another. What did they do while they were there? I asked.

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At first, of course, everyone cried that they were bored and wanted to go home, but that was out of the question. They had to work together to figure out what to do. That’s how connectedness developed. They looked at empty time and space together and figured out how to fill it. They were edgy and irritable for awhile because they didn’t know how to work together. They didn’t know how to negotiate, communicate, or compromise. But they learned through struggling.

They came to enjoy hiking together, shopping together, and even cooking together. They read, put together puzzles, and organized day trips for sightseeing. They learned each other’s likes and dislikes because each person got to choose and organize different activities. The point is, when they removed all of the “stuff” that separated them (sports, work, TV, etc.) they naturally developed connectedness.

COnneCTing ThrOugh lOve When we think of Mother Teresa, we inevitably think about her boundless ability to love others and to act on that love. There was nothing complicated about it. As she walked the filthy streets of Calcutta, she looked for people in need. When she found them, she touched them in the most intimate places on their bodies—their faces. We could see her press her frail palms against their cheeks, capturing their gaze and offering hers in return. She made love simple, identifying and then filling the needs of those she saw without expecting anything in return.

This is the kind of unconditional love you need to give your teenagers. You must love your child whether or not he or she returns the favor. It is the greatest gift you can give, and it will yield great blessings to both you and your child. If a teen makes herself difficult to love, so much the better. In the end, she will benefit that much more from your love.

I remember one extremely sick girl with anorexia nervosa. She made it harder for me to love her than any other teenager I’d ever treated. Whenever I opened my mouth or approached her, she snarled venomously and swore at me. When I firmly but gently told her swearing at me was not acceptable, she simply hissed. She was so walled off that even simple expressions of kindness were hard to give. Sometimes I just wanted to stand up, tell her we were done, that she was hopeless and mean, and that she had to find herself a new doctor. But being loving toward her meant seeing beneath the hissing and the icy glares to the tiny, crying little girl inside who was stuck in an iron cage of self-hatred. I knew she couldn’t escape unless someone loved her. That didn’t mean I let her walk all over me, of course. And it didn’t mean I needed to tolerate her self-destructive behavior. In fact, I set firm boundaries. She was not to curse at me. If she couldn’t stop, she would have to find another doctor. If she refused to eat or insisted on exercising every day, she would be sent to a hospital. No ifs, ands, or buts.

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I knew that she could use her eating problems to manipulate the people around her, and I wasn’t about to give in to that. I gave her strict rules, but I also expressed my love for her. Eventually, she left her anorexia behind and turned into one of the sweetest people you could ever meet.

Just as I learned to love that young woman, parents must look beneath the obnoxious, childish, selfish, and confused behavior our teenagers often express and continue to provide our love through patience and kind words. This, of course, means we also have to give up our own obnoxious, childish, selfish, and confused behavior, which is not an easy task for many of us. However, we have to do our best. If we can’t offer our love in an adult way but rather give love only to get something in return, kids will intuitively sense this and pull away. I often see this situation among the children of divorced parents.

One of my patients, Shelby, was a 15-year-old girl whose father had left her mother for another woman. Shortly afterward, Shelby began spending weekends with him. He bought her clothes and a car (before she could drive), but insisted that she spend time with him and his new girlfriend. Obviously, he wanted something from his daughter. She told me she hated her time with her father and deeply resented his pressuring her to spend time with his girlfriend. She knew the only reason he gave her attention and gifts was so that she would approve of his behavior, but she felt that what her dad was doing was wrong.

Shelby knew that his love was conditional, and in her mind, invalid. She needed her dad—his time, his genuine love. He didn’t want to give it because, quite simply, he wanted his girlfriend more. Now, three years later, Shelby rarely sees her dad and lives with a large vacancy in her heart. To no one’s surprise, she has had a string of boyfriends and sexual relationships.

Love is tough. It means sacrificing for our kids and loving them not because of what we can get from them—approval, fulfillment of dreams, feeling better about our parenting, whatever—but because those are the very things they need from us.

COnneCTing ThrOugh appreCiaTiOn Appreciation is a word we use to describe our recognition of someone else’s value or worth. We all need to feel valuable to the people we know and the world we live in, but teens, who naturally struggle with insecurities about their developing identities, feel this need even more keenly than other people do. Finding this sense—that they have traits and talents other people appreciate—makes them feel good, acceptable, loved, and defined. Parents, especially, should do everything they can to help their adolescents feel valuable and valued. Otherwise, teens will turn to peers, media, or relationships outside

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the family for a sense of what makes them valuable, and as we’ve already seen, the answer they’re likely to get can be summed up in one word: sex.

So think about it: What will you tell your child to make him or her feel valued? If the answer seems elusive, then rephrase it this way: What are the traits I really love about my child? You must be able to answer this question more for your kids than for yourself.

Before you answer, however, let me offer one caveat: When I say “traits,” I don’t mean academic, sports, or artistic accomplishments. At issue isn’t what they’ve done; it’s who they are. We’ve all seen sports parents who show up at every game cheering their child’s victories but completely losing their composure—and sometimes their temper— over their child’s failures. When teenagers see our enthusiasm swell only when they excel at something, they think their performance increases our love for them. Then— and this hurts—they become stuck performing, studying, or producing to earn more expressions of love from us. Is this what we want for our children? Or do we want them to know that they are fundamentally, at the very core of who they are, lovable and valuable to us?

If you praise your son’s great soccer abilities, also praise his patience. If your daughter is as compassionate or perceptive as she is bright, give her as much credit for the former qualities as for the latter. Recognize courage, persistence, wisdom, gratefulness, self- control, compassion, kindness, faithfulness, joy, and goodness in your children. They deserve it.

parenTal disapprOval Of sex There are four main reasons teenagers have sex, and none of them are healthy or lead to good relationships:

for fun, excitement, and thrills; to seek out the unknown. In this situation, most teens have very limited attachments to their sexual partners, viewing him or her as an object of play. Teens who engage in sex strictly as a game become increasingly detached and emotionally distant from their partners.

To be accepted by peers and society at large. We know that young teens typically have poor self-esteem, and that some teens opt for sex to bolster their sense of value. Kids who are immersed in media are particularly vulnerable to engaging in sex to feel accepted.

To have their needs met. All teens are wired with needs for intimacy, love, and a sense of their own value. When these needs are not met in meaningful ways through relationships with family and loved ones, a teen may turn to sex to fill those voids.

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To lose themselves. Some teens use sex like a drug to blot out pain or other uncomfortable feelings. When having sex doesn’t work and the pain continues or gets worse, the only way these kids know how to cope is by trying again, only harder, more frequently, and with different partners.

In my experience, the latter two reasons account for most early sexual activity among teenagers. Basically, teens are having sex to find something missing in their lives. They’re desperate for a connection with the adults around them, primarily their parents.

As parents, most of us know these things instinctively. Some of us may feel shy or uncomfortable communicating our disapproval of teen sex to our kids. Still, we feel it deep down, and communicate it we must because, as the Add Health study shows, a significant factor in keeping teenagers from becoming sexually active is perceived parental disapproval. If a son knows that his parents don’t think he should have sex, he is more likely to wait than if they give him a pocketful of condoms.

Parents’ convictions and beliefs change the behavior of their kids. Why? Because teenagers want to love and be loved by their parents. They want to please them in order to get that love—to stay “hooked” to them. They figure out what their parents want and believe and respond to it. This deep dynamic drives their behavior much more than anything they learn in a sex ed classroom.

So parents (and other significant adults) must define their own convictions about teenagers and sex. If you’re not sure, ask your teen. She may not be able to tell you your favorite color or food, but she knows how you feel about almost everything else. She knows what you believe about her and sex, dating, and birth control. And she knows that if you believe it’s okay for her to be sexually active (even if you haven’t articulated that message to her yourself), then she has the green light to be sexually active.

For parents who care for their children and want to protect them, there is perhaps no better or stronger force at their disposal than connectedness. And remember, the connection takes place on both sides of the relationship. While your teens will benefit profoundly through feeling a deep sense of connection with you, you may be surprised at the sense of love, satisfaction, and vitality you will feel through your connection with them.

This material is excerpted from Epidemic—Raising Great Teens In A Toxic Sexual Culture (Copyright 2004, Published by Life Line Press) and is used with permission.

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