Helping a Family at Church

Transcript: High Risk Males

I begin by introducing

two males, Irwin and 0s and 0s and will proudly display a trophy that he has won. As results of becoming state champion

in wrestling. Irwin will not be able

to tell you anything because he ended up on

a slab in the morgue. King's County Hospital. What made Irwin go

the way he did and why it might in

is doing well, will be explained as B. Follow. Let's look at

that risk factors. Risk factors are

those factors that either

environmental or genetic that will lead to the possibility

of a disorder later on in life. And that is precisely

what happened to urban. Irwin began using

mind-altering substances when he was about

13 years old and continued on

until his death. Look, let's look at some of the factors that can contribute to

risky behavior on the part of teens. The major factor is

poor family management. Teams had been allowed

so much latitude, so much free time, times where the parents did not know what

they were doing, where they were, or the friends with whom they

were associating. This allowed

them to get into issues that would lead

to the difficulty. The other is the exposure to risk factors plus the absence of other

parental supervision. Last July fourth

in Charlotte, North Carolina, a number of teens were

arrested for rioting. These teens were

age from 12 to 18 years of age. They had guns, they were high on

sons substances. They turned over cars

and smashed windows. These risk

factors that the, these teens have

seldom are isolated. They cluster, that

is to say drug use, can use. Gang activity. All seem to cluster

together to form this high-risk team that will be

speaking about. Let's look at some of

the characteristics of the team at risk. Some of the behaviors

we listed above, and then also the

availability of firearms. Firearms in some states, a very readily available other states have

strict laws. Those states that have laws or rather lax with

regard to firearms, the teens will more often of obviously

use them. In the home. We have a

single, single mother, and the single

mother is not able to control this team. This team has had

no male influence, a little male

influence in his life, and therefore can do

what he wants at will. He may have a I've seen aggressive

behavior at home, violent behavior at home. Some of these young

men grew up in homes where the mother or the

mother's companion, notable, shall we call him, was aggressive

towards the mother. And they observed

this behavior. And later on we will talk about modeling and how that behavior affects

the gene teen's life. Many of these teens have poor intellectual

capacity or poor ability to

adjust to schooling. Schooling, after all, is really an outgrowth of what happens at the home. A child who has been read, bedtime stories and read, and had books in his home, is more, more able

to adapt to school. The school becomes

an outgrowth of what happens at home. Some children had

been exposed to early to sexual activity, which makes whoops,

confuses them and causes for the

later problems later on in life. Many of the

teenage teenagers with high-risk

behavior have had emotional or psychologically

impaired parents, one or both, but one

or both parents, parents who used alcohol and drugs in the home, they were abused, many of them by their parents. We mentioned earlier what happens when they

get to school? What does that have to do with risky behavior? What it has to do with it because the child cannot

adjust to school. Not only as we said, does he have perhaps Loic, no intellectual capacity or lack of preparedness

to school. But he doesn't

have a sense of the social conventions

that school presents. The school requires that a child be able to sit up, sit at a chair,

that child is able to to follow orders. This is almost

foreign to some of these children as

they get to school. A very interesting

factor that has come up as we've

done this research. And that is that some of these young people every, relocated from a rural setting to

the urban setting. In the rural setting

they were known to which everybody

in the community, everybody in the community

didn't knew them. They could not misbehave because people knew

who they were. What happens

when they get to the city, they

become anonymous. They can do what they

will on one street and go to another

and nobody knows who they are,

where they work. Along with this, we have parents

who have come from other countries where they do not speak English. The child, therefore, it has an advantage

over the parent. The parent, the child knows something that the

parent doesn't. One of the things

we found through the school system,

for example, send the communication to the to the parents at home about the

child's behavior. And they did that. They ask the child

to translate the letter into Spanish or whatever the

language is. Of course, a child

doesn't doesn't translate what happened

about his behavior. And so therefore

that the parent has no idea of

what is going on. Parents. Peer

influence is a very, very important factor

in this discussion. Most of the young people

who are involved in drugs, Irwin, among them, as I've mentioned,

he began using drugs because the the fellows in his community did it. And he said he wanted

to fit in with them. And so he began

usage drugs. Maybe gang involvement likewise is

appear influence. Some of the young

people we've had just

disorganized homes. They look to the gang as a kind of family that

they can relate to it. Because after all, we as human beings need

to be with others. We are social beings. And if one environment

does not provide us with the nurturance, with the care that we need. We will go to another. Even if it's negative. Some of them have had experience rejection

by their peers. The two young men and the Columbine

shooting, for example, were rejected by

the other people, to other children

in the school, young people in the school. And therefore, they

resorted to violence. They've to foun others that were like themselves. The community factors are involved because there's

some communities, at least what

we spoke about, family disorganization. There are some communities that are totally

disorganized. And again, what is, what is available in

these communities? Availability of drugs. There are some areas

in some cities where drugs are sold openly

in the street. The availability

of firearms. Some of the

communities from which these young people have come had been crime RED. Crime is not seen

as a problem. Climates, almost

a sadness that assemble a status symbol to go to the, go to jail. We've been concern about these young men walking around with their genes down so low that we can

see their underwear. And the reason

they do that, that is a that is a habit that

comes from jail. In jail that uniforms

they give them an ill fitting and therefore they

do droop down. So this has translated

into the community. So the young boy growing

up in the community sees jail as a place to be, as an almost of a

rite of passage. Crime is seen as adaptive. People are not

concerned about crime. And fat crime is

something that you do in order to make it. We'll talk about

poverty later on. There's some cities

in New York, in New York City,

for example, sections of New York City where you can

buy all kinds of stolen articles at

these young people have stole them and

in order to make it, in order to buy

their drugs. Let's look at some

of the statistics that are around

this whole issue. In 1994, the Children's

Defense Fund listed some of the results

of risky behavior. Every five seconds

of the day, a student drops out of public school. Every year. 2,000,700 thousand

children are reported as abuse,

abused, or neglected. Every four hours, some teenager

commits suicide. Every 59 seconds, a baby is born to

a teenage mother. Every four minutes,

a child is arrested for an

alcohol-related crime. Every 30 seconds, a baby is born

into poverty. Every two hours, the United States of America, a child is murdered. This school year

in Chicago. Eight teenagers

were murdered. These are some of the

dismal statistics, but this is the

introduction to this whole issue of

teenage risk factors. One of the things

that we know about males, for example, that just by being

male is a risk factor. Because of the presence of the hormone called

testosterone. Testosterone is a hormone that gives us

our aggressive, that gives us our impetus. It in a positive way. It gives the football

player that courage, the power in order to make that tackle baseball player to hit that home run. And so when the

testosterone is channeled into

positive areas, it works fine even

in adulthood. What makes the salesman so powerful that he can go

in and make the sale? Well, it makes a lawyer in the courtroom being

able to present his case is a presence of testosterone on the

on the negative side. It's also one that ends up hurting

other people. One of the reasons that e, and as we mentioned that the introduction was

able to be successful as a wrestler because he was the testosterone that was channeled in the

right direction. There is a saying that

kids in it Court, kids in sports stay out of courts to the test. Testosterone as

a facilitator of aggressive

behavior can go in either one or the

other direction. These conclusions

were, we looked at in very many studies

about testosterone. And Dr. James Dobson

and his book, bring up boys as a wonderful discussion

about this. The risk factors then

that follow being male predispose them to cluster a young monk

among young men. This is especially true as they reach adolescence. This is the time

when the range of hormonal changes it bring out the aggressive behavior that we

have mentioned. On a side note,

the question of the violence that's on television has been said that this contributes to violence among teens. It's quite the

opposite. The teen already comes from a home, as we've mentioned,

where there's violence, a community where

there's violence. And all the violence

on television does, is to bring out that

violent proclivity for liberty that

he already has. And so therefore,

the relationship with television is real, but it's not that

the television causes of violence. The dysfunctional behavior

that we see among teenagers is that grows out of that, that milieu. If I could use that

word because it is the home and then the community that

brings it out. One of the things

we talked about children who grow

up in homes where. The parents are in

either addicted to drugs themselves or have emotional or

psychological problems. This means that

the child growing up is not has not ever, possibly not ever attached to apparent or bonded

with a parent. This is this is

a critical point for the child to grow

up as a healthy adult. That child may

have may have had to had bonded with a grown up so that they had they grow

up in a world. They grew up in a

world where they feel secure. Albert Bandura was one of those psychologists

that demonstrated to us the effect of the child's

environment at home. He wanted to show that the violence that we've

been talking about has been modeled for

child by parents. By modelling we mean that the child will imitate

very early in life. The child will imitate the behavior of the parent. What Albert Bandura did was to take an

inflatable doll. One of those

inflatable dolls, it's about 2.5 feet tall and you can punch

it did bounces back. And he put the parents

in a room with a one-way vision meant

so that you could watch the parents

beating up on this doll. And the children could watch their parents beating up on the top punch the dom, dom bounces back. He then told them, the young boys to go into a room and play while he talked

to their mothers. Obviously, those young boys when they went into the room, did exactly what the

mothers had been doing. Bandura wanted to show

that we as parents, model much more behavior than we realize without

saying anything. And so as a result of the aggressive behavior, we have the

issue of anchor, an interview with with two detectives from Mecklenburg Police

Department. I talk to them

about the kinds of young people

that they arrested. And they told me

that the, the, the prominent feature of these young men that they arrested was that

they were very angry. They were full of rage. They were angry because they lived in poverty. What does poverty had

to do with anger? As a result of television? A young boy growing up

in a poverty area is able to look into

the living room of people who have means. And he realizes he

doesn't have it. He realizes also, if he's in a single

single parent home, he realizes other people. It's one young man

said what hurt me most about not having a father was that some of my friends

had fathers. That are the factors

that lead to anger, one, poverty, to being

fatherless. And three, that he

has to listen to. This woman is Mother. And there's no other males. And some, some

of the young man I interviewed had no male relative in

their existence. Their father was gone. They live with

their mother, who lived with her

mother and her sister. And so he was

surrounded by females. And as a result, he

began to reason. And resent all

females and the egg. A couple that with the

anger that he has. As a young man,

this anger then becomes what we

call displaced, displaced aggression. He will then behave aggressively to other people in

his environment. I'll be talking

about assaults on teachers later on. But more, more

teachers had been assaulted by these

teenage boys. Because the teacher stands for the parent in his own mind or

the parent figure, the authority

figure in his life. And when these

children get to school and they have male teachers,

they do well. I'll be talking about

the Walter Reed school later on in that context. Another factor that we have is that these

young boys growing up because they

have not had a sense of right or wrong, or little sense of

right and wrong, little moral upbringing. So therefore, they

don't know how to refuse things

that are wrong. Let's go back to the

drugs for a moment. What made Irwin used drugs? He was influenced by the young people in

his neighborhood. He did not see this

kind of thing at home, but the neighborhood was what led him to that. The other boys used it. And after all he said, I didn't want

to be called a pumped by the other guy. So therefore, I

used drugs as well. And so the the

aggressive behavior becomes displaced. That is to say, it, it is vented on other young people or other people in

the neighborhood. We find that

children come to school as early

as third grade, and they are in

third grade, they're almost

uncontrollable. The the, the crop criminal behavior that they see in their neighborhood

also finds its way into the schools. Because again, they think that this criminal

behavior is normal. And so we've had cases

of boys as young as eight years old extorting

money from other, the other children

in the class. One of the other

issues with regard to drugs is that, that the, the whole idea of the violent behavior

coupled with the use of drugs and the level of inhibition is so low at the behavior therefore, comes out from the child

while exhibited by the child because of

the presence of drugs. We mentioned school performance

earlier wrong. The fact that the child comes to school without any or little sense of the social conventions, as we said, that school leads to, what

does this lead to? It leads to low

academic performance. Needless to say, this low academic

performance will lead later

on to dropout. As we mentioned earlier, the statistics, statistics about

dropout rate. The dropout rate

in some cities, in the inner city,

for example, is as high as 80%. In some cities, only 20% of young men dropout. Well, the only 20%

of, of, excuse me, of teenage boys at risk ever finish

high school. One of the things

about that, this whole issue

brings up we mentioned earlier

single mothers. And along with all that

we've talking about, we cannot forget the effect of fatherless ness

and our society. Margaret Mead said that

the supreme test of any civilization

is whether it can socialize men by teaching them

to be fathers, creating a culture in

which men acknowledged that paternity and willing me nurture their offspring. In some cultures, for

example, in Africa, that the young

boy is taken from his home and taken to a training program

where he learns what it is to

be responsible, what that particular

community considers to be

responsible, men. This is not left to

the parents to do. And we have to we

have to look at that. We can't take people away from that, from

their children. But we can indeed influence these young men

in ways that are positive, as

we shall see. Another issue

with regard to the fatherless boys is that the young man will

look for a role model. He does not have

one at home. And he feels some,

someone young man said that he felt

as though he had he had a space in his body that needed

to be filled. He wanted so badly

to have a dad. He saw those

kids that he saw television commercials

where young men had fathers and he had none.

And he wanted that. I've said this to mothers, that I've spoken to single mothers over the years. That if you don't provide a positive role model

for your child, male role model

for your child. He will find one. And you might not like

the one that he finds. As, as a result that these young men are

susceptible to males. One baby were acceptable to the male community who

has the most money. And in the case

of one young man, the neighborhood

where he lived, the person who had money and means the things

that he could get was a drug dealer. Interestingly enough, this drug dealer

was named Papi. The kids called him Papi. The kind of that, that term by itself kind of evoked some sort of

nurturance by a father. Illustration. Papi

was arrested and the district attorney asked the young man to testify

for the prosecution. The young man refused. If he were willing to have have testified for

the prosecution, he would've gotten

a sentence of five years because

he refused. He received a sentence

of 45 years in prison. And this is what he said. I will not testify against Papi because he took me from riding a bicycle, the driving a BMW. This young boy was

willing to for, to forfeit 40 years of his life rather than testify against this man. The other one that

we could be we fine. All too often is that young boys who had

no fathers are also susceptible to

sexual predators, homosexual predators. Here again, the young

boy doesn't want sex. He wants affection and affection that

he has not had. The other is

the teenage boy who grows up without him, without a father is also act to father

children also, because again, very often there's

little respect for his mother and therefore

little respect for other young

people, young women. One young woman was

interviewed and she, she said that these young guys will

make you pregnant. They won't know your

name The next day. Maleness therefore is, is biological mail as a male because genetical

he's a male. However, masculinity

is achieved. Masculinity is

achieved through interaction with

positive role models. I was speaking to

a group of ladies few years ago and I

was telling them how important it was to have a male role model in their lives and

their sons lives. And one of the women at the

question and answer period said this to us. She said what I

said was correct. She said that she

had two sons. One son was in college, and the oldest son

was in prison. She said she accepted

the Lord and became a member of a

church where there were lots of men that this young

boy could look up to and the younger son was in college is note. There's no secret

about that. That young man desperately need that kind of

influence in their lives. What they see out in the

street is one thing, but what they

get into church, they can see that there

are so many people, so many men, excuse

me, who are positive. Men, men who have positive, provide positive role

models for them. In the church in

which I grew up, we had all these men who were concerned about us. They call us, they call everybody

was called a sun. We were all sons

of these men. And they looked after us in ways that perhaps a

father, I might not, even though we

might have had our own father still, there were other ways

of other kinds of role models that they

provided for us. The community

that went back to community again

for a moment. We'd mentioned

drugs as a factor. I cannot say it enough. The places I have

been where we find these young men were resorting to drugs to

one, to make money. One young man said that he, he, he was living

on welfare. And he found out

that he could make $100,500

selling drugs. Why? Again? No model, no

refusal skills. Skills, no idea of

deferred gratification. That yes, he was poor. But if he was able to see that if he worked hard, he could possibly be

something that's not, that's not in the equation. And the equation

is that they want, they want success, what

they see as success, and they want

things immediately. And the immediate way

to do it is through. Drugs, especially

the crime, especially drugs. The high school is

the place where we see so much of this

violent behavior, much of this high

risk behavior. We see it in the

high schools. Columbine, we

mentioned earlier on April 20th, 1999, the United States

was shot that 12 students were murdered

in a high school. In Colorado, in Montreal, Canada, for example. For young people were killed within 1818 months. It is difficult to

provide a, a, a, a profile of the

drug dealer, profile of the shooter, a profile of the,

of the team. But we know a few

things right now. We know the

communities at risk. We know that the family

is disorganized. And we know that

these factors lead to this kind of behavior. I was touched by

an article in The New York Times

by Timothy Egan, a columnist for the

New York Times. He tells about

going to Seattle, Washington funeral, where he was to

deliver a eulogy. And the person who had

died with his nephew. And he speaks about

the confusion of mind, that he had confusion

of confuse feelings. This young man and

he had watched grow up his sister's son. And now he had to come and preside at his burial. Here's what he said. He said a young person

born today can look at becoming 80 years old to live to be 80 years old. The problem he said is getting passed the

ages of 16171819. If you get past that,

he can live to 80. And he call those years that the hazardous years, the hazardous years for a teenager to go up in. A few days later, a young lady high

school student wrote a letter to

the editor and response to the article that was called The

Boy in the coffin, that's what he called it, the article in the paper. And she said this,

as a teenager, I can attest to

this description. My peers engage in unhealthy experimentation with their bodies daily. Often, the parents are

completely oblivious. I do not agree with the solutions Mr.

Egan suggests restrictions will not cure a teenager of

his free spirit. Instead of trying to halt this desire for

independence, relevant authority

should channel teenagers emotions to more appropriate places. Education as the only

acceptable answer. Perhaps our educational

institutions to teach the consequences of common hazardous teenage

activities. Instead of attacking team teenagers innate

instincts and leaving them to find the answers to themselves for themselves. This insignificant. We had the idea that these young people

didn't want us. We have the idea that

these teenagers, teenagers are rejecting us as models for

their behavior. Quite the contrary. When we get to know

these teenagers, we find out that they desperately

wanted direction. 11 man that I

treated was had was in some serious

difficulty. And he told me that he essentially

brought himself up. He had no no model

for his behavior. His parents paid no

attention to him. They never knew

where he was. They never knew

when he came in and went when

he went out. Let's look at

what we can do. The picture is not as

bleak as we thought. The picture is bleak. Yes. But the answer

is available. We looked at the problems

around this issue, but one of the

things that I'm always impressed with is that we can prevent these high risk behaviors

from taking place. We can prevent them if

we start early enough. I've never forgotten

a sign I saw outside of a Sunday School room in a church in

Brooklyn, New York. It was the boys

Sunday School room. And outside of the room, it had a plaque

on the wall. And it said this, it is better to train a boy than to repair a man. And we know that if we can get to these young, young men early enough,

we can prevent. And I believe that one of the most important

interventions that we can make is

it's prevention. And we know it

when we see it. We know when we see young boys who are at risk, we know the behavior that they exhibit when

they're very young. I mentioned the extortion, For example, in

third grade. The teachers and the

early grades report that these young

children come to school with the

apparent heir marks. Later on, delinquent

or high-risk behavior. And we'll talk about

those in a moment. I believe that parents

ought to be taught. I don't believe we

should leave it to young people who get

married, validation. All of a sudden be able

to become parents. Being, being a

parent is probably one of the most difficult

jobs in the world. And again, we look to the so-called

primitive people, we call them in other,

in other cultures. What are the

problems we have in our culture is that we

have a nuclear family, mom, dad, and children. Other cultures do

not have that. They have an

extended family were in the home. They're older relatives, grandmothers,

aunts, uncles, all kinds of

people living in close proximity

to that child. And that child has

the advantage of the years of experience that the older ones

have the parents. Also. Because one

of the things that somebody has said

and they said it said, well, that one of the

things about becoming apparent is that the child does not come with

instructions. But other cultures

realize that. Cultures realized that

the young people who having children need

the instruction. We do marital

pre-marital counseling. I've done quite a

beloved benefit, but we also need counseling for people before

they become parents. That note to note to understand the

developmental stages, for example, that a

child goes through. The psychoanalyst, Erik

Erikson talks about the eight stages that

a child goes through. This should be part of the education

that the child in the early years needs

to feel secure. This is one of the most important areas of life. Those early years with a child knows he's loved, He's cared for, He's

given direction. Those children

grow up, secure. Those children

are the woes, those that grow up

when they get to school than the able to function well in school. Because it already has been inculcated before

they ever get there. And teachers in

the early grades can point out in a minute, those children

that are having difficulty later on in life because they haven't had these early instructions

in the structures. We have an example. You remember when

the angel came to Samson's parents

and judges 13, They came to his

parents to tell to the mother to tell her that she was going

to have a child. And this child

was going to be a very special child. And she gave all kinds

of things about him. The father, when

she told to Manoa, his father is what

the Mohists prayed. He says, Oh

Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come

again to teach us how to bring up the child that

has to be borne. What a wonderful prayer for every single parent to be told by the Lord how

to bring up the child. Wherever they

hear this, they would hear this in church. One of the things about our church is that we have classes for people

before they get married. We have we have

classes for children, vote to website

law for children, people before they,

before they get married. And we, one of

the advantages of having that

in the church is because I get to see them and I get to

see how they're progressing as a result of the pre-marital

counseling. And they all point out that they don't know where they would have

gone had they not had this counseling? Well, if we have

premarital counseling, we can have pre

parenting counseling so that people growing up, even though they're

intelligent, well fixed people

financially, they need that training. Because the Word of God

tells us to train up the child in the way

the he shall go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. What do we have when

we have a teen, a child who was brought

up in a home where that kind of instruction

with a child has been taught with a

child has been that, for example, in

our growing up, the child has been

taught the Word of God. The child has been taught to respect

authority. Most of all, the Reverend Scott,

what happens? Teens who have healthy relationship

with parents usually do not engage

in high-risk behavior. One of the things

about children would engage in high-risk

behavior. They have nothing to lose. They don't feel they have any that

they don't even see themselves

as worthwhile. Young people. Teens who believe that their

parents cared about them, do not engage in with

high misbehavior. They'd know their

parents love them. Children who engage in

high-risk behavior, that they have

no parents even care about them or

they feel that way. The issue of modeling, again I mentioned, must be part apparent education. Children who have

who've parents have modeled proper

behavior function? Well, it's not that children will

not experiment. I think all children

will do kinds of things that are

not quite right. But they come

back, as it says, train at the child

and the way that he shall go and he

will not depart, even though we may

act different. He comes back to the point where the

parents wanted him, where God wanted him. Parents who know

the circle of friends that their children are associated with. When the child goes out

and the mother left, my parents asked me is

I'm just going out. Know the parent needs to know where he's going, who he's going with, knowing the

family structure, all of those things

are necessary in order for that child to be brought up properly. Because after all, high-risk behavior exist all across the board. Those two young men and the Columbine shooting. They came from very,

very wealthy families. We can see

there's all, all, all around where the

young people who have exhibited high

risk behavior come from all strata of society. Those children who were

possible problems, they can be flagged. We call it flagging

because that the teacher will look at the teacher's

notes and we look at children who have

been in trouble. And we see the

teacher's notes all the way from

third grade. They see these markers

that we've mentioned. Poor adjustment in the, in the early grades, excessive absence

from school, children who appear

malnourished. This is an important issue because it's

shown the child who was not cared

for properly, even physically, is not going to function well. Lack of parental interests in the child's progress. Young woman I was

talking to not long ago, teaches at a high school. She has a total of

a 160 students. And when they had the parent-teachers

conference, evening Conference, only two parents out of a 160 showed up that speak

about their child. Latchkey children. Latchkey children and those children who that

parents give them, we call them latchkey

because years ago these sing around the neck and the key hanging

off the string. The parent was not on. The parent went to work. The child went home

from school and from three o'clock till

approximately six o'clock, the child was

home alone and that child could do pretty much whatever he wanted. When we did a study of

teenage pregnancies, we found out that these pregnancies

took place in homes with a mother was not there and

there was no father. And they had this three

hours in order to do things that they

didn't not to do. Let's look at some strategies

that have proven successful with regard

to teens at high-risk. There's a folk saying

that says an ounce of prevention is worth

a pound of cure. And we said that

the young people, the younger they are,

the better they are. However, we also

know that we, that the young boy

may grow what, without any other

influence in his life. I'd like to talk about the Walter Reed school. The Walter Reed school

was a school for boys. They were called

maladjusted boys. And they were sent

there because they were expelled from the schools,

that they were in. School records read

like a horror story. They had assaulted

teachers. They were absent, they had destroyed

school property. They were on incorrigible. They were sent to the

Walter Reed School. I spent five years there. And we found, we found these boys that were

called incorrigible, that they needed

from simple, simple treatment. And the treatment was

that they needed males, we all male teachers, and they needed males

that cared about them. A couple of us used

to take these kids home to our homes and let them sit down

with our families. One young man who was 15 years old said it

the first time he ever sat down

to a table with a family was when he went to one of the

teachers homes. These children were

not incorrigible. These children wanted love, they wanted carry. One of, one of the

students in my group, that principle to come from the line when

we were growing up. And he asked the young man, he said, why do you

behave so well? It Mr. minutes class. And he said it's

very simple. He treats us like a father. These kids were desperate for her father's love, that they did not again, and as a result, we did

not save all of them. This is not a panacea

by any means. But we were able to

save a number of them and they followed

us through life. One young man turned

up in my office many years later

and told me. He said, I had

been looking for you for 26 years because that sort

of experience that he had at that

Walter Reed School. Another is a program the police department has. It's called, I see hope I see hope

these detectives, Liu squad arrest

these boys, but they don't

just arrest them. They continue

to follow them. They visit their homes, they counsel the mother, usually the mother called the father's not there. They they look

for people in the community who are willing to take

these males, were willing to

take these boys on, take them to their jobs, take them to their shops, and worked with them. And again, not a panacea. Not every boy

functions well, but they do, some do. The other is

called write mu, right moves for youth. And right moves for youth also is connected to

the police department. It was started

by a policeman who was arresting

these young men. And he found that Was a three he called it a

three-legged stool. That is to say

the policemen, the school and business person in the community that would take

these children on, these young boys on

and mentor them. And they found wonderful, wonderful success as

a result of that. There's a that there's

a proven track record that assist those school. The article that was NANDA Cisco school in Marlboro, Massachusetts. The, the, the, the, the writer of the article called the desist

though globe. This was Mike. The system might persist though. Started this school again very similar to the

Walter Reed school. He did pretty much

what we had done. We didn't even

know him, but we found out about him. Realize we're both pretty much on the right track. We allowed those young men to come to that school to set up a Code of

Conduct coming from them. How would you like,

how would you like this school

to be this class, for example, to be wrong? What would make you

feel comfortable? Surprisingly, they talked about

proper behavior. They talked about not

using obscene language. They made these, these

rules up themselves. And they made up the, the consequences for

not obeying the rules. It was it was

an eye opener. I cannot believe

the kinds of things that they did

in both the system and water reeds school. What

are we saying here? We are saying that these young men who

so desperately want, love, that, desperately

want carry, they will functions, they will, they

will function. I'm struck by the example and Genesis 22 with Isaac, Abraham and Isaac, they're going up

to Mount Moriah. And the Lord had told, told Abraham to

sacrifice his son. As they're going up. Isaac says to his

father, Father. He says here I

apparently and my son said Father, We have the fire and

we have the wood. But where is the land

for a burnt offering? And Abraham says to

his son, my son, God will provide a lab

for a burnt offering. And they went,

the two of them together says They

went on together. And if there's a key to dealing with

these young men, we need a father or a

father figure to walk alongside these young men to let them know that

they're cared for, to let them know that there's somebody

who loves it. Let them show them how it, how they can become productive young

men in the society. It's by walking

alongside of them, caring for them, watching

for their progress. Doesn't take much in church to spot these young guys and to check with them, take them out

for hamburgers, bring them over to

the house for cocoa. Those kinds of behaviors because we're looking at what we call a corrective

emotional experience. That is an experience that that child can have even though he maybe 15 or 16 that he didn't have, he was three or four. And that caring on the part of

adult males can, can act as a corrective emotional

experience where he now can have the

experience at age 14, 15-16 that he did not have when he

was two or three. I I painted a rather

dismal picture of teenage males at risk. But I want to

leave you with this that I am convinced

for my experience, I'm convinced

by the Word of God that correction

can take place, that these young men

can turn around. And the reason that

I know it is true because I was one of

these teens at risk. I was getting involved

with risky behavior as a teenager hanging out with the wrong person. Of course, my

father never do it. I would sneak out

of the house, do all kinds of things

to be with them. Thank the Lord, that I

had a godly parentage, I had a gladly household, and I was not able

to goal but so far. And at the age of 16 and the Lord touched my life, so I praise God for that. And I believe that if

you do that with meat and do that with

these young men that we've been

talking about. We can indeed turn around

this situation for these young men can become productive

and serve them.

When Kids Go Bad: Dealing with Anger, Defiance and Rebellion

When kids start going bad and sort of the anxiety

and stress that, that creates on the

family and with parents. And what we want to do is really hop right into this problem and describe it some many, many times. The most common reason that parents seek help for their teenager

is because of problems with anger

and defiance, where they feel

like they've sort of lost control

of their teenager. And they really don't know exactly what

they can do. And they feel sort of lost and out of

control themselves. And what we wanna do today is describe a little

bit of this problem. What, what kind of things

are involved in it? We're going to talk about

anger and defiance. And in a non

complicated form, we're not gonna talk

about teenagers who are using substances, who were involved in highly self-destructed or major rule-breaking

behavior. But we want to talk

about the kids who become very moody. They become angry, they are easily frustrated. They often appear

to be grumpy. They isolate themselves, especially from the family. This a little bit

different from isolating themselves

and their peers. It just tends to be that when they're at home, they tend to pull away

from from the family. They want to spend

time in the room, they closed the doors. There's a lot

more secrecy and privacy kinds of

concerns that they have. And there's quite a bit

of arguing, fighting, frustration going on in the family about this. And parents are

quite concerned. Some of these kids will

meet the criteria for what's known as

oppositional defiant disorder. As opposed to kids who are who have been

struggling most of their life with

problems with behavior, perhaps have attention

deficit disorder, and are developing some serious

conduct problems such as running

away from home, substance abuse problems, and problems with the law. The approach that

we want to use today will in fact work with those children. But we're not

in those teens, but we're not

going to address those problems per se. Now, for those of you

who are counselors, just want to

keep in mind and think about the way that, that teenagers

actually come to therapy is important. It's, it's more than just a coincidence that that parents bring the

children to see. Most of the time you're

not going to see a teenager call your office and in schedule appointment out of their own

their own desire, you're not going

to see a kid. Say, Gee Mom, I really think I'd

like to go talk to one of those counselors. That that's not

normally the way that you're going

to get these kids. It's going to be a parent who is very anxious, very concerned,

very worried, maybe very angry with

this child who is bringing the child in in generally it's against

the the teens. Will. So keeping

that in mind. We would probably want to highlight and

emphasize for you that, that this problem

itself is going to require that you address the family, the

family systems. And in specifically, you want to address

the parents because they have much more concerned about

this problem than the teenager

themselves. So we'll talk about some of the strategies

and some of the approaches

for dealing with with the parent's

concerns as we go along. Now, one of the

things that we that we want to

just sort of jump right into this problem. I want to put a bit

of a context to it. Most of you are

aware of this. I'm going to

cover it pretty quickly so that we'll

have a lot more time to spend on the strategies

and approaches that we try to help parents learn and, and

for kids to learn. First of all, as

most people know, adolescence is a very

big time of change. Massive changes are going on at this point in time. Beginning at

the body level. What you see of course, is our bodies

begin to change. And there's hormones now that are flowing

through the system that changes just the

way that they feel. With boys, more

testosterone, girls start getting

hormonal changes and they have to deal with

these changing events, the way they perceive

themselves of their body and their relationship

to their peers. You also start to see

changes in the brain. And now this is

very important. There's massive changes

going on the brain. As kids become more capable of thinking, more, more capable of

thinking abstractly, they're more capable of

learning information. There. Their

processing speed is, is, is getting better. And one of the

things that you'll notice about kids

at this time is that they start

to figure out that they're basically just

as smart as you are. They, they don't

know as much as you. They haven't had the

life experience, but they kind of

are aware that they're processor

their computer chip, update it a little

faster than yours. And if you will, like any other

developmental skill that a child gets, just like when

a child learns to to start walk. And what they do is they want to walk everywhere, they want to

run everywhere. And when kids start getting these new cognitive skills, they really want to

try him on for size, which means they're going to want to challenge you and the logic

that you use. And whereas when

a child younger, 5-6, seven uneven eight, nine-year-old,

you can say well, you can respond to why questions by simply

saying, because, Well, as you become more abstract and you become a little bit more logical, that's not going to

be quite satisfied. So, so that's part of the challenge

that's gone on for teenagers in, at the next level though. And what's really important to keep in mind is that their self-awareness

starts to come on board. Their capacity

and their brain now is to reflect

on themselves. And this becomes

overwhelming because they are

caught up in two kinds of concerns and actually two kinds

of thinking fallacies. The first one is to

spotlight fallacy. Most kids actually

think that they're living their

life on a stage. And they have this sort of subjective awareness

that everyone, everywhere is sort of really super

focused on them. And the second

one is what we call the brush

fire fallacy, which is if anything

is wrong with you, people are going

to pick it up and then begin to sort

of spread the news. They'll tell to people and then they'll tell to people and then on

and on it goes. So this is, this is important for them because they sort of have

this sense that they're a movie star being watched by

the paparazzi. And they're very

sensitive to anything that would suggest that they're not that

they're not okay, not really developing

in the right way. Now the, the next, the next piece

is they've got some more

developmental needs that are coming on board. I want to highlight

a couple of them. The most important

developmental need that starts to come

out in adolescence. It kids are trying to

define who they are. So that's at the core of what what begins

in adolescence, prior to adolescence

and Preet, pre-adolescence and

in middle childhood, kids really think

of themselves basically as an extension

of their parents. And parents feel really

good about that. Because their kids will behaviorally just

go along with what, what their parents

basically want. When kids become teenagers, they begin to define

who they are. And one of the things that you do and

you start to define who you are as you try to define

who you are not. So that's where kids begin to move away from and withdrawal from

the family and begin to move

toward their peers. And you'll see this at the beginning

of adolescence. And as per, as

adolescents progresses, you're going to see that kids want to actually

have sort of their own life with their peers that

they don't want the parents to know about in this can seem

very secretive. But in fact, they're

just trying to create sort of a different life that's independent

of the family. And then finally, as they go into later

adolescence, they begin to integrate the idea of having a relationship with

their parents. Their new roles as

adolescents who they are, what they believe, what

their value system really is in a more

internalized way. They're not just

trying to stay out of trouble or keep from

getting caught. They're actually trying to figure out what they believe and why

they believe it. This is hugely important. Then they can

begin to develop a better relationship

that balances both family and

peer concerned. We want to keep in mind

that the whole goal in adolescence, in what many

parents have as their underlying

concern is they want their child

to turn out OK, a productive

participant in society. But they also want them to internalize

their worldview, their value system. In the difficult thing

is that you have to realize that in order

for them to do this, they have to go

through some trial, some tribulation,

some struggle. So with that in mind, what we want to talk about and what we're moving to is the challenge

for the family system. The challenge for

the parents to create a context that allows their child to

learn how to do this. So with that in mind, we want to talk to

parents about using what we call secure

base parenting. Another way of

describing this is some authors

referred to it as is it's called parenting

from the inside out. And what this

does get net is, as your child's brain

is actually developing. The brain requires different kinds

of challenges, different kinds

of stimulation in order for it to learn

how to do some, some of the very

important task. Now what I want to do

real quickly for use, describe five

cognitive task that a teenager needs

to be able to master. The, the issue

here is that they basically have

these skills. They may not have deficits per se in any of them, but they don't really

know how to use them altogether

at the same time, It's kind of like a

great baseball team that has a bunch of

great players on it, but they can't actually

play together. We kid around

sometimes we baseball fans and talk about the New York Yankees

who, who struggle. They have the

largest payroll in baseball and they

have lots of stars. But as a team they don't necessarily always

play well together. So what you can see with the teenagers that they

can actually be very bright and very social and sometimes

seem very mature. But the issue is

can they do it around when the pressure's on and when they're feeling emotionally

challenge. So secure base pair, a teen as it approached

apparent team that uses certain skills

that will T2, that challenges your

child's brain to grow in this way. Now, that being

said, let's, let's move into

let's move into the process of helping parents with kids who

are angry and defy it. Now. Now the first

thing to keep in mind is that parents are very upset and anxious and worried

about this. And what we tend

to suggest is that if you have

your, your choice in, sometimes you should make a choice to either

treat the, the, the family first,

usually the parents, and then the adolescent. If you start with

the adolescent or you're trying

to work with both the adolescent,

that parent. Nine times out of ten, you're gonna

get sucked into this polarized system

and you're going to, you can very easily

crash and burn. So this approach

is going to focus primarily on working

with the parent. And then eventually

the child can come into the

into the system. But until you teach

parents he's skills, it will typically go the way it normally does, which is not very good. Now, what we want to

help parents realize is that actually

the very problem that they're coming in for, those noncompliance, the

anger, the defiance. Are actually the situations that we want to

focus on with it. Because those are

the situations where kids are trying to learn how to use

their brain correctly. Now, these are called the, these moments where

parents and kids have arguments

about core issues, like privacy issues,

about curfew, issues about homework

and peer issues. There. They all fit into what we call

compliance interactions. Now, there's three

goals that we try to, actually four

goals that we try to teach and compliance

interaction. We tell parents when

you have these, these are what we want

you to keep in mind. The first goal

is you want to take Parent's concern

seriously, right? Usually parents are

making a request. Child is saying, no, I

don't wanna do that. I want to do this. But we still want to take parent

concern seriously, but we also want to take the child's

concerns seriously. Alright? So both of them want to be

taken seriously. That doesn't mean that one wins, the

other one loses. Third in probably one of the most important goals

is that we want to prevent meltdowns

and explosions. Those are never helpful. There never good in nobody learns

anything from them. And they tend to break systems apart, not

pull them together. And in, in eventually. We want parents to

help kids learn how to think, feel, and relate. At the same time. A lot of kids

can think they can feel and

they can relate, but doing them at

the same time during a conflict oriented

situation, a compliance interaction, where you want something, you want your child to do something they

don't want to, or your child

wants you to do something and you

don't want to. These compliance

interactions are the time when we want them to learn how to think, feel, and relate all

at the same time. When you do that, then you're creating a situation where your child

can begin to use these cognitive skills, an internalized the value systems that you're trying to

communicate to him. So those things being said, we want to we want to move into compliance

interaction. Now, when you're in a

compliance interaction, the thing you want to keep in mind is that you have three options

available to you. Alright, this is what

we teach parents. One of the things that you can do is you can go through one of these

compliance interactions with parents where you

get them to describe a specific time as

specific place, where they were having

a conflict with their child about

a specific issue. We'll talk more

about that later. But Ana compliance

interaction, you got three choices or three pathways

that you can take. Pathway a is the

pathway that typically parents use

that can backfire. It's the pathway

that eventually got him to see you. Alright? This is

a pathway where parents are going to absolutely force

their concern. Alright? Which

always leads to an escalation of conflict, flick and an explosion. It's essentially

where parents try to use that skill

set where you may have been

successful in child was younger and saying

you're gonna do this, this is what you're

going to do. It's not open

to discussion. And it turns into quite a, quite

an explosion. You're second pathway, we're going to

call it pathway C, because it's at

the other end of the continuum

is going to be, it's going to

basically have three possibilities here

and pathway C, The first one is the one that parents most dislike. And we don't recommend. It's the overindulgence or the overly

permissive pathway. It's where you drop

the concern just because it's not because you don't think the

concerns important. It's just that

you don't care. Now if you use that as

your primary approach, you as a parent, you wouldn't be in

to see a counselor. Alright, so that's

usually not the problem, but it's what parents

are afraid of. Your other use of

pathway C though is, well, one of them

is acceptance. There's certain

things that kids do, teens do that

we don't like, but they're a normal

part of teenagehood. Namely, they want to

have their doors closed. They want to talk

to their friends with that, you

listen in in. They want to be on the computer and email and text message their friends. They want to go

to baseball games or football games and movie theaters without parents necessarily

attending these, these these are often very core concerns to kids. And depending

on the parent, some of these need

to be accepted. Alright, now, your

next strategy and the one we want

to talk about the most is what we call that, where the temporary

dropping of a concern. Now the reason

you drop it is only because right now is not a time when you can actually resolve

the concern. There's too much conflict, there's too much anger, there's too much tension going on that no one can actually

think straight. So we'll talk a little bit more about the

temporary dropping of a concern that you will eventually follow

up with pathway B. Now, pathway B is the pathway that obviously takes the middle road. It's a pathway where parents are going to work on this secure

base parenting. We sometimes also call it the emotion

coaching pathway, or the collaborative problem-solving

skill pathway. This is the pathway that if it's

done correctly, is a time that you

can actually change your team from

the inside out. Now, let's talk about what's involved

in pathway B. This is the skill set that we try

to teach you as a parent to use with your team or to use

with your angry, defiant child. They

work with both. There's there's five skills that you'll use here and a compliance interaction. And actually we try to use them in this order. So if a parent and

child is arguing about a curfew time in parents decided it's going to

be nine o'clock in. The child wants to be

able to stay out till 930 with a friend who's going to go into

a movie or, or they have some

special reason they want to

stay out later. Empathy is when

a parent allows that child to express what is your concern, right? So the child says,

well, you know, I think I can

stay out later. I I can handle that better than what

you think I can. Acknowledging the concern

is what empathy is. F30 is not necessarily saying yeah, you're right. Empathy means

you're able to basically stay back to the to the child, okay. So you want to be

able to stay out later than nine o'clock. You think that you can

handle a curfew that's that's later than what

we've already said. You're you're trying

to give it back to them in a non-judgmental

way that says, do I have this right? If you get it right,

your teenager is actually going to say, yea, you got it. And you'll actually

find that a de-escalate some

of the conflict. Empathy does not

mean that you have to be wishy washy. It doesn't mean

you have to go all you poor baby ie, you don't wanna

patronize him. Now, the second skill is what we call

assertiveness. Assertiveness is where

you're going to state what your concern is. Now, this is a hard

skill for parents to learn because

they actually have to statewide

is that they want the rule the

way that it is. It's not necessarily

saying well, this is the rule. It's what I said. And what I said goes, that's not what

assertiveness is here, what we want you

to do, state what your core concern is. In other words,

if you stay out past nine into 930, then you're going to you're going to start

to think that you can always stretched

to limit or you can always live outside what the limits are that we set or that you have some

safety concerns, are that they

need more sleep or whatever that

concern is. But it's not asserting what your solution is

that that's pathway, a pathway, ice as

well in a nice way. You're going to

do what I just said and there's

no talk about why. Now when you do that, your when you do pathway a, there's no skill

building here. There's no working on taking each

other seriously, And there's no

work on building these cognitive skills that we want the kids

to work on. Now, the next skill is one that you have

to use throughout. And I actually

find it's one of the most challenging

skills for us parents and for

teaching parents. And it's called Respect. Respect is, has a number

different meanings. But what it does mean at its most base level

is that simply you refuse to be mean and nasty even if your teenager is being mean and nasty. Now a lot of times parents will

object to this. But we think that

it's incredibly scriptural that you're going to model respect rather than just demanded. And there's two kinds of respect type one respect is the respect that where you say you're gonna, I'm only going to respect people who respect me. And we don't actually

think that that's biblical respect. It seems that the

Scripture advocates that one is respectful even when others aren't. And for us to

be able to ask our children to be

respectful means that we have to model it. It also means that we don't use disrespect as a

form of punishment. There's basically

no scriptural basis for using it that way. And it tends to provoke

children to wrath. That's one of the best ways to get them really angry, is if we use disrespect. As a form of punishment. And then finally,

respect means that you are not going

to judge your team. You're not going to,

you're not going to assume the worst

about them. In fact, you're

gonna give them benefit of the

doubt at times. That doesn't mean

that you become a pushover or that you just sort of always take them at their word. But you're, you're not

necessarily going to judge them in and

really put them down. So keep that in mind. It's terribly important

because parents will often violate it

when they get angry. And it's easy to do bad thing is that our kids, I'll put it right

back toward us. Now, once he is in empathy, assertiveness,

and respect, what you're

actually doing for your child is

that your you're, you're creating this

context for them to begin working

on these core, these core

cognitive skills. I want to review

with you very quickly what these

cognitive skills are. Because without

the empathy, without the assertiveness, without the respect, you can't begin

to work on him. And if your kids can't

work on these skills, they can internalize

your values and in your worldview

in a meaningful way. Now they can mimic it. They can learn how

to comply with it. But compliance is simply a surface level thing. What we want is deeper

change that in the, in the heart and it

actually in the brain. Now the cognitive skills

that kids need to be able to use our

problem-solving. Problem-solving

is being able to state what a problem is and generate a

range of solutions. Select one of the solutions and then monitor how it works if it's not

work and then you change it and you go back to the drawing board. These kids can do this. They don't do it well

when they're upset. The next cognitive skill is learning cognitive

flexibility. Kids who are inflexible

and parents who are inflexible tend to

see things in black, white, all nothing

either or I win, you lose kinda categories. When you do that, you tend to gets, you tend to find that

your emotions go from 0 to 200 very quickly. And you tend to, to make mountains

out a mole hills in, and you can blow

up very easily. The third skill is what we call language

processing skills. This is your ability, your child's ability to actually state what

it is that they want, what it is that

they feel in a way that is concise

and makes sense. Teenagers have a

hard time with it. So when you ask

them, you know, how do you feel

about that or what is it that you want? And they say, I don't know, it can actually be correct. So you act, you

have to work with them to help them figure

that out at times. All right, now the, the, the next skill that we work on is emotion regulation. Emotion regulation

is the ability to handle your anger,

handle Europe sadness, and handle your

frustration in a way that, that, that allows you

to solve problems. If you have too much of the anger to much

of the emotion, you can't deal with it. Then you can't solve

problems and you can accomplish some

of the goals that you shoot before. And then finally,

you want to work on the social skills. This is the ability

to negotiate, ability to collaborate, and the ability to stay in a problem-solving

interaction with someone while

you're thinking and why you're feeling. Now. You have to actually

have practice using these skills in

order to learn them. And. And so one of the things

that we want to, we want to keep in mind is that if you simply

use pathway a, you're going to bypass learning this skill set. And for your child,

learn a skill set. If you only use pathway C when you

drop the concern, but you never come

back and put it in pathway B terms which we're gonna talk about

in a few minutes, your child still doesn't learn those

cognitive skills. Now, when parents come into therapy with

their teenager, there's usually too

much conflict going on. And that's usually because parents are over-relying on pathway B skills. All all. I mean, I'm sorry. They're relying too

much on pathway a there there arguing, enforcing concerns and

their child is just resisting and define and both of them

become polarized. So one of the first

things that we began with parents is we want to begin to educate them on the model that

we're talking about, about the idea of

secure base parity and the idea that we want to train children

how to think, feel, and relate

at the same time to internalize values. And that this is

a process that unfolds from about age 13 really until

about age 181920. And that it's a

slow process. It's not a pressure cooker, microwave kind of thing. It's sort of a slow

cook crockpot idea. So parents want to

rush their kids through this and it really takes years to learn it. So the next thing

that we do then is we teach them

the ABC model. And we begin by

teaching them how to use C. That may seem odd, but the reason that you see is that you want to eliminate a lot

of the conflicts. And and we tell

parents that they need to reduce

the rules that they have at home to begin with to a very base level. Right? Now, parents

get very shaky, very concerned about

this thinking that their child is

just going to go absolutely crazy

if they do. And it's important for them to see that the

child actually won't. So usually these would

include things like, you know, you're

going to have to go to school. You gotta do your homework. That there are curfews and there's a

certain amount of participation around

the house as far as chores and these things go depending on the kid, you may only be

able to have your school concerns and the homework concerns and the curfew concerns. And that's about it. If your child's

breaking those rules, they may be more into juvenile

delinquency and may have a conduct disorder rather than just oppositional

defiance, but coming back to the kids that we deal with or that we're

talking about here. They they they tend

to have a lot of conflict around smaller rules with

their parents. Now, if you can get parents to put things into the C category to begin with, that's

only short-lived. What we do then is

that we begin to pick one problem at a time and we begin to work on

it with the parents. Now to do this, we use what's called

agenda setting. Now, agenda setting is where we help the parent describe a specific problem that they're having

with the child. So it might be that the child wants

to go to the room, closed the door, and they don't want the parents to know what they're

doing in there. They want to work on

work on their homework. They might even want

to be on the computer. In the parent is very nervous and anxious

about what this means. The idea here is, we only work on

one problem. And when we do that in

the agenda setting, we want the parents to describe when

this problem has occurred and when

they tried to talk to their teenager about using this problem. About this problem, we

want them to describe a specific time and a specific place

where this happened. Now, the problem here is that parents

will often want to use the often want to use very globalized

blaming language. He always this, she never that when I do this, they never this,

they never that this language is

impossible to work with. You want to describe

a specific time, a specific place, and

actually what was said. Alright, so be aware

of the challenge in setting the agenda

and getting a specific time and place. The next thing that

we want parents to do is you'll do this

with them as it, you'll use what we

call the three column situation analysis

sheet, right? And we have this included

in your handouts. Now what this does is it helps you helps the parents describe sort

of the context in which this this

argument occurred, where you were, what

time of day it was. We really want

them to be very specific and describe exactly what it was that the child said that

was upsetting. Okay. In this argument, we want to hone in

that specifically, what was it that

your child said into describe it as close

as a Canada verbatim. The next is we want

you to describe exactly what you

said verbatim Not I said something to the effect of or

basically I said, we actually want it the way you said it,

what you said. And third, we

want to them to describe what

was the outcome. Had the child respond to your statement and

ask this question, did what you say make

things better or worse in terms of where this this conflict

was going. Now, when we get

this in place, we want parents very

specifically to examine how well they

did in terms of the E, a are skills that

we talked about. Now the EAR skills, again, did they

use empathy? Did they use assertiveness, and did they use Respect? Okay. If they didn't

use those three skills, it would be

impossible for them to get anywhere

with her child. It means that they're

going to probably move back the pathway a, it turns into a

huge explosion. Now, this brings us back to the skills that we're trying to teach parents. Okay? We're looking at empathy or looking

at assertiveness. We're looking at respect. We want to add

two more skills if parents use those. Okay. So if you're saying

to your child yes, I understand

that you want to stay out later

for your curfew. My concern is that you're not going

to be back in time to get enough sleep for the test that

you have tomorrow, or that you're not going

to have enough time to study for your test. And at this point you have actually

set the table. You've been respectful. You haven't said

something like, you know, you're

always trying to break the rules. You you always are trying

to test the limits. Why can't you just

do what I say? You set the table. And now you're going to

add another skill. You're going to

invite the teenager. Okay, so this is

called invitation. You're going to say, so what can we do about it? You want to stay out later? I want to make sure you

study for the test. What can we do about

it? At this point? We want the teenager

to come up with some ideas about

what kind of solution can we find

for this problem. Now, we've actually moved to them using their

problem-solving brain. Okay? We're

helping them keep the emotional brain intact and calming it down. But now we want to

use the other part of the brain

that they don't use a lot of time, which is the problem-solving

brain, right? And depending on the

solutions they come out or come up with, this is where we begin to collaborate with them. In other words, if

the child says, well, I don't really

I don't really care about the

class that I had, the Mar and I

don't really care what kind of grade I get. If you've got that

kind of response, it might be,

well, you know, I can understand empathy that you don't really care about those grades, that you don't

really care about those that class. But it is important

to us you're, the grades that you

get are important. And we want you to

be prepared for it. So that solution is

not really working. Do you have an idea

of a way that we can, you know, take your concern my concern both seriously. If a child comes

up with, you know, I can study ahead of time for the test and put it in an hour or so

before we get there. Then we can you can actually work toward coming up with a solution

that can work. Now, this may sound

oversimplified, but it's hugely important because

you're keeping the parent focused as doin the

problem-solving, as they're doing

the collaboration, that parent has to resist their own impulses

to be disrespectful, to judge their child, that those things

won't work. We really want parents to learn how to use

this skill set. I've taught it to literally hundreds

and hundreds of parents when they use it, it's incredibly

effective. Okay? Now, one of the things that you've

probably recognized is we need to talk a little bit

more about pathway B. And the reason for this is that there's two

kinds of pathways B. There's the crisis

orient it pathway B. And that means

that you wait until the problem

is upon you. And in the middle of it, then you start

trying to use the empathy and the assertiveness

in the respect, which at that point in time both you and

your child or too angry to

effectively do that. Sometimes then

you have to punt and go to pathway C and, and temporarily drop it and come back to the issue. Now this is

important because it's not usually on

most of the issues, it's not going to be detrimental to your child. You're not you're

not saying yes, it's okay that

you can go out and drink with your

friends this weekend. That, that's not what

we're talking about. Most of these are less crisis

oriented than that. The best way of

using pathway B is more on a

preventative basis. In parents have a hard

time seeing this, but the problems

that their children struggle with and what

they bring them in, the issues that they

argue about are very predictable and they tend to happen the same time, same place,

weekend, weekend, week out, day in, day out. So if we can help parents predict when these

problems are going to arise and be in and work with their

child on the problem, addressed the

problem before it actually gets there, such as, you know, Sally, it it is it's Wednesday and I

know that you're probably cook up some plans for this weekend

with your friends. I know that next week you've got some

test coming up. It's it's, you

know, it's getting close to those

standardized tests. And I'm wondering if on Friday you're going to want to stay out later, but not really have

a lot of homework done or you're

going to have something planned

over the weekend. So let's talk

about that now. Before we get there, instead of later until we're right in the

heat of battle and the Child tells

you at 430 on Friday afternoon

that they want to go do something with

their their friends. So when we teach parents how to

use pathway B in a more preventative style and to be able to predict when this problem's

going to come up, it works

tremendously better. As opposed to waiting for the heat of the moment. Now that's just a, a sort of a brief introduction

to the skill set. There's a lot of

things that go on in teaching it. There's a lot of

things that go into learning how to use

it effectively. We think it's very Biblically consistent on a lot of

different levels. It's about teaching

our kids how to take these values inwardly

and use them. And when parents

actually model this, their children can benefit a great deal because

it's teaching them. Again exactly

what they have to learn is to think, to feel interrelate

at the same time. Now, to wrap things up, I just want to touch on a few issues that come to play with with the

family systems. In part, what we've

been talking about is the developmental

process that unfolds between

parents and kids. And in the

developmental processes that are going on

inside the child. But if you'd noticed, the developmental

process inside the child are affected by

the family system. So in part, it's the unique

characteristics that the child's bringing

into the situation, into their own life, their own ability

to think, feel, and relate.

That's God-given. And the family creating a context for these skills to actually develop. So it's kinda

like a kid who has a certain amount of athletic skill and he wants to get better than

what he actually is, then he has to

expose himself to an environment

that challenges and beyond when he

can already do. If you're simply

asking him to do what he does well and you're

not challenging him, that he's not going to

grow in that skill. And every kid's different. Every kid needs

more challenge or less challenge

depending on who it is. So we have to work with that family

system once we teach the parents

these skills and they begin to use them, them when they have problems that they

can't resolve. We can pull them

into the session with their teenager

and begin to help them use these

skills with their child. Sometimes we videotape

it, sometimes. Then we'll go back with the parent later and

look at the film and spend time

going over it and asking them how

they did it. Have to be very

careful here to use a lot of

empathy because parents are very

sensitive about how they do in these, in

these instances. But use a lot of empathy,

a lot of support, and to give them some

corrective feedback on, on how they felt

they were doing in terms of each of the skill sets that we're teaching. Now at some of

the family zone, some of the issues

that you'll have to deal with include this. The first is that there's the

polarized family. That usually means that you have one parent who uses a lot of a parenting, a lot of authority,

authoritarian, a lot of, you know, it was sort of

very rigid rules. And then the

other one who's very lays off fair. And they tend to like the sea approach

to parenting. They want to drop concerns and they can

be overindulgence. And they kind of

battle back and forth. And what we're trying

to do is get them to both use B more. Another thing that

you'll need to do for each of these

parents is to identify what some of some of their

core fears are, that the parent who's

an a parent who does pathway a and wants to stick

with pathway, has a lot of core fears about what would happen if they

didn't use it. The one who uses pathway

C all the time but won't use b also has fears. We want to help

parents identify these fears and also spend some time exploring with them what the origins

of those fears are. And they can be varied. It's not that there's

any one origin. Sometimes they could

have had their own wild and crazy

adolescent years and they want their

child to avoided. They had a sibling who

got way out of hand. Or they've been exposed to a lot of things

that say that teenagers have to be very tightly reined or else they're

going to blow it. You have to use

your own empathy, assertiveness, and

respect skills. You have to use your

own invitation and collaborative collaboration skills with these parents, uh, you will model

it with them, and then you must

deal with resistance. There's a certain

amount of resistance that comes with

this on parents. Again, using the empathy, using the the

assertiveness in that respect skills will help facilitate and work through the resistance

with parents. But one of the things

that we like to use is a cost-benefit

analysis with, with them that they'll begin to use the approach, they'll begin to resist it. We'll talk about what some of their fears are. But cause benefit analysis

is where you ask, actually have the

parents stay and look at what are the

costs and what are the benefits of

using pathway. Pathway B? Some of

the cost is exact. Some of the costs or

the represent the fears that the parent has that

if I use pathway B, my child's going

to learn how to walk over top of me. I'm going to lose power. They're going to think that they can get away with anything and

they're gonna grow up to be bad kids. It's very important

for parents to be able to unpack

what these fears are and what their

perceived costs are in using this

approach to parenting. But we also want

them to ask what is the cost of

using pathway a? Remember, the

failure of pathway a is what got the parents here in the first place. It has not been working. And it's important

for you not to downplay their

concerns that you have to use a lot of empathy in a lot of understanding. But also highlight

the fact that using pathway a with them will only make the

problem worse. In, in, in review

with them, the history of it,

the effectiveness, and how it work. Sometimes there's

a resentment because the parent

themselves, as they grew up,

their parent use primarily pathway a. And that what they had

to learn how to do was essentially they

wouldn't question anything that

their parents did. They didn't do

it externally. They may have done

it internally. Sometimes you need to

talk to him about that. Sometimes your

children are very different from

what they are. Again, a high degree of empathy is used

around they're, they're perceived fear, the perceived cost

around pathway B. And then also helping

them identify what the call star

for using pathway a. And you'll also come

to the benefit side. What are some of the potential

benefits of pathway? Sometimes the benefits are, are, are paradoxical. For example, parents

feel like they're in control when

they use pathway a, they feel like

they have a way of managing their own anxiety about their kids

growing up. Some parents are very nervous about

their children growing up because

they've seen their children,

his confidant. They're even anxious and angry about their children moving away from

them emotionally because they feel lonely, or they rely on their child for

emotional support. These are important

and you need to take them seriously and even help parents label

these concerns because sometimes they're not very

good at doing that. But if you address

these things, you addressed

the resistance. In fact, you expect the resistance

and deal with it. And at the same time, teach them a skill set and consistently bring

them back to it and consistently encourage

them and support them and understand how hard it is to

actually use it. And also support and

be empathic about their wish and

their desire that they could just

get their child through this

period of time, that the child would

just sort of easily get it and in turn out OK. It's a very

understandable desire, but not one that's

necessarily realistic. When you're using

these approaches with the kids, with the parents. It, again, you can see very remarkable changes. We've covered a

lot of skill, a lot of information in just a short

period of time. There's a lot of

great anecdotes and stories that I have about parents that I've

worked with on this. Many of them find that

they can redevelop a relationship

with their child that they'll begin

to share with them, concerns about other

areas of their life. And there's even a

reduction in some of the secrecy in some of the withdrawn this that

they dislike so much about their

adolescent child. And then finally,

keeping in mind the job yourself can be pretty stressful. And you have to manage your own frustration

and even some of your own anger when you try to work with

the system that can have so much emotion

imbedded in it. And then finally, you can begin to bring

the teenager in. And as you're having discussions about

these topics, what you begin to

do is try to step back and allow them to work it through without you necessarily being

as involved. One thing to keep

in mind is that as the tension starts to go up and they sort of are arguing back and forth with each other. You can get them to, to channel it

back through you. So you become sort of the, the empathy machine forum that kinda

reregulate and get the emotions come back down and then get them back into

problem-solving. And these are just

some of the, the, the, the little things that

we work on when we're training our therapists how to use this approach. Hope that you can

find that helpful and useful in your practice

and your work with, with teenagers and

their families. And if you're a

parent, begin to try some of

these skills. And, and we have

some resources available to you

in our manual of how to get more

information on using motion coaching

and collaborative problem-solving

skills with your kid.

Hallway of Doors

For family doc cheers, Dr. James Dobson,

Let's talk today about

lifelong addiction. Switch off and began during the

adolescent years. Imagine if you will, a long dark hallway with a series of doors

on either side. Written on each

door is the name of an addiction such

as alcoholism, smoking marijuana, hard drugs, gambling,

***********. And so now every

teenager must walk down that hallway

on the journey from childhood

to adulthood. And the temptation is very great to open one or

more of those doors. They can hear the

beat of the music, raucous laughter

of their friends. And it's very

difficult to convince loving adolescent

that he or she should stay on

the dark hallway, which seem so boring

and embarrassing. Unfortunately for a

certain percentage of individuals who open one or more of those

dangerous doors, a tragedy against them

for a person who's susceptible and you never know in advance who

those people are. Only asked to crack the

door uninterrupted. And a monster will

run out and grab. Some will be held in its power for the

rest of their lives. Talk to an alcoholic about how the

addiction happy. He or she will

probably tell you that it began casually with no hint that

life was about to take a radical

and tragic turn. It all started

with the the door. Probably in the teen years. Dr. James Dobson

for Family Talk.

Teenage Attitudes

How does a happy, cooperative 12-year-old

boy or girl suddenly turn into a solid,

depressed 13-year-old. Here's Dr. James Dobson

with family talk. There are two

powerful forces that overtake our kids in the early years and

account for some of the strange behavior that drives parents crazy. The first is

social in nature, with incredible

pressures being inflicted on adolescence

by the peer group. But the second,

and I think more important is

hormonal in nature. We can see the effect of these hormones on

the physical body, of course. But something

equally dynamic is occurring in the brain. Human chemistry

apparently goes haywire for a few years, affecting mind

as well as body. This internal upheaval were motivate a boy or a

girl to do things that make absolutely no sense to the adults watching anxiously on the sidelines. There's a tendency

for parents to despair during this

period of transition. Everything they've tried to teach their sons and daughters seems to have misfires for several years. Self-discipline,

cleanliness, respect for authority,

the work ethic, even common courtesy may look like lost causes, but there's good news, better days are coming. I promise. That's why perhaps the very

best advice I can offer at this time is don't look too quickly

for the person. Your child will become. Dr. James Dobson

for Family Talk.