adolescents – Inspiring Change LLC

Gender Control & Body Shame: The Purity Movement

Nothing makes me sadder than the way a part of the Christian family, the conservative evangelical community, has shamed women for their gender, leadership and sexuality. In the 1990’s, a bizarre, controlling movement spread in churches to have young women be told that sexual purity was their responsibility alone; that young men were so weak that they couldn’t control their sex drive. Girls were trained to pledge their “purity” until marriage at the cost of their integrity and sense of self. Girls were indoctrinated to such a degree that their sexual expression was wrapped in shame, guilt and fear to traumatic degree.

I hope that any woman for whom this story is a personal one will seek care with a good, skilled mental health therapist who has religious training and deep background. I work with such women.

Want to learn more about the way women have been shamed and controlled by this movement? Listen to this recent Fresh Air broadcast in which Teri Gross interviews the author of the new book, “Pure.” https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/09/18/649070416?showDate=2018-09-18

What is Structural Family Therapy?

I’m grateful to Sal Minuchin for helping us as family therapists understand, conceptualize and maneuver within the dynamic structures of families: the way that the emotional and legal connections of parents to their children over generations create fluid as well as fixed patterns of hierarchies, loyalties, rules, subsystems, coalitions and boundaries. While we may know these experiences instinctively, his theory gives us a vocabulary, structure and system of talking and thinking about these automatic family features.

I’m particularly glad for the way his ideas give us a way to talk about family power. How are marriages formed? How do parents use their power over children? What does it mean to be a grandparent, a sibling, a twin, a youngest or oldest child? Who creates the family rules? Who breaks them? Of critical importance is the way that this theory helps me to conceptualize children’s emotional dysfunction. I don’t have to think simply in individualistic, intrapersonal terms. I’m free to think, speak and intervene with children’s pain interpersonally by helping their parents better manage their own functioning, power, and relational well-being.

Every time I draw a new genogram, and hear about a conflicted marriage, a stressed child, or cut-off grandparents, and think about rules, power and family structure, I draw upon the core ideas of Minuchin and generations of clinicians after him who have helped us all become students of family structure.

1/2021: Here’s a great detailed look at Structural Family Therapy from a new counseling resource, Choosing Therapy: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/structural-family-therapy/

13 Reasons Why NOT

13 Reasons Why is a video series available on Netflix. If you’ve been told you NEED to watch this drama in order to understand teens now, I want to argue the opposite. I don’t believe that watching this series is necessary in order to understand teen cultures. Many viewers make this series sound as if it is presented as a documentary; it is not. It is a sensationalized, emotionally wrought fictional presentation of hours and hours of teen suffering and feels voyeuristic in its brutal and graphic portrayal of suicide. I managed to watch about 15 seconds of that scene and was so repulsed I turned it off.

Fictional, video streaming accounts of high school are not the way that our youth their own experience their lives. Parts of it, yes. Intense, highly edited with a powerful sound track? No. What this series does, I’m afraid, is double down on the visual trauma our youth are exposed to regularly. And we wonder why they are anxious, depressed, afraid and suicidal in greater and greater numbers?

If parents or counselors are curious, then watch a half hour or so. You won’t need any more exposure than that. I suggest it is completely unsuited for anyone, never mind teens. Watchers of any age are participating in reinforcing trauma. As a pastoral counselor and family therapist, I see the effects of too much trauma exposure daily. It’s very difficult to heal.

Just Kidding…..Not

I’ve had the pleasure of being around girls in their early teens quite a lot the past few years, and I have noticed a quirky turn of their conversation that has got me thinking.

One girl in the midst of a conversation with another girl will say something critical, blunt, or even hostile; pause; and then follow up immediately with a smile and “Just kidding!” Thinking it might have been a style of humor unique to one (particular) girl I know very well, I listened for it when these girls were together in groups, or chatting back and forth on Facebook, or in conversations I overheard while driving or waiting for them (I’m always waiting for them).

Over and over the same pattern. Critique, “just kidding,” then the other girl usually follows with a response that might be equally snarly and if not met with a light heart and smile in return. The first girl might answer with another blunt remark. Et cetera. I’ve often wonder how these relationships survive this emotional dodge and weave. And the answer is, many don’t.

I think that this particular stage of relationship building, coupled with the rocketing growth of body and brain in this age of adolescent girls makes this a way that girls are able to manage aggression with one another. In the same way that adolescent boys may push, poke and even swing at one another on a daily basis, girls push, poke and swing with words, attitudes and facial expressions that emote hostility and aggression.

I’ve not been reading the adolescent literature lately, and so I can’t quote the latest author that has put this observation into article or book form: I guarantee someone has had this thought before me. But I wonder if any one who is around this age group (11-17) of girls from a different part of the US or outside our country shares this or a different observation.

I know a few readers of this blog are living around the world in quite different cultures. If you have an observation, comment below. I’d love to hear what you’re hearing! No kidding.

The Adolescent Effect: Part 2

Parents of adolescents don’t have much fun.

Fun, for many parents of teenagers, is something they watch their children have. Fun at school, fun at the mall, fun on the playing field, fun at parties. What used to be happy times as a family with pre- and elementary school children has transitioned into good times for the teens, and being the ones who not only pay for those, but also drive the kids to and from these teen-centered events. Having given up weekend after weekend, night after night, to manage my children’s sports, music, church, school and friend events, I feel like an event planner. Always making things happen, invisible to the guests, never getting to sit at the head table or get out on the dance floor.

This is what many middle aged parents find when they get to the second decade of their children’s lives. A child centered life, but with no emotional reward. No smiling toddler looking back at you as they climb up the slide. No proud 10 year old eager to show you off to their teacher or coach. Instead, the parent must now watch their child’s back as they saunter, without a second glance, into the gym, store, house or ball field. The parent ready to drive, wait, and pick that child up when the event is through.

Do I sound resentful?

I have been thinking about my emotions around the lack of fun adult time in my life. Perhaps it has something to do with where we live, a suburb full of families in some stage of doing what we’re doing. Years back, when I lived in a small town, adults made time for one another and the kids were expected to come along. One of my closest friends, having moved to Alaska, regularly reports her time spent with other adults in her small town, running, eating, fund raising, skiing, church building. What happened back in our shiny suburb?

I know for my husband and me, these years of chauffeuring came on slowly, incrementally, at the same time we had to manage some serious work and health issues. It was like an emotional tossed salad, trying to keep it all together. We managed to keep the whole one piece, but the pleasure in parenting? the joy in the week? I’m looking, but it’s not so obvious anymore.

For families that don’t have the funds to finance big vacation cruises, or a second home on the lake, these adolescent days are hard. There is no natural escape. Add into these adolescent effects a divorce, or an elderly parent, a job loss or a health or financial crisis and you see why most of the families I see in therapy are families with teens. We are adults without the focus of small children, adults without the freedom of retirement or the adjustment of an empty nest. We are hobbled, and stressed, and under-appreciated.

We are struggling to re-define ourselves and what brings us joy. If we look chronically worn to you, don’t ask us to explain. Just give us a hand, and invite us to dinner. Without our kids.

The Adolescent Effect : Part 1

As our children are neck-deep into adolescence, I’m trying to pay attention to what this developmental transition does to our family relationships.

We are pretty early in the game. Son is 16, daughter is 13. We have gotten here relatively unscathed, moving through most of middle school with solid parent/child connections, positive opinions of one another and every body part accounted for (not counting wisdom teeth, sports injuries or general repairs). But lots has changed, and what has changed is worth noting.

1. We know less and less about our children’s lives at school. Moving from a single class room in elementary school into the maze of middle and high school meant an immediate and dramatic change: I don’t know my children’s teachers. I have gone to what passes for parent-teacher conferences in our district only to spend about 10 minutes per subject talking to each teacher about my child in their class. A few of the teachers stand out in their effort to talk to me about my children, and that has made a difference in how I talk about them at home, and how at ease I am in communicating with them. Some really do a great job keeping in touch with emails, but most have as much substance in my consciousness as ghosts. I wouldn’t know them to stumble upon them. I am no longer the advocate I used to be for my kid’s educations. I have little to no real information on these teachers, and they me. That seems a huge loss for my family. I don’t think of the teachers in my children’s lives as people I share my children’s education with. They have it during the school day, and I have given that influence up.

2. We know even less about our children’s friends and their parents. One of the more interesting things for me to observe in our family life is how friendships evolve. When the children were small, and we drove them everywhere, dropping them off for play time or events, we would spend time in the front halls of these homes talking with other parents and getting to know them personally. None of us would think of simply letting our 7 or 9 or 11 year old stay overnight with a family we hadn’t at least met face to face. And that circle of friendships was relatively small and interconnected. But as our children have grown older, and their friendship circle wider, we have loosened our expectations about knowing the parents, and focused a bit more on trying to know the friends. We’ve learned that the apples don’t fall too far from the trees, so if the child is solid and steady, we tend to believe the family is that way, too. This isn’t always the case, of course. I know this well, both in theory and in fact, some children are more steady than their parents. And this has occasionally caused some real drama. But in general, we have shifted from a parent-centered to a peer-centered assessment of where our children spend their time.

3. Our children still need us to be their fierce advocates, but in more subtle ways. Just when I think that our children no longer need me to do for them as much, to speak for them, to argue, plan or problem solve for them, I’m proven wrong. There is an adult they need to speak to, and they want me to do it. There’s a plan they need to make, and it didn’t get made, would I make it? There’s an appointment, a game, a tryout, a field trip form, a PSAT, youth group, lunch money, library book, driver’s ed class, special purchase, problem, or phone call that needs my help, my advice, my money, and my signature. Usually at the last minute, and often at my least flexible moments. But I have to hop to it, because in some ways, I am now the cleanup team. They have outgrown their childhoods, but haven’t quite grown into their adult selves. And it’s now my job, our job, to bend and flex in our parenting as they are in their development. We still defend and protect, just not so often and not so obviously.