Raising a Teenager

A friend of mine posted a link to an article on parenting teenagers that for some reason "struck a nerve" with me. The article is an interview with psychologist Dr. Wendy Mogel with regard to her new book "The Blessing of a B Minus". I would link to the article here, but for some reason my blogging skills aren't that developed.

I felt compelled to organize my mixed responses to this article, so, as a result, I offer the choppy, rambling, responses below in terms of my agreement and disagreement with the psychologist interviewed.

AGREEMENT:
“Parents should not shield children from mishaps, but teach them to learn from their experiences.”

“Parents should be less obsessed with achievement and college applications and more tuned in to enjoying their teens.”

“If a teen’s job is to take out the garbage, parents can’t complain if they act sour about it or roll their eyes and stamp their feet. You can’t ask for both doing the job and doing it nicely.” COMMENT: Parents must “pick their battles” with teenagers and often the foot stomping or eye-rolling derails compliance with the task because parents choose to be corrective about those undesirable responses. I take issue with the semantics of her statement: parents CAN complain and CAN ask for both doing the job and doing it nicely, but it depends on what your desired goal is, and how that standard is set. Fussing and complaining about their fussing and complaining sends the wrong message.

“We are raising them to leave us.”

“They have to do really dumb things to get smart.” COMMENT: So, in following this logic, kids who do REALLY dumb things will become REALLY smart, but this just isn’t true. Teenagers don’t HAVE to do really dumb things, they CAN learn from the mistakes of others. However, the lesson might be more potent to those who experience it first-hand, and yet those who experience it first-hand might be immune to the lesson. It is up to parents to help their teens navigate through and to the lesson learned.

“The way to make it easier is be alert without alarm, be observant without prying or spying, and be compassionate but not too enmeshed.” COMMENT: It has been a contention of mine that parents should trust their teen up to the point the teenager gives them a reason not to do, so. Privacy is a privilege to a teenager, not a right. The major point in this quote is MODERATION and I believe this is a good “default” for parents who are tempted to vacillate between extremes.

“Delight in your kids. Sit down to Shabbat dinner, light candles, and say what you’re grateful for… and no one can look at their iPhone! Make sure you protect Shabbat dinner the way you protect math tutoring.” COMMENT: Great principle for Jew and Christian and all those in-between – it’s about relationship and valuing and capitalizing on the time shared together. As parents of teens know all too well, time together is less the older they become.

DISAGREEMENT:
Without going into the disagreements quote-by-quote, I can summarize my disagreement by explaining that teenagers do need to experiment and be encouraged to experiment as a means of establishing their own identity (as rightly suggested by the author and proven in the research of James Marcia), and teenagers will by virtue of their still-maturing prefrontal cortex make boneheaded decisions. It is the parent’s role to help the teenagers navigate and even engage in preventative planning for that experimentation; teaching them wisdom, forethought, and emphasizing godly virtues/values not out of a legalistic mindset, but one of seeing God’s plan “for us” not against us. Teenagers should be encouraged to THINK and PRAY rather than just experiment and regret. Those regrets will come as a course of life. A part of raising our children to leave us is teaching them how to minimize the boneheaded choices and how to glean wisdom and maturity as a result of those that will inevitably come.