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By: Dr. Erica WollermanFor several months now, our blog has focused on helping parents understand just what it might be like for their teens to well, be a teen in our current culture. I truly hope that by discussing what I am observing in my office week in and week out can be helpful to illuminate just how challenging it can be to grow up in our modern world. While in some ways, teens lives seem so much easier due to technology, I am of the belief that they are also so much more challenging for the exact same reason! Just to review a bit, we have discussed the following topics:
While I know it might seem excessive to go over this again, I wanted to note that each of these challenges are contributing to the increased anxiety and fear that parents feel BUT ALSO THAT SAME ANXIETY AND FEAR TEENS ARE FEELING. We are seeing record numbers of anxiety in teens currently as well as rates of depression and other mental health challenges. As someone whose life’s work has become about supporting teens and their parents, this is something that I find quite concerning. Parents seem concerned about this situation as well, particularly the ones I talk to and work with at our office. While I appreciate their concern and suggestions that their children need more “coping skills,” I would argue that they need much much more than that. Our teens need a world where it is expected and understood that they will mess up sometimes. Parents are often in my office trying to figure out how to direct their children, or discipline them, into making only the right choices without realizing that it is normal for all of us to screw up sometimes. Mistakes are where the learning is, particularly for teens who often learn best by doing rather than thinking. I suggest that we as a culture, and in our families, learn to embrace and celebrate mistakes and challenges that come up. The more we can encourage our children to take big risks and leaps, even if they might miss the mark, the better. This allows them to get hands on learning about how to handle disappointment, failure, and errors of their own judgment. If our teens and children are buffered from actually experiencing failures or challenge, but they hear all about how their lives could be forever impacted by mistakes or “wrong” choices in high school, this only sets the stage for a lifetime of fearing failure and experiencing anxiety. We need to communicate to them that it is okay to struggle and to fail as well as to make the wrong choices. While we will still hold them accountable for their choices, we can also love and support them through the process of repairing mistakes and relationships. This real life learning about our own humanity is much more valuable than any concrete list of coping skills I can provide. If you would like to talk more about parenting your teen with a Thrive therapist, contact us today! We love talking about how to reduce feelings of fear and anxiety around parenting. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL. So far in this blog series, I have talked a lot about what teens are struggling with. I wanted to take some time to also give context to what I see parents struggling with. I see so many parents making decisions from a place of anxiety and fear for their children. We fear that something is going to happen to them to hurt them. We fear that they are somehow not cut out to make it in our world. We see the world as both more competitive but also more dangerous and look at our children and are riddled with anxiety that they are just not going to be okay. That bad things might happen to them. They might not get into a good enough college. They might get hurt sometime. They will find out that they are not good enough for some things despite their best efforts. And the list goes on and on and on… We are parenting from a scared and anxious place and I have to say, this is what I see as most harmful for the upcoming generation. You see, our kids sense what we really think and believe about them. If we don’t think they are capable, you bet we are communicating that in ways we don’t even realize and it is impacting their thoughts about their abilities as well as their desire to take chances. If we have limiting beliefs about our children, unfortunately they are likely to have them as well. As the mother of a toddler as well as a psychologist who has spent my career so far working with children, teens, their parents, and families as a whole – I am so grateful for what I have learned. I have learned that it is better to parent from a place of faith and courage. We need to communicate to our kids that we believe in them, even when we are terrified that they might mess up or get their hearts broken. We need to communicate to our kids that it is okay to completely screw something up, fall down, and make a mess of things as that is often our path towards learning. We need to celebrate mistakes, failures, and terrible days as the chaos that brings change and learning in our lives and teach our kids that nothing comes to those who are comfortable and not challenged. I have to say that this is TOUGH stuff for us parents. Living in the information overload age, particularly with such a huge focus on what parents are doing or not doing, it is hard not to feel that we need to do SO much for our kids. We need to praise them in a certain way otherwise they will be messed up for life. We need to feed them all the right foods, or they will be messed up for life. And the list just goes on and on about how we as parents hold so much power. This is why parenting feels so relentless for us and is leading to parents struggling to let go and let their kids live their lives. Unfortunately, while I don’t believe in being super passive and laissez faire as parents, I do think we are overdoing it. And while we overdo it, we communicate the hidden fears and anxiety that underlies our tendency to do everything for our kids. And what we tell our kids is that we don’t think they can do it themselves. We don’t think they are going to be okay. We are worried about them and if they can handle this world of ours. Sometimes we even expect them to prove themselves before we give them responsibilities. Like we want our kids to show us they can pay rent on time, do their laundry, eat balanced meals, etc. before they can move out. Interestingly, many of them probably need to move out and see what it is like to make those mistakes and not do any of that so that they can figure out just how important those parts of life are. Many of us learn as we live, rather than learn before we live. Our teens are not different but they are lacking the confidence that they can figure things out. Which is sadly leading them to be more anxious, stressed, sad, and honestly terrified of being adults. One thing parents can do to help them is to just release some of their own fear. We need to accept that we just can’t protect our kids from the world, or from themselves and their mistakes. They are going to screw up, get hurt, fall down, and make mistakes. Some of them will be big. It is my belief though that the sooner we let them start this process of messing up, the odds are better that their mistakes will be manageable and that they will learn some resilience along the way. This will help them when the mistakes are bigger and the risks riskier – if we have experience picking ourselves up and repairing mistakes from our childhood, we will be better suited to do this when we need to as adults too. I am of the belief that we are raising independent humans that are their own people. Our jobs are really to love them, try to understand them, and encourage them to seek out the life they want. They are a story waiting to unfold, not a blank canvas that we get to paint. By: Dr. Erica WollermanAt Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  By: Dr. Erica WollermanIn writing this blog series as well as in my daily work with parents, teens, and families in general, I reflect often on what is going on in our world that has led us to where we are. Stressed. Overwhelmed. Feeling not good enough. Worried about our futures. And I mean that parents and teens often feel all of those things pretty much daily. A common theme that I come up with in my reflections is that we have so much information. As a child of the 80’s, the level of information and resources that our children have access to on a daily basis just amazes me. I truly think it is a wonderful thing to have the internet and have such a breadth of information and ability to learn from others at our fingertips. While I might be a little nostalgic for those fond memories I have of looking through encyclopedias, I do recognize the improvement and progress in our world. Unfortunately, I also see that the development of technology is leaving all of us (not just teens) inundated with a constant stream of information. Instead of feeling comforted by the vast array of knowledge at our fingertips, it seems to only make us feel more anxious about our lives and futures as well as more aware of how we are not either living up to expectations or what others’ lives are like. We now have access to witness other people’s daily lives through YouTube, social media, reality TV, etc. We also have access to the immediate thoughts of almost anyone on the planet (hello Twitter and blogs and curated news feeds and advertisements on whatever social media platform we like). On a daily basis, there is not just a feeling of access to information, but information overload and overwhelm. I believe this leaves us feeling more stressed and uncertain in our own lives and choices. Consider what it is like to be a high school student who is feeling uncertain about their future and their college decision. Since so many of our choices are so well thought out and researched in our world, I think it makes choices where there is little certainty even more difficult. With the endless information, reviews, articles, opinions available to us, many of us do not take many chances in our decision making anymore. We research movies before taking the time to see them, we read reviews before we eat anything or go anywhere, and we definitely do research before purchasing something. While this is AMAZING and such a benefit, particularly for people with anxiety; it is dangerous to get so comfortable with relatively certain choices and less luck in our lives. I believe that there is so much in our lives that is actually up to chance and uncertain and that we can’t always control what happens. Making a decision about college is one of those things. While we can think we might know what we want (big or small school, city or more college centric area, east coast or west coast), we can’t possibly actually predict how we will experience any specific college. There are just too many elements to control – who your roommate is, what dorm you are in, how your first year professors are, if you even like your major, if you actually like the weather or area you anticipated liking when you spend 24-48 hours there one time. This choice is important and our teens feel it is the absolute most important decision they will make in their lives. It is also, not an outcome completely in our control. And if we don’t have experience making decisions and rolling with some level of uncertainty about how something will work out, it might be more difficult to cope and surrender if this important life decision feels not ideal once we get there. I think it is important for parents in our world to help model how to surrender to life’s chances and how to roll with unpleasant and unanticipated outcomes. Even just modeling for them that it is okay when everything does not go as planned (on a vacation, a day out, a class, a test, etc.) can help. If parents can model this and parent more form a place of grounded faith in their and their child’s ability to cope with whatever happens in this world, I believe it also helps them feel less uncertain and anxious about their own parenting choices and their child’s futures. The best part is that the more parents feel confident in their children, the more the kids feel confident too. And this actually helps them cope better when life does not go their way. This is definitely a win-win in my book! If you would like to talk more about parenting your teen with a Thrive therapist, contact us today! We love talking about how to reduce feelings of fear and anxiety around parenting. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  By: Dr. Erica WollermanWhile I am of the belief that there are more opportunities for all of us currently, particularly due to technology and our ever-changing world, I find that the families with whom I work do not often feel that there is an abundance of opportunity for their kids. It seems like currently there is much more of a feeling of scarcity rather than abundance when it comes to our children’s futures. This competitive attitude and feeling of “not enough” permeates our parenting climate these days, which also unfortunately filters down to our children to make them feel that if they are not “the best” or “perfect,” they’re not going to make it. This just leads to increased feelings of anxiety about the future. I am noticing that over time, more and more of the teens that I work with have fears about growing up and not being able to take care of themselves, despite being perfectly capable young people. Interestingly, this competitive climate impacts teens in other ways too. Some teens that I work with have shared that their peers at school are unlikely to help them if they are struggling with homework because they do not want their peers to succeed as it would mean that their own success would somehow be less valuable. I believe that this attitude of “me first” or “only some can succeed” is particularly toxic for teens as it reduces our likelihood to develop compassion or understanding for others’ and their experiences. I have so many conversations in my office where teens will share something that they believe very strongly and when I try to help them consider others’ perspectives, they at times really struggle. For example, when the topic of being transgender comes up and individuals who do not struggle with their gender identity or expression struggle to understand that experience. Or when the topic of wealth inequality and related challenges comes up and those who are from more affluent families struggle to understand what it would be like not to have enough. Many of the challenges that I see in our world relate to a basic lack of understanding of each other and lack of social perspective taking (which just means, even though you are living an experience that is unlike my own, I will try to see it from your perspective). And it makes sense that if we tell our kids that there is only so much (food, money, etc.) to go around, that they will worry if they will get what they need and then feel that they need to worry about that before helping others. In a way, they are putting on their own oxygen mask first, which while good advice in an emergency, is not a great way to learn about how to relate to others as a developing person in our world! I would encourage parents to consider ways they might be encouraging competition or scarcity mindsets in their families. I invite you to consider ways to adjust your message if you are. For example, when parents instill in their children a mindset that there is only one path to success (regardless of what that path is), it automatically makes them feel that if that path is not for them, they are not likely to be okay. This creates a feeling of scarcity as only those on the “right” path will be “okay” as adults. Consider the following differences:
If you would like to talk more about parenting your teen with a Thrive therapist, contact us today! We love talking about how to support teens and help their parents communicate effectively with them about their futures! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL. |
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