Teenagers are a riot. They are alternately short and tall, and disproportionate in scale, one part to another. They are loud, smelly, messy, discombobulated, emotional, and scatter-brained. They are too honest at all of the wrong times, and obvious in their indiscretions. They are both flexible and intransigent. They are fully committed to two propositions: (1) their central place in the universe, and (2) social justice, if only for themselves. Low social and emotional IQs make messes; high social and emotional IQs leave scars. They are also capable of spectacular genius, and comedy to rival the finest comedians. While they may grow ten inches in a year, they mature incrementally and unevenly. Then, one day, before your eyes, they emerge as wholly different people, young men and women, confident and capable.
Getting between point A and point B is a challenge for adolescents, and even more so for their parental units. I was once asked to develop a parent workshop on adolescence. I entitled it "Surviving Your Teenager's Years". Parents showed up in droves. Instead of a talk, we had a two-hour therapy session. While I explained the psychological and physiological changes that come about during adolescence, their causes and effects, I was most concerned that parents went home with strategies that worked, that led to common understandings and common ground, that kept communication open, and that gave adults a sense of hope.
One of the big ideas from the evening: teens need you more now than ever! Small children need to be attended to, fed, comforted, cared for, and protected. Adolescents need to be heard, held accountable, and guided. If you don't guide them, they will find others to guide them, usually from among their own peer groups. If you don't emphasize your values, you can expect your teen to window shop for the values of others, for better and worse. In the search for identity, the adolescent needs to know they are not you, that they are independent, that they are the product of their own choices. They are programmed to push away, shut down, and shut you out. You simply can't allow this to happen. They may look like adults, even behave like adults, but they are not adults. You have to hold your ground.
Let's consider a concrete example. It is the most natural of all things for our pre-teens and teens to wake up one day and find themselves preoccupied with sex and their sexuality. We mature sexually long before we mature emotionally and socially. In days past, exploration was limited to ourselves, to awkward relationships, and to even more awkward conversations among friends. Today, streaming media makes all fashion of pornography too accessible, too user friendly. The phones we give our children, ostensibly to ensure communication between them and us, facilitate "sexting" and the distribution of compromising pictures. Our children's private lives may be far more explicit than we know. Access meets adolescent priority meets unsupervised space.
While you shouldn't choose your child's friends or dictate their every experience, you have every right to know where they are, what they are doing, and the company they keep. I am no advocate of invasive parenting, but if you provide your child a phone and an internet plan, you have every right to spot check how they are using their technology. Kids who have nothing to hide have nothing to hide. If the mere act of entering your child's room sends them into DEFCON 5 defensive posturing, there's a problem. On a personal level, you need to know your children are living your family's values. On a legal level, ignorance does not excuse you from culpability. There is no such thing as delete. All is permanent in the land of 1s and 0s. Reputations are hard to build and easy to destroy.
Character, as the old saying goes, is who we are when no one is looking. It is what we choose to do when there are no witnesses to the choices we make or the actions that we take. Our children need to be guided towards this truth. They need boundaries. Be present in their lives. Make time to listen. Teens don't need friends nearly as much as they need their parents.
See you around campus.