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Issue 18 - Autumn 2011
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No Fault Kids
Timid Parents & the New Anger They’re Facing
Is there anything new under the sun when it comes to teenagers? For generations, adults have complained about adolescents, bemoaning “kids these days” and “the younger generation.” The hormones running through the current crop of teenagers are the same ones that have caused turmoil through the ages. Yet to many parents and those who work closely with teens, something feels very different. Stories abound of wildly outrageous behavior from children at younger and younger ages, not only within their peer group, but in interactions with parents and other adults.
Child psychologist and author Ron Taffel writes about this in his book, Childhood Unbound:
The debate over whether anything is truly different . . . has ended for me. From my twenty-five years as a counselor to children, teens, and their parents, as well as from over a thousand talks in schools, churches, synagogues, and community agencies around the country, I am convinced that not only are kids’ lives qualitatively different today from those of earlier eras, but that parents today are uniquely different, and therefore the parent-child relationship has fundamentally changed as well.
Dr. Kathleen Kline is an academic child psychiatrist and affiliate scholar with the Institute for American Values. “Part of adolescent growth is a search for risk-taking, novelty-seeking, and peer affiliation,” she said in an interview. “It’s a very risky time, across millennia.” What’s changed, she believes, is the environment, specifically an environment rife with technology that can leave parents out of the mix and that is potentially toxic for kids
William Doherty, director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota agrees with Taffel that parents have changed, too. For one thing, they cater to their children in a way previous generations did not. “You see it with the hyper-praising of kids, particularly middle class kids, who are given the message that every time they breathe they’re a little genius. Parents will bend over backwards,” Doherty said in an interview, “to make sure their kids have the most special birthday party, for example.” As a result, children are given an inflated sense of entitlement starting in their early years.
No Respect
Like children, parents are not immune from peer pressure. Doherty tells the story of a four-year-old who, after being brought to preschool one day, suddenly demanded that her mother hang her coat up. “The girl had never done this before, but had obviously seen other kids treat their parents as servants.” The mother firmly told her child to hang it up herself. Later, a teacher remarked that she was the first parent who’d handled it that way.
Ask most parents of teens today whether they would even have dreamed of speaking to their parents the way their teens talk to them and the answer is a resounding “No!” And many of these parents are from the notoriously rebellious baby boom generation. Doherty writes about the disrespect and general coarseness common among children and teenagers in his book Take Back Your Kids. He describes a father being at a loss when his eleven-year-old son failed to thank him for a Hanukkah gift. When challenged, the boy responded, “But I don’t like it.” Another family in therapy has a ten-year-old who’s begun calling his mother a “bitch.” Doherty believes such disrespect is part of a widespread blurring of the boundaries between parents and children.
Taffel calls it “the new anger” and reports that, in his experience, it’s “becoming the norm in ordinary families.” He tells the story of “Jessica,” who was told by her mother to turn off the tv and clean up the table.
“Not now,” Jessica says, without bothering to look up. “No, Jessica, I mean this minute,” her mother says sharply. “Later,” Jessica responds, almost absentmindedly. Mom stiffens and threatens: “Stop it now, or there won’t be TV tonight.” Finally, she’s got her daughter’s attention. Jessica looks her mother squarely in the face and says, “F___ you, Mommy!”
Jessica is eight years old.
. . .
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