All Grown Up and No Place to Go

All Grown Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis Prepared by Keith Warta CI 3920 Dr. Tracy Smith Summer 2004

NEEDED: A Time to Grow

Family History Golden age • Nuclear family -two parent family -romantic love -maternal love • Adolescents perceived as immature • Protective environment Postmodern age • Permeable family -single parent, etc. -consensual love -shared parenting • Adolescents perceived as socially sophisticated • Exposure to many destructive images

Two pathways to identity formation • Differentiation and integration -separating out concepts, feelings, and emotions and putting those parts together into a higher ordered whole • Substitution -replacing one set of concepts, feelings, and emotions for another

Identity construction by: • Differentiation • Substitution -strong sense of self -patchwork self -inner directed -other directed -future oriented -ability to postpone gratification -present oriented -less able to postpone gratification

The New Morbidity • • • Drug and alcohol abuse Teenage suicide Teenage gun violence High rates of teenage pregnancy High rates of STD’s

I am the center of the Universe! “Starting at about the age of eleven or twelve, adolescents develop the ability to think at a higher, more abstract level than they did as children…These new mental abilities bring about a Copernican revolution in the way young people think and feel about themselves, others, and the world in general” (p. 25).

Some manifestations of these new intellectual abilities • Idealism/ Criticalness • Argumentativeness • Self-Consciousness • Speciality/ Invulnerability

Manifestations, (cont. ) • Pseudo-Stupidity • Hypocrisy • Personal religion

Puberty and the Emotional Lightning Rod • Adolescents tend to focus all of their developmental anxieties on one feature • Interesting fact- Adolescent girls are most satisfied with their body image when they are slightly underweight • It is estimated that 75% of girls have at least one symptom of an eating disorder, most often, fad dieting

Three important lessons • Exclusion • Betrayal • Disillusionment

Given: A Premature Adulthood

As if that wasn’t enough! • The stresses on adolescents are compounded by stresses that derive from the postmodern society. • The new perception of adolescents as sophisticated has added demands for maturity without giving them the time to attain this maturity

Vanishing Markers • Clothing • Activity • Information -the average child or teenager views 1000 murders, rapes and assaults per year on television alone • Authority

No Place to Go • Vanishing markers leave adolescents with no special place of their own in society • Vanishing markers also confront teens with stressful new freedoms

What about schools? • Educational reforms • School size • Class size • Universality

The Chore of Teaching • When teachers lose their excitement and commitment for their work, their effectiveness as a role model is diminished, or lost

What has taken the joy out of teaching? • Many more students than in the past are troubled, unhappy, and difficult to teach • Diversity of curricula, variety of educational reforms, and demands for accountability take time and energy that once went into teaching • Salaries have not kept pace with inflation

Result Stress and its Aftermath

Stress • A response to an extraordinary demand for adaptation • Lack of stress management

Three stress situations • Type A- Foreseeable and avoidable • Type B- Neither foreseeable or avoidable • Type C- Foreseeable yet not avoidable

The Patchwork Self…Revisited • Low self evaluation • Mixed bag of values, attitudes, habits, and beliefs

Effects of Stressors on the Patchwork Self Adolescent • Type A • Type B • Type C

Teenage Reactions to Postmodern Stressors • Eating disorders Anorexia nervosa Bulimia • Alcohol and drug use Alcohol accounts for 80% of teenage deaths 45 -50% violent teenage deaths 400, 000 teenage alcoholics • Depression • Repression/ Denial PTSD • Suicide • Violence

Helping Teenagers Cope Encourage Growth by Integration

“Parents are the single most powerful, nonbiological influence on their children’s lives” (p. 241)

What Parents Can Do • Inform yourself about child growth and development • Be an adult, set limits and boundaries • Deal with adolescents on the basis of principle, not emotion • Engage in mutual authority, when appropriate

What Schools Can Do • Again, be adults, set limits and boundaries • Work with individual students when possible • Make the last two years of high school more like a junior college

Always remember “Even if we can’t do it all, we can do something” (p. 253).

Other sources of information on Child Development and Techniques • Touchpoints by T. Berry Brazelton (1992) • Parenting Your Teenager by David Elkind (1994)

Services for Troubled Teens in this area Foothills Mental Health Point of Access Toll Free 1 -866 -327 -4968

All Grown Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis Presented by Keith Warta Summer 2004 CI 3920 Dr. Tracy Smith