Hello and welcome back to the B Spot; The place that gives you almost therapy but not quite therapy. Today I want to spend some time talking about the experience of being a teen in today’s world. You may be thinking, “what do you know about this, old man!” Well, over the years, I’ve sat with a lot of kids and teens, and I’ve learned a lot about the stresses that our kids face these days. I also have two kids of my own and often get to experience those challenges through their descriptions of what life is like. And, given that I’ve spent a lot of my career working with kids of all ages, I’ve also spent a lot of time reading and learning about current challenges facing our kids. Over the years, I have met with many families, and by the time they make it to a session with a counselor, they are dealing with some degree of brokenness, or systemic dysfunction that is causing stress for one or more family member. I spend time learning the history of the family, when the dysfunction was first noticed, when it became unbearable, and what has been tried to address it. Most often parents bring their kids to me with the hopes that I will fix their dysfunctional outlook or behavior. My child is addicted to screens, fix it. My child is disrespectful, fix it. My child is anxious, depressed, addicted to some other drug or unhealthy activity, fix it. But, what I hear when those requests are being made is, our system is dysfunctional and needs to change. We are a broken system and we are hurting. One of the best ways to work toward systemic change is to involve as many members of the system as possible so almost any plan to help a kid will involve the parents learning how to be more functional, in that their actions are most likely to lead to the outcomes that they want. Another important part of systemic change is to work to understand the experiences and emotions of the dysfunction. And that takes me back to the purpose and goal of this session. I want to talk to you about what I have learned through my years of working with children, adolescents, and their families.
So, what do you think it’s like to be teen in this world? This world that is 24hrs a day 7 days a week connected to all the information all the time. All the suffering, the struggling, the contradicting, the hating, and all the negativity everywhere. And on the other side, all the success, generational wealth, lavish lifestyles, exotic toys and pleasures, sports cars and all the other fantastical luxuries that only a few ever get to actually experience. What do you think it’s like to have all that information in your pocket all the time? How would it make you rate your existence? Could you be happy? Would you be satisfied with a modest life? News used to be something that wasn’t for kids and now it crosses their social media by the minute, either by fact or opinion, and the line between the two can be really hard to see.
So, kids, like adults, are easily influenced by what they see and hear, from people or sources they regard as good, or trustworthy, or same…part of my in group. But, unlike adults, they don’t have the strong reasoning skills to discern fact from fiction, opinion from news. And once they type that search into google, they are profiled and fed the opinions and beliefs of others. The search engine companies have gotten really good at collecting data and selling that data to the highest bidder…actually, that’s not true, they sell it to all bidders and those bidders sell it to people and companies that want to influence your kids…they are the product. The ability to influence others is available for purchase in ways never seen before. Remember that cell phone you got your kid so they can text you when they need a ride home? Well, now it’s the handcuff and chain that binds them to anxiety, disillusionment, and other emotional pain.
Connected all the time. Imagine have to relive that horrible moment over and over again because someone posted the video? Imagine the class bully being able to attack you on your phone, and through your friends. When I was a kid, if I had a bad day at school, or experienced some other emotional hardship, I was able to find solace at home. I didn’t have to worry about social media posts, group chats and others types of cyberbullying that our kids have to worry about. They can’t escape it. It’s always right there in their pocket. So it really is NOT surprising that a national state of emergency was declared in October of 2021 due to the soaring rates of mental health challenges among children, adolescents and their families due to the impact of Covid. To be clear, the covid pandemic did not cause the national state of emergency for children and adolescents, it just caused it to be declared. Interestingly, it operated much like covid acts in the body. It often causes other, previously unknown, or unidentified conditions to become exacerbated to the point they must be addressed. That’s what covid did to the issue of the emotional well being of our children.
Being a kid really is hard. Being a kid in this world…must feel insane sometimes. How do you talk to your kids about the bad ways that grown ups are behaving? How do you talk about the hard things? The things that make you uncomfortable. Because the days of kids being sheltered from the ugly underbelly of life are gone. They are getting their information from those who say and do the craziest things to get the most views. I don’t know about you, but I would rather be the one influencing my kid. So where’s the line between depressing the joy out of our kids with the truth, because let’s be real, the truth right now is depressing, and being able to influence them before they are virtually brainwashed by some youtube or social media star with more charisma than sense or actual facts. We have to have the hard conversations. We have to control our emotional responses to whatever opinions have already formed. We have to help them find the facts so they will be spreaders of truth, not speculation, imagination and lies driven by the goals of others. Remember, they are the product and there are lots of people spending lots of time and money to own them…their perspectives, their minds. Don’t let them!
Ask your kid what he/she thinks about the big issues. Explain both sides of each issue! Help your child see that opinions form out of experiences and those experiences are valid, even if they completely disagree with the opinions. Once we respect the experiences, we can respect the human and the need for hate disappears. It becomes about finding solutions, not enemies. We learn how to change their opinions…and ours, or we distance ourselves from those who are too far gone. Teach your kids about fake news and how it rarely holds up under investigation. Teach them how to do their own research and to never take the word of any one person on a screen as fact, until the information can be verified.
Teach them how to set boundaries with others. Teach them how to identify toxic relationships and what to do if they find themselves in one. Teach them about escapes. Talk to them about drugs, including alcohol. Tell them why people use them and why they eventually come to the conclusions that they need to stop doing them. Be honest with them because they have all the information with or without you. Talk to your kids about porn. I know it’s really awkward but if you don’t, somebody else is. Talk to them about healthy ways to explore relationships with healthy boundaries and expectations.
Talk to your kid about politics! And race! And the environment! Talk to them about police brutality and systemic dysfunction! They are being inundated with persuasion attempts so much of the time they are plugged in. If you haven’t been competing with that, you better start! Educate them, and please, if necessary, educate yourself. As the adults, we must influence based on facts and reason rather than emotion, or what our parents may have told us, or our grandparents, with little comments here and there. Nothing overt, or maybe it was. Either way, if you’re going to talk to anyone, especially your children about any issue, make sure you have the facts and that your point of view actually lines up with your values. Accepting that we may not have it right on all things is so important because let me tell you, you don’t have it right on all things and neither do I.
Even more important than talking to your kids about all these issues, love your kids no matter what. Empathize with them. Be open and honest with them and try to remember what things were like before you had your adult brain. Take a good hard look at how you were raised and rather than just repeating patterns because, “that’s what my parents did,” be open to evolving into a better raiser of humans than most of our parents had the opportunity to be. Accept that your children are not little yous, they are full thems.
