Tags

“These days, the medicine cabinet is truly a family affair. More than a quarter of U.S. kids and teens are taking a medication on a chronic basis, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager with around 65 million members. Nearly 7% are on two or more such drugs, based on the company’s database figures for 2009.” Read the rest of this entry »

“Attachment is our limitation, not the limitation of the child.”

I heard Dr. Yvon Gauthier say this at a Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Conference and it struck me as if with physical force. What an encouraging thought!

In the teen treatment industry we often hear of the “untreatable” child. I think this is totally false. The untreatable child is just the child we haven’t figured out yet! But heaven knows I’ve run into a few in my lifetime.

I was on a conference call yesterday and one of the participants said that her mantra is “behavior problems are indicative of unmet needs”.

When my wife and I adopted our son, Michael, who is turning 7 next month, I was nervous about whether he’d be able to attach or not. He did just fine and over time I relaxed. The truth was, I had figured out how to connect with him.  Now that he’s almost seven, I still take the “temperature” of our relationship every night when I tuck him in bed, just to see if we’re still connected.  Last night he wanted to cuddle three times before he’d go to sleep. I think he’s connected!

One of my former New Haven students had a child she thought was Autistic. She wasn’t connecting well with her at all, and then she was diagnosed with Autism. I suspected the diagnosis was misguided. Over time, as my young friend worked to engage her daughter in the way her daughter wanted to be engaged, this perceptive mother discovered that the child’s speech and physical abilities improved. The misdiagnosis fell by the wayside.

Contrast the relatively easy time my alumna friend had with the experience of one of my former co-workers, whose first sonmost definitely has Aspergers. After years of behavioral work, she is finally getting him to eat on his own, hug her occasionally, and so on.  He’s thriving.

I realize now that attachment is not about the child’s capability. It’s about ours.  The only children who can’t attach are the children whose caregivers give up trying.

This may sound like I’m blaming parents or professionals.  Not so.  What I’m trying to illustrate is the immense hope I feel. Think about it:  we’re not dealing with a deficiency in the child, rather we’re dealing with our own lack of knowledge or skill. And we know where to get knowledge and skill: our own experience and the shared experiences of others.  That’s incredibly empowering.

What challenges have you any of you had in connecting with your own children or the children you serve? What knowledge or skills have you developed that you could share here?

ABC News ran an article online about Dr. Megan Moreno, who is attempting to help teens on MySpace reduce their risky online activities – specifically their risky sexual activities. Check it out at http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=6581085&page=1

MySpace and Facebook are increasingly popular with our teens. The attraction makes sense – teens of all generations have sought to connect with their peers in ways that their parents can’t understand. They are on an constant search for who they are, and so many of them try to differentiate themselves from the crowd. The great adolescent irony is that they also seek for belonging. MySpace and other social networking sites offer both the ability to differentiate and express oneself, while connecting and socializing with peers.

The danger of virtual relationships and the virtual expression of self is that there are virtual consequences which can quickly become real. If a young woman, for example, experiments with her sexuality on her MySpace page, she may not immediately experience the same consequences she otherwise would if she were to experiment in “actuality” in the real world. This provides a false sense of safety, as the consequences are soon to come. For example, employers are increasingly including MySpace and Facebook searches in their vetting process during hiring. Predators roam social networking sites under disguise, seeking vulnerable teenagers. Online bullying has reached new lows in the last few years, and you may have heard of one high-profile case where a teenager last year committed suicide because of it.

It’s imperative that parents keep tabs on their daughters’ online activities. Among other things, parents ought to check their daughters’ social networking activities weekly.

Do you know how your daughter is expressing herself online?

I flew kites with my two young sons. Michael was doing fairly well with his kite, but Cam, my five-year-old, struggled with his.

“Higher, Daddy!” Cam said. He could feel the kite straining against his little hands, and thought the best way to help the kite move higher was to walk toward his kite. The line would slacken, and the colored fabric kite would dip toward the ground.

It reminded me of when my nine-year-old, Hadley, was Cam’s age and informed me that her kite was like a helium balloon. “I’m going to let it float up to the sky!” she’d said. Before I could stop her, she’d let go of the string. It immediately lost altitude, but sailed an impressive distance, over the park, over three rows of houses, then crashed in a driveway, narrowly missing a small yapping dog! She’d been surprised that letting go of the string didn’t help the kite rise higher.

“Stand still!” I called to Cam. But he moved forward. Predictably, his kite soon crashed into the turf.

Michael was laughing. At first I thought he was laughing at Cam, but he wasn’t. He was excited because he’d found that if he pulled gently on his string, the kite would respond and dance on the wind. Unfortunately, he began yanking too hard, which caused the kite to dive and spin out of control. Soon, Michael’s kite had impaled the sod, a few feet away.

Kite flying is a fitting analogy for parenting, isn’t it?

The thing that seems to restrict and bind the kite is the very thing that enables the colored fabric to dart high among the clouds. Some teens have difficulty balancing their emerging independence with their dependence upon their parents. These teens want more freedom. They want adventure on their own. Like kites, they strain against the line their parents hold, pulling toward the clouds.

Teens sometimes fail to realize that it’s their family ties that allow them to fly ever higher. After all, it’s counter-intuitive. Everywhere else in the world, if something is tied down, it’s more restricted – not more free.

And yet, the way parents hold the line with their kids is important. If we jerk too hard and too quickly, teens may react like Michael’s kite. If we move in too close like Cam did, we run the risk of over-protecting them. They won’t learn to navigate life’s currents on their own. If we let go of our teens altogether, like Hadley did, never guiding or directing, then our kids will never even have a chance.

Sometimes it’s appropriate and necessary to gently pull back. It’s our job to guide our kids from one shifting wind to the next. It’s important to keep our hands firmly on the line in case a huge gust of wind knocks our teens from their equilibrium. Frequently, however, the key to coaching teens is for parents to set clear family traditions, values, rules, and consequences and then stand still.

Here are some ways that parents can practice standing still:

1. Establish (and then follow through with) family traditions for holidays, birthdays, summer vacations, celebrations of success, etc.
2. Gather everyone together as a family at least once weekly to coordinate, plan, and review.
3. Have one-on-one time with your teen at least weekly. (Daddy-daughter dates and mother-daughter outings are great ways to stay connected.)
4. Hang a copy of your family values in a prominent place in your home.
5. Decide on a family symbol that represents what your family stands for. Obtain a trinket for each family member to carry with them. (One father bought pewter acorns and attached them to key rings for each family member – their family symbol was the Oak Tree.)
6. Create rational rules that support and teach your Family Values.
7. Decide on a few “zero tolerance” rules. (These usually involve issues of safety: no drugs; curfew set in stone; no boys in her bedroom; etc.)
8. Agree upon natural and logical consequences to reinforce your rules. (Wise parents include teens’ suggestions about appropriate consequences.)

I hope you’ll take a moment to post your thoughts about your successes and failures at standing still. It’s helpful for us all to hear what has worked/not worked for other families!

I attended a corporate training and the CFO’s message (in light of the current economy) was to “get back to the basics” of business management. I think that applies to family life as well, so I’ve created a list of items I think are the “basics” of good family life. Take a look and see how you’re doing on these:

1. We praise more than we nag or criticize (ratio = 1 criticism to every 4 compliments)
2. We have scheduled family time together at least 3 times/week (such as dinner together)
3. We spend one-on-one time with each kid at least once each week (double that if the kids are under the age of 16)
4. My partner (if you have a partner) and I carve out “us time” at least weekly (at least two consecutive hours, once weekly)
5. Humor is present in our relationships with each other
6. We can identify at least one activity that we all still enjoy doing all together (such as vacations)
7. We have traditions for special events (like holidays or birthdays)
8. We make a point of celebrating each others’ significant achievements (like posting report cards on the fridge)
9. We nurture spirituality as a family (like church attendance, nature walks, or working in soup kitchen)
10. We spend less money than we make, and we put away a little every month for a “rainy day”

I’m doing pretty good on #2, #6, and #9. I need to work on #1 and #4.

Catch and release.

Parents can apply this wonderful fisherman’s phrase as they teach their daughters about dating.

I spent a stressful thirty minutes talking to a young woman about this two weeks ago. She wants to marry a boy she has only known for about 3 months. Another young woman I know met a kid 4 weeks ago and now they are engaged.

I counseled with an adult woman last week whose boyfriend had “gone cold” on her. She’d been dating him for little over 2 months.

The other day I tried to pin down the meaning of “dating” with 14 girls during group therapy.  They couldn’t do it.  Bottom line in their high schools:  either you are currently having sex with someone or you are single.

Hello?! What happened to dating for fun? What happened to old-fashioned “courtship”? I think past generations had it right. We have lost dating as a way to get to know someone. Nowadays it’s wham, bam, thank-you Ma’am.

I have some advice:

Pick your spot carefully and deliberately. Take a seat and bring a friend. Enjoy the sun and the pleasant conversation. Drop a line out. Wait a while. When one bites, set your hook and reel him in slowly. Play with him a bit, but be firm and let him know you’re in charge. If you want to, pluck him out of the water and look him over. If he doesn’t meet your standards (or even if he just smells a bit fishy) remove your hook, give him a little kiss on the head, and drop him back into the stream.

Even better, go fishing with your girlfriends.  Group dating is much safer for teens and can be surprisingly fun.

You don’t have to commit right away. You can date, have fun, not get too serious. You can and should catch and release lots of fish before you put one in your icebox and take him home for dinner.