Virtue and the Adolescent
Understanding the dynamics
(43 slides)
creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth
Yiddish proverb
• “Little children disturb your sleep, big ones your life!”
Adolescence issues
• Virtue, thinking skills, and moral reasoning.
• Puberty and sexuality development.
• Identity and rites of passage into adulthood.
Virtue and the adolescent
Virtue is the power to be self sustaining, the power to live the
values he or she believes in their heart.
How can parents teach their children to be virtuous and have
personal inner integrity?
The identity crisis
• Adolescence is a natural time to explore and wonder about
who and what they are and believe.
• Adolescents have entered into the formal operational stage of
the new brain and are intrigued with their new found thinking
skills.
• Adolescent rebellion is a normal event.
• The issue is how we handle it!
The dilemma for parents
• A function of adolescent rebellion is their budding virtue (paying
attention to their inner state of reality)
• Do we, as parents, nurture it or do we squash it?
• This rebellion is about leaving the metaphorical garden of
innocence, it’s about growing up.
Saying no
• Saying no is an affirmation of the adolescent's identity and
individuation.
• Autonomy is necessary for maturing.
• Direct it do not fight it.
• Let your teenager say no to you sometimes.
• Let them win some confrontations.
Peers become surrogate parents
• To the extent that parents dominate and control their children
in making them respond to their external pressure…
• Peers will have an equal or greater influence as they replace
the parents in exerting that external pressure.
• In other words, since you are eventually going to be replaced
by their peers you can prepare them to stand them if you
have allowed your teenager to stand up to you.
If you want your teenager to have the moral character to stand up to peer
pressure, then they need to have the experience of standing up to you as
their parents.
Think about that one for a moment.
You can help develop their own virtue of being self sustaining by giving them
opportunities of doing so in relationship to you as parents.
Inner versus outer realities
External:
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Peers
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School
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Church
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Parents
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Fads
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Media
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Athletics
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Friends
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Enemies
Internal:
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Thoughts
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Feelings
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Reasoning
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Loyalties
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Fears
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Dreams
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Values
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Memories
An identity crisis at 15 is a whole lot more benign and much less
serious than an identity crisis at 45.
Too many middle aged men and women awaken to a life that
they never chose and find empty and without meaning.
Help your teenager to build and then honor their own inner life.
Your role as parents
• To help the process of individuation from you as parents to occur.
• Be willing to engage your teenager in intellectual exchanges, give
and take. That’s how you will continue to teach them by treating
them as equals.
• Do not issue arbitrary demands and punishments.
• Be respectful.
• Back down sometimes by letting them win the confrontation or
debate.
• Be willing to apologize when you are wrong or mistaken.
Beware of polarizing
• Polarizing is extreme behavior in one direction that invites
extreme behavior in the opposite direction.
• It is emotional and intellectual shoving. No one likes to be
shoved.
• Polarization never results in enlightenment. It always results
in defensiveness.
Some examples of polarization
• Your ideas and experiences (can you think of any from your own teenage life: like if
your father ever forbade you from seeing a certain young man or woman ever again- chances are
you took the steps to win the confrontation and ended up seeing them again.)
• The metaphor of the flash light (if you had a flashlight as a parent and was
continually was pointing it into the face of your teenager it gets to be very irritating. Flashlights can
show the way but they should never be used in harassing another by always shoving the light into
their face).
• The metaphor of the bent nail (if you have ever bent a nail in the process of
hammering it in then you know you need to redirect your hammering by metaphorically patting the
nail on the back before continuing trying to hit it directly into the wood. If you don’t take the time
in trying to straighten the nail first, you just end up bending it more and smashing it into the wood.)
How to diffuse polarization
• You care about the relationship more than you do the issue.
examples: a wedge of hair (When I was growing up long hair was a sign of rebellion.
One of my friends ended up being thrown out of his family because he wanted his hair longer
than what his dad did. An inch or two of hair ended up destroying their relationship.)
• A pregnant daughter (who sexually acted out as a means to rebel against the strict,
overbearing rigid religious notions of her parents.)
• A drinking son (a son who ended up drinking, not because he really wanted to but to
defeat his parents in their attempt to completely control his life.)
• After all is said and done, can parents cannot control their
teenagers’ behavior.
To diffuse the polarization the parent needs to stop shoving their child
around. Every human being has a need to control their own life and when the
parents continue to treat their teenager as if they were still four or five years
of age, it will end badly.
The parent needs to see their child as growing up and slowly reorient
themselves to treating their child more and more as a peer.
This transition can occur in the home if associated with a lot of conversations
and modeling of adult thinking and perspectives.
Your lecturing years are over at about age 11 or 12. From then on, it should
be more of an intellectual sharing and exploring and not dogmatic lecturing
that leaves the teenager feeling disrespected and ignored.
Peer rituals
• The peer activities of adolescence lead into society not away
from it.
• The reciprocity and responsibility to the peer group can help
socialize the individual into community values and behaviors.
Adolescents will experiment with things that adults do
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Sex
Drugs
Cars
Addictions
Work
Relationships
Money
Love
Isn’t that what adolescence is all about, to become
an adult?
Research into peer influence suggests
• Peer influence is temporary and pervasive but when
compared to the prominence of the family experience over
time, it cannot come close to the energy and power of early,
middle and late childhood socialization.
What do parents want?
• A child that is a carbon copy of themselves.
• A child who merely engages in sophisticated parroting role
plays to keep you off their backs.
• A child who is lost in polarized rebellion.
• A child who is living the adventure of a thinking, virtuous self.
A Successful Teenage female suicide victim
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“The world has not changed, there is so much evil and meanness all around me,
and I see it even more clearly than before. Nevertheless, for the first time I find
life really worth living. Perhaps this is because, for the first time, I have the feeling
that I am really living my own life, and that is an exciting adventure. On the other
hand, I can understand my suicidal ideas better now, especially those I had in my
youth- it seemed pointless to carry on- because in a way I had always been living a
life that wasn’t mine, that I didn’t want and that I was ready to throw away.” My
happiness is me, not you not only because you may be temporary but also because
you want me to be what I am not. I cannot change merely to satisfy your
selfishness
nor can I feel content when you criticize me for not thinking your thoughts for not
seeing like you. You call me a rebel. Yet for each time have rejected your beliefs
you have rebelled against mine. I do not try to mold your mind. I know you’re
trying hard enough to just be you and I cannot allow you to tell me what to be. For
I am concentrating being me. You said I was transparent and easily forgotten, but
why then did you try to use my lifetime to prove to yourself what you are?
Who's life is it, anyway
• The parents’ job is to help their children live their lives, not
theirs.
DON’T PUSH, by Carol Lynn Pearson
The minute the doctor said “push”
I did, and I’ve got to stop now
Because you’re eighteen.
Breathe deeply
Think of something else
Don’t push
Don’t push.
The scale: which weighs in as the most?
• Physical body
Spiritual soul
• Can you imagine how you would feel as a parent if your child
committed suicide because of their depression concerning
their own life? No sense of happiness. No sense of purpose.
No sense of control.
The desecration of the inner sanctuary
• There are sacred places within each of us that can be
destroyed by shaming, abuse, domination by outside forces
and the like.
• As parents be cautious and respectful when helping your
children to be respectful and honoring of them self.
• Your model of concern and consciousness of their inner
kingdom and sanctuary can be powerful as they explore their
own life.
Some children have to give up the relationship with self to be in
a relationship with their parents.
What kind of family would you like to grow up in ?
The family that values:
• Autonomy
• Love
• Compassion
• Safety
• Energies expressed
Or the family that values:
• Conformity
• Obedience
• Contempt
• Threats
• Shut-down of energies
Feelings do not need to be fixed they need to be processed
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Pain teaches................grief
Anger teaches............strength
Fear teaches................wisdom
Guilt teaches..............conscious
Happiness teaches....joy
• They need to noticed, labeled and affirmed.
The greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by
them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.
Virginia Satir
The stewardship of parenthood
• If, in our stewardship as parents, we forget who these children
really are, we may be guilty of psychological and emotional
abuse and desecration.
• We stand on holy ground in attempting to socialize children.
The seduction
• The seduction may occur if you are blinded by the culture’s
paradigm and treat the children as objects for which you use
and fill your own hungry and needy hearts.
Let Me Be, by the Turtles
• Please don’t mistake or try to make me the shadow of anybody else. I
ain’t the him or the her you think I am , I'm just trying hard to be myself.
Oh society’s goal is to be part of the whole, it may sound good to you- not
to me.
• Let me be, let me be, to think like I want to. Let me be, let me be, that’s
all I ask of you. I am what I am and that’s all I ever can be.
• Don't try to plan me or understand me-- I can’t stand to be understood. I
could never give into or ever live up to being like you think I should. I’ve
got some inner need which I'm trying to heed, I can’t take any doubt cast
on me.
• Don’t try to change me or rearrange me to satisfy the selfishness in you.
I’m not a piece of clay to mold to your moods each day, and I'm not a
pawn to be told how to move. I’m sorry I'm not the fool you thought
would play by your rules but to each his own philosophy.
• Let me be, let me be, to think like I want to. Let me be, let me be, that’s all
I ask of you. I am what I am and that’s all I ever can be. I said, that’s all I
ever can be. I said, that’s all I ever can be...
Now for a shift in thoughts
When do you become an adult in this culture?
What rites of passage exist?
Rite of passage defined
• A ritual or initiation that symbolizes a change of status, a
ceremony that introduces a person into a new life or role with
new responsibilities and privileges.
Typical rites of passage
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Drivers license
Graduation from high school
Getting a job
Leaving home
Marriage
Voting
Drinking age
Supporting your self financially
Rites of passages
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Family
Church
Society
Culture
Can you think of any examples of the above in
your own life?
Identity issues for adolescence
• Lost in the library of life, looking for a book that you know you
have written but never had the chance to read.
Statements of identity
• Infants: I am what I am given.
• Toddlers: I am what I will.
• Preschool: I am what I imagine I can be
• School age: I am what I can learn and do.
• Adolescence: Who am I?
Parenting teenagers
• Issue of parental companionship
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• The issue of congruence versus fantasy bonds
• The issue of social power theory
• Scapegoating parents
Legitimizing requests
• 1. Anticipate problems
• 2. Make explanations clear
• 3. Show respect and concern
• 4. Don’t issue arbitrary demands
• 5. Back down sometimes
• 6. Try for understanding
• 7. Apologize
Parental monitoring
• When parents are aware of what their children are doing,
where they are and who they are with, then adolescents will
usually do what their parents want and expect, if the
relationship is good.
• Monitoring is very important.
• Anonymity and morality do not go well together.
• Parents need to know where and who their teenagers are
with.
the end