最近读的三本书，笔记之以为备忘录。三本之中最喜欢的是 Get Out of My Life (可译为《别来烦我》?)，从心理学角度分析孩子的言语行为，我读了才不由感叹，啊原来如此，怪不得，原来是这么一回事，跟我对身边朋友家的大孩子们的观 察一一印证了。作者是少儿心理咨询专家，理论都有大量的实例支持，言之有物，言之有理。我越来越认识到，要解决跟青春期叛逆期的孩子的交流问题，最重要的 是理解他们的所思所想。不理解，就容易做出错误的判断，盲动，瞎发脾气，让自己和孩子都不痛快！
Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager, Revised and Updated by Anthony E. Wolf PhD
Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!: Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind
by Michael J. Bradley
How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years by Julie A. Ross. M.A.
Review Notes on “Get Out of My Life”
General
Teens feel entitled (to our love, to our “service”)(it’s good) and we want them to. Their entitlement might make you mad as they take your “service” for granted.
Instilling fear as an explicit child-raising practice has some bad consequences. It can breed anger and resentment. It can intimidate and cause the intimidated to lose confidence in themselves. Worst of all, it tells the children that in the service of getting what one wants, fear and intimidation are necessary and acceptable in everyday life.
It is possible to elicit respect from teenagers. This respect can only be based on the strength and confidence of the parents.
The first step is to accept a child’s right to say what he or she has to say. No matter how stupid or unreasonable. It’s the strength not to descend to the teenager’s level of name calling that bring you respect.
You need confidence. Not that you are always going to make the right decision, nobody can do that, or that you are always in control of your child, nobody can even come close to doing that. Rather, you need confidence that you are the right person for the job and that your efforts are definitely not in vein.
The hallmark of adolescence, the transformation that defines this period of life, is a psychological change. It’s the adolescent mandate. This mandate tells the adolescent to turn away from childhood and childish feelings. Since childhood is marked by the domination of parents, it follows that adolescent must turn away from their parents.This turn towards independence, towards a world separate from family and home, has always been at the core of adolescence, today and a thousand years ago.
The course of pre-adolescent childhood is played out in the continuing struggle between the mandate to grow up, and the wish not to. On the one hand is the “baby self” which desires only the nurturing it has enjoyed for years. All pleasure. No fuss. Parents see their children act immature, irresponsible, lazy and demanding, because the home is the natural realm for expressing the babyish mood of functioning. But there is the other self beginning to develop slowly –the independent, mature self, which is usually on view only away from home, unseen by the parents.
Operating in the baby-self mode is a way not to separate from parents. Some children need to cling, often provoking endless and senseless battles. Children who are not so good at functioning on their own, will probably have a tougher adolescence than their peers.
Why teenagers can’t accept “No” especially after a couple of attempts to change your mind hadn’t worked? – The teenager was being asked to accept loss and this meant shifting over, however briefly, to the more adult, independent mood of functioning. Picking up and moving on is the separation that they dreaded. Instead of separation, they got passionate involvement for an extended period of time, even if it was in the form of yelling, crying and sucking.
The baby inside of teenagers controls their behavior. Teenagers have an infinite capacity of self-deception. This is the characteristics of the babyself: it does not look at itself. It does not judge itself. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s not anything. It has no conscience. ( so this explains why they can approach you as if nothing happened, 10 minutes after a major argument with you, after they said terrible things to you that make you feels desperate.
During adolescence, attention and concern turn to the world outside, and away from family and home. Success and failures in school and with friends seem absolute crucial to continuing survival. Everything takes on a much more desperate quality. Because adolescents don’t have much experience in life, they see only their day-to-day existence. They have no long-term perspective.
Mostly an adolescent’s love is unfocused, diffuse. It lights up the whole world and produces the sense of inchoate longing that so characterizes early adolescence. Teenagers are, in effect, in love them the world, but their love is unrequited. They have great longings, but are never quite fulfilled.
Two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the mandate that demands that teenagers turn away from childhood and parents.
Typical of Teenagers
Being near their parent creates feelings of wanting to be near them, as always before, feeling of loving them and wanting their love…because parents are the source of these unacceptable feelings, adolescents are repelled by their own parents. … so that explains why they don’t want to be in the same room with you.
Allergy to parents: The pattern of behavior caused by this allergy differs markedly for boys and girls. Boys, primarily because of their sexuality, choose the absenting method in dealing with mom and dad. They hide. Girls battle.
Boys choose to physically separate and become vanishing experts. Teenage boys become all a sudden very private. Boys are especially likely to avoid their mother. The possibility always exists that strong feelings towards one’s mother might be tangled with sexuality and therefore are extremely unacceptable. Since strong emotional contact with his mother is especially upsetting to any teenage boy, he might react strongly to his mother’s anger towards him. After all, he can’t explain the facts of life to his mother because he doesn’t know what’s really going on himself.
Boys for the most part, can’t battle verbally. They get little practice. If boys become emotional with their parents, they tend to be very emotional. Boys avoid confrontation for the excellent reason that they can’t handle it. They get too upset. It’s either fight or flight. Boys who battle their parents regularly instead of isolating themselves can encounter serious problems. They are usually boys, who, prior to their teenage years, remained strongly attached to their parents. In adolescence, their lack of separation takes the form of endless battle.
One particular irritating manifestation of the adolescent mandate in boys is a sort of absenting, even when present. They appear to do nothing. At home, boys want peace and tranquility. In this regard, parents are a special problem because they are a constant potential source of aggravation. Boys seek to achieve a state of perfect passive pleasure.
Girls solve the problem of living at home and get successfully combating their unacceptable feeling of love and dependence, by fighting everything.
Sexuality, for most teenage girls, does not have the “in the air, all the time, waiting to be attached to” quality that it has for boys.
With almost all girls, the attachment to their mother is stronger than the one to their father, and therefore the adolescent mandate requires that much more negativism in order to deny that tie with the mother.
Teenage girls also argue far more than boys do as an out-growth of earlier style of fighting and relating to peers.
Parents are to be taken for granted.
Parents should let them know that they are being inconsiderate. Parents should refuse to be bullied. They always have the option of saying “No”. Like it or not, the teenager behavior, though obnoxious, is normal. It does not mean in any kind of itself that they are selfish, inconsiderate people. It is a developmental stage, and it does change – even before the end of high school. They are still children.
Adults as Jerks
It is very important for adolescents to begin viewing adults as flawed. They know that they themselves have flaws. They also know that they are expected to go shortly into the adult world and survive. So it’s important to view parents as flawed. What they ideally want to see, especially in their parents, is adults who are flawed but who are not thrown by their own flaws, and hence are still worthy of respect. Adults who act as if they know everything are hard for teenagers to stomach. So to get along, parents need to accept that they themselves have flaws.
Parents as embarrassment
Not only do teenagers see their parents as grossly flawed, they also find them outright embarrassing, esp. when seen with them anywhere outside the home. The adolescent mandate says that teenagers must disinvest in parents and commit to the world separate from home. As a result, parents and the world out there – particularly friends do not mix at all. Comingling between parents and friends causes acute embarrassment.
Many teenagers find an adult whom they like, respect, or even listen to, but never their parents, until the end of adolescence.
Friends as everything
Adolescent girls fitting in
Girls are not confident. The underlying insecurity gives rise to much cruelty. They also develop intense attachments to girls they admire, which creates intense jealousy. The combination of insecurity and strong attachment is an unparalleled nastiness. Little can rival the viciousness and social desperation of eleven to fourteen year old girls.
The basic purpose of cliques is to give each group member a sense of self-worth, which is inextricably tied to the exclusiveness of a clique.
To an appalling degree, girls’ day-to-day feeling of self-worth is directly tied to a sense of their own popularity.
Fortunately, the stage passes. By the middle of high school, girls have usually formed more lasting relationship and are content to be part of a small but secure group of friends.
Fitting in for boys
Boys have to fight a lot (or maybe talk a lot about it) to show who is tougher. Cool replaces tough.
Parents
Letting go is the hard part, but it’s the key. Prevent disaster. Accept who they are.
Review Notes on "How to hug a Porcupine"
(her other book: Now what to do? A guide to parenting elementary aged children)
Teenage years are like holding the bow and letting go the arrow. Now it’s the time to hold back the bow and do the best you can at aiming the center of the target. In high school, you’ll have to let go the arrow and watch it fly. Whether it’s a good hit depends on how well you aim now and whether you have your bow adequately extended.
Teenage parents need to shift to a preparatory mindset, proactive and long-range stance. Change from controlling our children’s behavior to building, strengthening and fortifying our relationship with them, because you won’t be able to control them anymore. The relationship has 4 qualities: respect, support, reciprocity and collaboration.
Respect
Child’s self-worth has 4 levels in the shape of a pyramid: (from bottom up) unconditional positive regard, real accomplishment, parental feedback, and peer influence. The broader the base, the less weight peer influence will exert on our preteens.
When you treat them badly or talk to them in a harsh way(use of words, tone of voice and body language), think if you’ll treat your spouse, your best friend or anyone else this way. Do you want to be treated this way?
Support
Developmental urge: to become independent from us, to prove that they are different from us
Supporting means recognizing that their burgeoning developmental needs are in direct conflict with their reality. It means giving them healthy and appropriate outlets for their needs.
Reciprocity
Healthy adult relationships are reciprocal, which means that there’s a “give-and-take” quality to them. Compromise is required to achieve a win-win solution. Both needs are met.
Collaboration
Adopting a win-win philosophy
Methods
Listening with heart – interpret their behavior and tone, pick a time when both of you are relaxed. If your preteen is in a defensive mood, the best way to refrain from taking it personally is to walk away. If you are taking the bait and letting your temper flares, you are effectively transforming into a 12-year old yourself. In addition, you are role-modeling the very behavior that you are asking your preteen to eliminate. This is one of the most disastrous things we can do as a parent, for several reasons: 1)our children are much better at being preteen than we are; 2) our preteens need for us to remain emotionally connected and stable, because they are very unstable during this period.
How to connect with them – use “love tickets/notes” (keep it short, simple, stick to the present, and don’t ever use it to criticize)
What if they don’t listen?
1) natural consequences. It’s OK to let your child sink sometimes. It’s part of learning.
2) Use “sandwich” technique (first positive but honest statement, then use “I statement” to state the problem, followed by another positive statement of the truth. Never use “but” “however” to connect the bread).
3) Use the “tell me more” technique and explore together.
4) Use family meetings. Kids need to feel that they belong and are making meaningful contribution to something that’s bigger and more important than they are. The family meeting has to be consistent (for example, at the same time, on the same day), with an agenda and a format. Kids can choose a fun way to end each meeting, such as ice-cream or a family game of monopoly.
Dealing with Defiant Kid
Forgiving yourself is the first step in not making the mistake a second time. Confess, apologize, and forgive.
Understand their behavior: defiance and anger are ways in which they keep the world at arm’s length during their metamorphosis so they won’t get hurt. They are usually seeking attention, seeking power or control, seeking revenge (not necessarily because they are hurt), seeking withdrawal, out of a sense of inadequacy or fear of failure. If they are being defiant all the time, there’s a pattern that need to be analyzed.
If you are about to explode, disengage mentally, take a parental time-out, but only once. If the kid still can’t disengage, try different method.
For computer/games addiction, act as if we are interested and stay in with them. This help maintains the relationship and open lines of communication.
Michael Popkin, author of the video-based parenting-education program "Active Parenting", names 9 ways that parent mis-communicate with their children when the child is having a problem:
| Communication Block | How it sounds | What your middle-schooler thinks when he hears you say it |
| Commanding | "quit whining." | "what I have to say is not important. " "I don't count". |
| Advising | "Next time, you should…" "Well, what you need to do is go back to her and explain that…" | "I never do anything right". "What happens is all my fault". |
| Placating | "Oh, honey. You're beautiful /talented / smart no matter what she /he said about you." | "Mom/Dad doesn't understand me." "Mom/Day is lying. " |
| Distracting | "You know what: let's go out to lunch to take your mind off of it". | "Feelings are bad. " "I need to bury my feelings or distract myself from them." |
| Interrogating | "Well, what did you do to make him say that?" | "If something bad happens, it must be because of I did something wrong." |
| Moralizing | "Every cloud has a silver lining." "Tomorrow's a new day; it will be better then. " | "My feelings don't count except as a way for Mom/Dad to prove a bigger lesson about life." |
| Using sarcasm | "It's not the end of the world, after all, you know." | "I'm a jerk/stupid for having feelings about this." |
| Being know-it-all | "Honey, that's just the way these things go. You have to chalk this one up for the law of averages. By the time you are twenty,…(blah, blah, blah)." | "I'm not allowed to feel the way I feel because there's always a bigger explanation that makes more sense than what I think or feel." |
