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Fostering Wellness and Growth / Troubling Issues — Comments Off on Is Your Teen Spoiled?
04
Jan 25

Is Your Teen Spoiled?

Teenager“Spoiling usually results from over-indulging or over-protecting our teen.”

How do you know if your teen is spoiled? Certain events can trigger an awareness in us. One mom said she realized her daughter was spoiled the weekend they spent at an out-of-town wedding. Her daughter refused to share a bed with her cousin and insisted upon standing beside her brother for photographs, even though she wasn’t in the wedding party. A dad said he realized his son was spoiled after he picked him up from a two-day camping trip. The boy complained about the habits of his fellow campers and pouted when he heard they were having roast beef instead of their usual Friday night pizza and wings. These wake-up calls tell us it’s time to make changes.

How Do Teens Become Spoiled and What Can You Do?

Spoiling usually results from over-indulging or over-protecting our teen. If that is you, take heart. It’s fixable. It is hardly a crime to try too hard. If your teen was ill for a time, it may have been necessary to take extra care of your teen for a while. The key is to make gradual changes and to always let your teen know what is expected of them. If you change the rules too suddenly or harshly, your teen will be caught off-guard, confused, and may feel humiliated or resentful.

If you suspect that your teen is spoiled, try to identify specific examples. If you’re inclined to, you can also identify some areas in which your teen is expressly not spoiled. This may take a few weeks of observation. What you are likely to find is that your teen is weak in one or two areas. For example, a spoiled teen may:

  • Expect you to handle the tedious or unpleasant parts of their life
  • Complain frequently if things don’t go exactly the way they want them to
  • Expect a lot from you and perhaps from others too
  • Seem to think they deserve special treatment
  • Want a lot of things and become unpleasant if you don’t deliver them
  • Show an unwillingness to do things for themselves, including working
  • Not care about the feelings of others

Think about the areas in which your teen needs to improve and tackle one at a time. Chances are, any changes you make will help with other areas as well. You will be more motivated to change if you choose something that currently bothers either you or another family member. That way, more than one person will benefit. In many cases, the change means simply doing less. Not buying them what they want. Not doing their laundry. Not doing things for them that they can do for themselves.

When your teen objects, simply smile and say, “I know you don’t like it. But we all have to deal with these things.” Ignore any tantrum-like behavior, including the silent treatment. Your teen needs you more than you realize, so tantrums are necessarily finite (plus they take a lot of energy).

Teaching Your Teen to Respect Others’ Feelings

If you want your teen to show more respect for your feelings, be a role model. Think about how you respond to your teen, your other children, and your spouse. If you sound respectful, it is reasonable to insist that your teen treat you the same way. If you think that you could both improve, make it a point to be more courteous. Your teen is likely to catch on.

Sometimes teens who have been through a deep depression become accustomed to having their feelings looked after. Family members, the therapist, and even teachers may have gone out of their way to accommodate the teen’s feelings. It may simply be that, in their misery, your teen forgot that others have feelings too. Do not let them get away with mistreating you or your spouse or a sibling because they are going through a rough time. It is okay to say, “We care about your feelings, and we expect you to care about ours.”

Helping Teens Who Lack Empathy

If your teen’s problem goes beyond being discourteous, and they truly seem to lack empathy, you have a more serious issue. Lack of empathy will be a problem for your teen as they enter adulthood. Talk to your teen’s therapist and let her know that you want to help with this issue. Ask her what you can do to help at home. Be a role model for empathy. Let your conversation be peppered with comments like:

  • I’m going to take Mrs. Beale to the doctor. She’s too sick to drive.
  • Let’s keep our voices down because Dad worked all night and needs to sleep.
  • I think you may have hurt your sister’s feelings. Apologizing would make her feel better and it would show your maturity.
  • Tell me what you’re feeling, and I’ll try to help.

If your teen has never been very empathetic, it may help to explain that all humans need other people. People who lack empathy do not understand this implicit principle of nature. Explain that when they do something kind, it is a type of insurance that it will come back to them.

 

Caring for Your Hurting Teen / Fostering Wellness and Growth / Troubling Issues — Comments Off on Your Teen’s Grief Over a Diagnosis
13
Dec 24

Your Teen’s Grief Over a Diagnosis

Teenager“Encourage your teen to learn as much about the illness as they can face.”

The word grief implies that there is a loss, and in your teen’s case, it may be a loss of the innocence associated with their health condition. Most teens never expect to experience mental illness; in many cases, they have never before heard of their diagnosis. The very word “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” may cause them to recoil. They do not want to be that person and they believe they cannot deal with this. The route from grief to acceptance is painful and difficult, but there are ways to ease the journey.

Addressing your Teen’s Stigma
Many teens carry a stigma about mental illness even if they were never before aware of it. Explain to your teen that stigma is the result of ignorance and is overcome through education. Encourage them to learn as much about the illness as they can face. This might include reading an autobiography or perusing articles online. There are some helpful magazines published solely for the benefit of people with, say, schizophrenia. This literature will help your teen to normalize the illness. Sz Magazine is an outstanding magazine for patients with schizophrenia. BP Magazine is also an excellent publication and is for sufferers of bipolar disorder. Your teen may be willing to volunteer at your local chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI). This will help them to feel like they have control over their illness and they will meet other people who are helping the fight against stigma. You may want to volunteer for NAMI yourself to show your support.

Addressing your Teen’s Self-Image
If your teen feels that their diagnosis changes who they are, ask why. If they say something like, “Now I’m a person with bipolar disorder,” ask them to list how that makes them different from before the diagnosis. They may say, for example, that they are now a person who sees a psychiatrist and a therapist and who takes medicine; that they are a person who has fewer friends and has given up on an activity that they once enjoyed. Then ask them what is still the same; for example, they may still drive, attend school, enjoy the support of a loving family, take pleasure in music or reading science fiction, and more. Try to get this second list as long as possible. This may help your teen see that they are still the same person. Try not to let them focus on blanket notions such as, “I’m bipolar.” Having bipolar disorder does not comprise a person’s entire being.

Beyond that, remind your teen that people are always changing, especially during the teen years. Even if they had not become ill a year ago they would still have changed in some ways. See if they can identify something new that they would like to try. What would they like to accomplish and get out of the next year? See if you can get them to set some concrete goals. This will give them a sense of  control over their life.

Helping Your Teen Compartmentalize Grief
If you find that your teen is crying every day about the diagnosis, tell them you understand but then suggest to them that they choose a specific time of the day to grieve as deeply as they want and to fight the feeling the remainder of the day. For example, they may need to go to their room and cry for half an hour after coming home from school. This could be a helpful stress reliever. When they are finished, they should come out and do something that makes them feel better.

Helping Your Teen Maintain Friendships
A mental illness can temporarily derail a teen’s social life. If they find that they have lost ground in this area, now might be a good time to evaluate their friendships. Some of their friends who have drawn away from them may be worth pursuing and others may not. If they have been involved in a negative friendship and the illness has strained things, they may choose to let the friendship go. A life-changing illness can be just that, but the changes may be for the better.

If they are trying to keep up but do not have the energy to go out much, they may be able to use Facebook to keep up with friends. They may find it easier to go to a movie with friends than to the mall, which requires more conversation. If your teen finds themselves so changed that they can no longer relate to former friends, suggest that they embrace their new self. They are more sophisticated about life now and they will need to find teens with a similar depth of understanding. They may meet such teens in a yoga class or in the school’s drama club or newspaper. Encourage them to try a few things and to take their time choosing new friends. This will be especially important if they have been hurt or abandoned by former friends. Tell them that many people will want to befriend them and that now they have a good idea of what they are looking for in the people that they meet.

Helping Your Teen Understand the Right to Privacy
It may be in your teen’s best interest to hold off on telling new friends or acquaintances about their illness. After all, their illness is simply one part of who they are. Let friends get to know the other, more interesting, parts first. Till now, your teen may have never experienced the need to maintain privacy in an area of their life. Empower them with that option now. Let them know that they do not owe anyone an explanation for what they are going through and that they have nothing to apologize for in terms of the illness. It is an important step toward adulthood.

Helping Your Teen Deal with her Loss of Innocence
All of this talk of embracing change may seem positive, but your teen may still be struggling with the end of innocence. At some point, we all go through this, but in your child’s case, it happened brutally and unexpectedly. Suggest that they give themself some time to let their emotions catch up to what their mind now knows. For whatever reason, humans are able to understand facts quicker than they can feel okay about them. A useful nighttime exercise is to have them write down or think about five things that are good in their life right now. Do not be surprised if their therapist or psychiatrist is one of them. Gratitude has a way of soothing pain. Slowly, they will begin to see that life still offers them opportunities and that their illness will not be able to hold them back for long.

Meanwhile, encourage them to keep their schedule as full as possible. Busy people do not have time to dwell on things that are out of their control. Finally, reassure them that they have probably been through the worst part of the illness and that things can only get better. Let them know that as they continue to improve and their symptoms continue to subside, the illness will gradually become a smaller, less significant part of their life.

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