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01/29/2018 11:00 PMThere has never been a lack of advice about raising teens. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare had a suggestion in A Winter’s Tale: “I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty…”
But, of course, those years exist and continue to provide challenges for adolescents and their elders. An upcoming program, Weathering the Adolescent Storm in a Pressure Filled World, will give parents and teens guidance on how to navigate those demanding years. The event, on Wednesday, Jan. 31 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Old Saybrook High School, is sponsored by Compassion Counts, a coalition of community groups, many focused on wellness, both physical and emotional.
“The idea is to help folks going through these challenges and let them know they are not alone,” said Dan Osborne of Gilead Community Services, who will moderate the forum.
According to psychologist Tom Allen, one of the organizers and a facilitator at the event, the program was designed to make the issues far more dramatic than merely listening to a lecture. Instead, the forum will feature a series of before and after skits, dramatizing breakdowns in parent-child communication and then showing how the same situations could be handled more productively.
“People can read about these issues, but when they actually see them played out, they resonate with their own lives,” Allen said.
A panel of students from six local high schools, Old Saybrook, Old Lyme, Valley Regional, Haddam-Killingworth, Clinton, and Westbrook will discuss the situations presented in the skits and there will also be participation from the audience. Psychologist Alicia Farrell and Andy Buccarro, a licensed clinical social worker and a licensed alcohol and drug counselor, will also act as facilitators.
Farrell said the event will focus on three themes: fostering positive communication between parents and their teens, allowing children to fail, and the developing the grit and resilience teenagers need to cope when difficulties arise. (Farrell is giving a resiliency-building workshop on Monday, Jan. 29 sponsored by Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services.)
“A great issue for parents is how to let go and to have a sense of when to let go. Allowing children to fail actually gives them a chance to learn by trial and error,” Farrell said. “They [parents] micro-manage. They’re so afraid to let up. Solving the problem gives the child more resilience and grit. If kids don’t make their own decisions, what happens when they go away to college?”
Instead, Farrell suggested collaborative problem solving where parents and children work together, having open dialogue as they work an issue through.
“It’s the way to learn what your children are capable of,” she said.
Allen noted that parents often invest so much of themselves in their children’s success, they intervene in situations where a teen should have the first chance to work out a solution.
“I often tell kids they are the quarterbacks of their own lives,” Allen said. “If the defense throws a blitz, you might want to come to the sideline and talk to the coach, but ultimately you have to run back on the field and execute the play.”
Still, there are some situations that demand involvement. Buccarro points out that having children suffer the natural consequences of their actions may be appropriate if they refuse to wear jackets and as a result get cold outside, but the same natural consequences don’t work in more troublesome cases of drug or alcohol abuse. Buccarro said if there are good relations between parents and children, parents can often bring the subject up, but if relationships are strained, it is good to seek professional advice.
Both Farrell and Allen stressed the importance of developing sympathetic listening skills. Teens, Allen said, often feel they are not listened to and their opinions are not valued. Parents, he added, often listen through the prism of their own egos rather than the needs of their child. He said the skits that will be presented as part of the program will demonstrate positive steps to fostering more trusting communication
Parenting, both Allen and Farrell emphasized, is not a situation where perfection is either demanded or even possible.
“Perfection is not the goal,” Allen said.
Farrell added that “if you do enough right, eventually it overwhelms what you are doing wrong.”
Weathering the Adolescent Storm in a Pressure Filled World
Compassion Counts presents Weathering the Adolescent Storm in a Pressure Filled World on Wednesday, Jan. 31 at Old Saybrook High School, 1111 Boston Post Road, Old Saybrook. The event starts from 6 to 6:30 p.m. with light refreshments; the program runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Admission is free; register online at weatheringtheadolescentstorm.eventbrite.com.