Our families need to connect. Each of us needs to feel important to the others. This is impossible if we’re always checking, texts, emails, snaps, Instagram, etc. We get frustrated that our teenagers are on their phones 24/7, but are we any better? Most adults I know have their cell in their hand or in their pocket. It’s never more than arm’s length away. You entire family needs some coordinated time without any form of electronic entertainment. Believe me, at first it feels weird. Eventually though it feels great!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
It can be difficult to control what your teen is doing with their cell phone. Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I never cease to be surprised in my job. You would think after enough years of sitting across the counseling room with teenagers that I’d have heard it all. For the most part, I have. However, their ingenuity with technology continues to boggle my mind. It’s all I can do to keep up with them, and they’re freely admitting to me how they misuse technology to do sneaky things. I can’t imagine how challenging it is for parents to try and figure out which app is being used for what, how to track what kind of pictures your child is posting and viewing online, and who in the world they’re talking to.
I will share what I know based on what I hear in the counseling room:
Firstly, most teenagers are using their cell phones appropriately. The majority of kids are not sneaking. They use their phones to call home, and to text their friends. They keep up with their friends on Snapchat and Instagram. They post things you’d be entirely fine with their grandma seeing, and a lot of them even “unfollow” people they know who post things they shouldn’t be. This is their social hub. This is how they are informed when someone is having a party, a group of people are going to the beach, or getting together to see a movie. They text one another questions about homework. They send encouragement if they’re having a bad day. They tell mom and dad if they change locations when they’re out with friends.
There are also a significant number of adolescents who are misusing the privilege of having a phone. Really, it’s the unrestricted internet access that’s the problem. Just texting and making phone calls is rarely the issue for a teenager. Even if you have the most sophisticated parental blocking system on your teenager’s cell phone, there is always a work-around. For example, most programs don’t block things on Facebook and Instagram. If you type in the right search terms, you can find pages dedicated to uploading pornographic images. Your teenager might also be trying out “Kik.” This is an app that allows chats with strangers, and the conversation history can be deleted. I have worked with more than one kid who met someone they thought was nice on Kik, but I was left wondering if they were a masquerading child sexual predator. In both cases these “girls” sent inappropriate photos to the adolescent boys I was working with. They tried to get information about the boys and asked for photos in return.
Here’s the main point: Be extremely careful when your child has a smart phone. You have to know how to check through their phone from time to time to see what they’re up to. More innocently, sometimes teenagers sign up for sites and input their home addresses and phone numbers. They don’t mean anything by it, but it still gives out information you might prefer be kept private.
The data plan on a phone definitely is a privilege. It seems like most teenagers now consider it a requirement for their survival, much like food, clothes and shelter. Do everything you can to teach them responsibility with their phone. A lot of teens are getting into things simply because they don’t have supervision on their phones, and don’t yet have the brain development required to really recognize the danger they might be in (that comes in late adolescence, which is the early 20s). I’ve noticed this most frequently with apps like Tinder. I wish I could promise you your teen is smart enough not to meet strangers from apps like Tinder, but enough of them do it that I can’t make you that promise. It’s really tough on parents to keep up these days, but it’s essential to your teenager developing healthy habits.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Use of e-cigs, or vaping, has increased in teenagers dramatically. Anecdotally I have seen a tremendous upswing in the number of teens using nicotine and marijuana ever since electronic cigarettes came out. It has been particularly pronounced in the last two years. Apparently studies support this. Studies also show that use of e-cigs has a high correlation to eventual cigarette use.
Check out this infographic from National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes on Health; and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
This should warn us all that adolescents are much more willing to try vaping than cigarettes. Since they were small children, teens have been socialized to think cigarette smoking is “disgusting,” and “dangerous.” Because vaping smells much better (if it smells at all), and because most teenagers aren’t aware of the dangers, some try it. They truly think they’re inhaling water vapor. This is simply not true.
A study was just released from the University of California at San Francisco that definitively links e-cig use to cancer causing toxins. The saliva and urine was tested in non-using teens, vaping-only teens, and teens who both smoke cigarettes and vape. While the highest amounts of the toxins were in the group the used both, a significant amount was also in the group that vaped. The group who didn’t use at all didn’t have these toxins in their bodies. More on the report written about this study can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/teens-cigarettes-show-evidence-toxic-chemicals-smokers-study/story?id=53537714.
Here’s the bottom line: vaping is very dangerous for your adolescents. The devices used to vape can look like a USB stick, wifi connector, credit card, a tiny black square, fancy pen, highlighter, etc. You won’t smell smoke either. You have to ask your teen outright, and keep track of their social media pictures. If you suspect your teen might be vaping, but they won’t tell you the truth and you can’t definitively pin it on them, call their pediatrician. They can order a nicotine test on your child (which won’t cover everything that can be vaped, but it will tell you quite a lot).
If you need to talk more about your teen’s potential addiction, we’re here to help. Give us a call.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
He finally had the strength to end a toxic relationship! (Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
Okay, obviously that is a cheesy photo. However, once you’re out of a codependent relationship, and have gotten beyond the grief, this is how you’ll feel!
Anyhow, let’s get to the point. Ending a relationship from a codependent position is one of the hardest things you will ever do, or have ever done. You have recognized your friendship, dating relationship, sibling relationship, etc. has reached very unhealthy levels. You now realize that you are often drained of time, energy, emotional well-being, and a general feeling of joy after you are around the toxic person in your life. You feel manipulated, guilty and exhausted after you are with the person. You have asked yourself repeatedly, ‘Why do I continue to answer their phone calls?’ The person calls you whenever they are in crisis. The person always needs something that “only you” can give, whether it is money, time, a place to stay, or you name-it. When you can’t break out of this cycle, you are in a codependent relationship. Other terms you will frequently hear are enabler and coaddict.
So, the big question is, ‘How do I stop this crazy in my life?’ That’s really what it is too: crazy-making. You always leave a conversation feeling like the crazy one, but your friends all tell you it’s the other person. To end this kind of relationship takes very drastic measures. You have to come to a place of strength and reality. You need to take a very honest look at what has been happening between you and this person. Is this a truly reciprocal and healthy relationship? If the answer is “no” or, “It used to be,” then it is time to move on.
Once you have really looked at the relationship, you have to tell yourself, “I will no longer enable bad behavior. I am not responsible in any way for the outcome of this person’s life.” Truly, the person will get better or get worse with or without you.
Next, surround yourself with good friends or family who will keep you busy and keep you grounded in reality. The crazy-maker in your life is going to call you with a crisis because that has always worked. You will have to either not answer the call, or simply say over and over again, “You will have to call someone else with this problem. I have been unable to help in the past because you have not chosen to help yourself.”
Finally, you need to maintain firmly whatever boundary or rule you’ve set. If you told the toxic person you will not call them back in the middle of the night anymore, then turn your phone off at night. You get the idea…
Again, ending an enabling relationship is challenging beyond belief. However, once you’re through the mud and the muck of it, you’ll feel free. You’ll feel like the guy in the picture at the beginning of this blog post!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Codependent people would literally give away everything to save someone else. Image courtesy of Teerapun / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Codependence is a problem nearly as destructive as an addiction. “It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive” (http://mentalhealthamerica.net/go/codependency). Sometimes it is referred to as co-addiction. Here is a hypothetical example of codependent behavior: Julia is a mom with a 26 year old son named Trevor. Trevor has an addiction to heroin. Julia spends all her time and energy trying to fix Trevor’s problem even though Trevor does not yet want to quit. Julia has taken out a loan against her house to pay for rehabs, continues to make payments on Trevor’s car so his credit does not go down, buys him food because “at least I’m not buying him drugs,” and constantly begs him to attend recovery meetings. Julia frequently sets down boundaries she cannot enforce. She told Trevor last week if he ever used drugs in her house she would put him out on the street. He did, and then he apologized and promised not to do it again. She forgave him and told him that was his last chance. This is the fifth time that has happened.
When you think about people like Julia it is easy to see how difficult it would be to actually stop “helping” Trevor because she loves him. On a deeper level Julia will feel like a failure if she lets her son go. Unfortunately many experts believe that is the only way he will really try to get better. Julia’s addiction is Trevor’s recovery. Codependent people often ruin their lives and relationships to try helping the addict; they frequently wind up in nearly as bad an emotional position as the addict. Often codependent people find themselves in financial ruin.
www.codependents.org is a good resource for someone who thinks they might have codependency. Therapy is also very important in this situation. It requires a lot of support to let someone go that you love and care for. It is extremely scary, but addicts usually have to experience rock bottom to finally realize their drug of choice isn’t worth it. If you’re codependent, you might be delaying that moment of truth for the addict in your life. Codependency can also happen in other situations. When someone you love is doing anything they shouldn’t you can be codependent to their behavior. Here is one I’ve seen quite a bit: Your teenager becomes sexually active with their girlfriend/boyfriend. You are against them having sex at their age, but you also worry about the possible consequences they might experience at their age without adult guidance. I’ve seen parents in this situation tell their teenage child to start having sex in their own room at home so that “At least there is an adult around if something goes wrong.” The parent then feels they can control the outcome better by making sure their home is stocked with condoms, etc. The problem here though is enabling a behavior the parents are not okay with.
If you need help determining whether you might be enabling your teen’s bad choices, or whether your teenager is codependent to someone else in their life, send us an email, give a call or just comment on this post. Let’s see if we can help you sort out the difference between helping and helping too much.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Ending a toxic dating relationship might take more courage than she thinks she has. Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/photostock
What does a toxic teenage dating relationship look like? The simple answer is when a couple should break up but for whatever reason they can’t.
This post uses pronouns that assume teen girls have more trouble breaking off relationships than teen boys do. This isn’t really true. Teen boys have a hard time with it sometimes too. Feel free to imagine your son when reading this if that’s relevant to your situation.
What are you supposed to do when your normally sensible daughter is so wrapped up in an insensible relationship that she can’t extricate herself?
Put a stone in her shoe: I don’t mean literally. Work hard at creating cognitive dissonance. This is when someone points out something to you that makes you uneasy with your current situation. While they don’t outright tell you what to do, the thing they tell you causes mental conflict. Here’s an example of what I mean: I dated a guy for my senior year in college, the next year, and my first year of graduate school. My parents consistently told me he was skiddish about marriage. When I asked how they knew this they would tell me it is because he would never talk about our future as a “we.” This quietly ate at me until it became a big enough problem that it was driving me crazy. Eventually it’s the thing that did us in. My parents never said, “You need to end it with this loser! What are you thinking?” They just put a VERY UNCOMFORTABLE stone in my shoe.
Set appropriate limits: If your daughter has a boyfriend who is truly detrimental to her health in some way, don’t support the relationship. Parents rarely have enough control over a teen that they can expressly forbid their son or daughter to date someone. When try to forbid a couple from seeing each other, teenagers end up lying and sneaking around. Now there’s even more behavior to be upset with, and it causes you to lose influence because your teen stops listening to you. What you can do though is refuse to support the relationship even though you don’t wholly outlaw it. If you replace the word “relationship” with “drugs,” you’ll know what to do. You wouldn’t allow your teenager to do drugs in your house. You wouldn’t give your teen money to buy drugs. You wouldn’t drop your teenager off somewhere to use drugs. Now put the word “relationship” back in those sentences. Don’t allow him in your house. Don’t give your daughter money to go out with him on dates. Don’t drop her off to see him. In simple terms, don’t enable.
Control your opinion-sharing: “Stick with the facts, m’am.” Just call things as you see them. Don’t then go on to explain why what you see means your daughter’s boyfriend is Satan’s spawn. She is more likely to listen to you and confide in you if you only say what you observe or hear. It’s okay to tell her, “Samantha’s mom told me she saw your boyfriend kissing Jennifer after the football game.” It’s not okay to then go on and on about what a rotten cheater he is. The reason I say this is that your daughter is responsible for herself, and you’re only responsible for her. The focus needs to be on her. If Samantha’s mom really did see your daughter’s boyfriend kissing Jennifer after the football game and your daughter still wants to go out with him, have a gentle conversation with your daughter about why she’s struggling with self-respect. There are all kids of people out there who aren’t right for her. Your job as a parent is to help her have enough courage to pass on them.
I know this is hard. It’s really frustrating to see your child in a toxic relationship. Whether you’re a teen reading this, or you’re mom or dad, make sure you keep talking. Run your feelings by someone who will be very honest with you, and then start taking the steps to make a positive change.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Hello, I’m Lauren! If you notice your teen struggling, you might be feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated or concerned as a parent. Try to remember, there is hope. I want to help your adolescent feel better. My hope is for them to enjoy their life again. I want them to feel confident they can handle whatever situations arise.
