Today we’ll give babies and toddlers a rest and look at how to help our teens navigate adolescence. I’ve learned from personal experience that nagging and power struggles don’t work. Even if such tactics result in the desired behavior, they our effectiveness in guiding teens through these critical years.
Please welcome Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch, author of At Risk: Never Beyond Reach, and the Executive Director of Shalom Task Force, an organization dealing with domestic abuse and marriage education.
If you have questions about your own teenager, you can visit his blog, At Risk Advice, where Rabbi Schonbuch answers parents’ questions.
Mother in Israel: Our society commonly views teenagers as living in their own world, one that we parents can’t possibly understand. Even if they don’t exhibit risky behavior, at the very least they have messy rooms, fight with their parents, and want to stay up half the night. Is this an inevitable part of growing up? Do all teenagers rebel, or can wise parenting prevent “typical” unpleasant adolescent behavior? What can parents do to keep things from getting out of control?
Rabbi Schonbuch: Rebellion is not necessarily a part of normal teen behavior – independence is. Every teen wants to explore their independence and test their limits, however that doesn’t have to turn into rebellion. Parents need to be aware of this desire and limit a power struggle by actively listening to their feelings. I believe that more than anything they want their independent feelings to be listened to. Most of the time they will not act out these feelings. So instead of fighting their comments, let them flow out and show them that you are listening.
MiI: That’s an optimistic way of looking at adolescence. It helps parents see that their children are growing and developing even when it looks like they are regressing. What do you remember about your own teenage years?
RDS: I found my “rebellion” by challenging my energy into studying music and organizing on behalf of Soviet Jewry and Israel in the 1980’s. I believe I had a healthy rebellion and rebelled against the mistreatment of Jews in the world. My music was a way to express my inner creativity and gain some level of recognition for my talents in a positive way.
You mention one in four families being affected by the phenomenon, and probably more. What are the early signs that a child is “at risk?” When should parents get help?
RDS: It’s hard to say in each and every case, but I would be happy to speak to any parent who is concerned and needs to know when to respond and when to let things ride until they resolve themselves.
MiI: You have written that the “magic pill” for at-risk behavior is forging a good relationship with your teenager. I agree with you there! But how do you start, when you and your teen are so angry that you can hardly talk to each other? How do you get past that in order to start communicating again?
RDS: Make a mental note to yourself: “My behavior until now hasn’t worked, so I am deciding from here on to go in a new direction.” The bottom line is to change the paradigm. You can’t look at your teen any more from the perspective of control; rather look at them as being in potential – as a separate human being full of good and not so good points.Most importantly go out with them and enjoy their company and stop arguing all the time. When you create quality time together you are investing in an emotional savings account. So start by putting in something into their pushka but and have a nice time (without arguing), actively listen to them and reduce criticism. In most cases this actually works to improve the relationship.
MiI: Your book lists 73 ways of spending time with your teenager, besides shopping and going out to eat. As a mother of six on a tight budget, I sure appreciated it!! What are the best ideas, in your experience?
RDS: If you can’t afford the time or money to go out, just spend a few special minutes together – perhaps alone in a quiet room for ten minutes, just talking. Or, take them grocery shopping, or even better take them with you in the car, buy two sodas, some nosh and relax with them for a few minutes together.
MiI: Another idea you mention is a mentor, or an adult within the community who already has a positive relationship with the child. Can you tell us more about that?
RDS: Parents can’t always be their child’s savior, but someone else, a friend of the family, an older teenager or young adult or a grandparent may be able to impact on their lives, without a power struggle. Parents need to allow others to influence, while they work on the positive relationship.
MiI: You place the responsibility squarely on the parents, yet we all live
within a community. Can the Jewish community do more to support families and teenagers, whether they are at risk or not?
RDS: Communities need to organize mentoring organizations by making lists of kids who need mentors and finding quality individuals who can spend about one hour a week meeting with them. This is by far the most powerful way to help teenagers.
MiI: Can you sum up the book’s message in one sentence?
RDS: Focus on the relationship, actively listen, limit power struggles and many teenagers will resolve their issues on their own.
MiI: Thank you for your time and I wish you much hatzlachah in your important work.
For other interviews with Jewish bloggers, check out Jblogosphere or click the “interview” tag below.
I recently upgraded my computer to XP; I was one of the last people with Windows 98. Unfortunately the Firefox interface switched to Hebrew without asking and I don’t know how to change it back, so all the buttons are on the wrong side of the screen. Also, I thought upgrading would fix some bugs but Windows was so good about keeping old settings that it kept some stuff I didn’t want.
I switched to Blogger Beta and am oh so happy with it. I also took the plunge and changed to the “drop and drag” template. I lost a few things on the sidebar but replaced them painlessly. I love new technology, and now I can spend my time writing instead of playing with HTML.
I also switched to Haloscan comments, but no one warned me that my old comments would disappear. I was able to copy the ones from the first page into Haloscan. I still have most of the older ones saved in email and one day when I have nothing better to do (or more likely when I do) I hope to copy most of them in. I value every comment and don’t want to lose them.
Now, back to our regular programming.
The only Israeli formula company, M*, with the pseudo-scientific Latin sounding name, has been running a successful public relations campaign within the religious community in Israel for eight years now. They teamed up with a charity organization to collect used M* scoops and bags. For every four collected, the company will donate one new can to the organization.
Who can complain about a company that will give needy mothers free formula, in exchange for stuff that would go in the garbage anyway?
Well, I can.
The campaign is a blatant violation of the International WHO Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes, which Israel signed and is supposedly committed to upholding.
Let me start by saying that I support the right of every family to feed their babies as they choose. Babies should not starve, chas ve-shalom, because a mother chooses not to breastfeed. If a poor family needs formula for their baby, they should get it. Even affluent mothers have a hard time getting the information and support they need to breastfeed their babies; disadvantaged families have it worse, and their babies shouldn’t suffer.
But the manufacturer’s motives are far from pure here. What invest so much in a campaign that includes full-page ads in charedi newspapers, email blitzes, flyers passed out in schools (including my daughter’s junior high) and who knows where else? I don’t want to give them ideas but I bet they have youth groups collecting the scoops too. Here’s why they do it:
Breastfeeding is free. It helps mothers develop a loving relationship with their babies. It helps mothers and babies stay healthy, and working mothers who pump miss fewer days because of illness. Every mother, no matter her circumstances, has the right to correct information and support. No conglomerate is looking out for breastfeeding; the Code‘s purpose is to even the playing field so that breastfeeding has a chance. The paternalistic assumption that poor mothers can’t or won’t breastfeed harms families. I have a friend who was in bad financial straits. Despite the fact that she was nursing, everyone kept trying to buy her formula.
Just for the record: Nursing mothers do need to consume more calories. However, an extra bowl of oatmeal is a lot cheaper than a day’s worth of formula.
A neighbor once approached me to help buy formula for a family with newborn twins. The hospital staff had convinced the mother to take dry-up pills in the hospital. I mean, everyone knows that no one has enough milk for twins, right? When the mother came got home and found she couldn’t afford the formula, the neighbor approached various organizations (including the one above) but nothing materialized. I offered to help the mother start breastfeeding again as this is possible even after those pills, but she never contacted me. (In case you’re wondering, I did give a donation.)
It’s time to wake up and acknowledge the detrimental effect of this kind of promotion on babies and families in Israel.
I belong to a book club, consisting of a diverse group of women with an addiction to books. Its purpose is not to discuss books (although we do), but to supply ample reading material in English. Steimatzky has a monopoly on book sales in Israel, making new paperbacks prohibitively expensive.
Each month we meet at a member’s house and choose books. We each come home with at least five and often more. At the end of the evening we collect the books that we no longer want, to trade in at the used English book store. We also collect money to buy books for the next month, although lately we’ve been ordering two or three months worth from Amazon whenever we find someone to bring us books from the US.
The book I’m reading now, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, must have come from the used book store. Apparently it’s famous, although I had never heard of it. First published in 1961, it tells the story of a young 1950s couple who grow weary of life in the suburbs. Each feels that s/he was meant for better things. The book excels at describing the inner life of the main characters and their motivations, often from several different perspectives. The author concludes (in my opinion) that the couple suffered from an inability to connect emotionally with others. There is a discussion of psychoanalysis and Freudian theories and perhaps a closer reading would help me tell whether the author was promoting these theories or criticizing them–I’m not sure.
Usually I don’t enjoy reading about dysfunctional families. When they start digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole I want to cry out and tell them to stop. My 12yo daughter was next to me when I put down the book and announced that I didn’t want to read the last chapter. The ending was obvious, and it wouldn’t be pretty. She asked why if the book was as well-written as I had told her, wouldn’t the ending be enjoyable? I explained that a good author can write in a way that brings out all kinds of unpleasant feelings in the reader.
The too-long introduction to the 2000 edition, by Richard Ford, mentions that Yates fails to portray any of the main characters in a positive light, except for the children. I actually found myself somewhat sympathetic to the husband, despite his wife-beating and adultery. Both he and his wife try to save the marriage, but his way (despite his bungling) is more credible. As for the children, I’m hard pressed to actually call them characters as they speak only a few sentences in the entire book. Virtually every scene finds them asleep in bed or back at home with the babysitters. There is lots of discussion about their welfare, which the author wants their parents to take into account, but this discussion lacks the authenticity of other sections.
The book did end sadly, as predicted, but I still enjoyed the depressing ending. All in all Yates presents a sad picture of empty modern life that continues to resonate almost fifty years later.
Anybody who’s raised teenagers knows how tough that can be. But Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch is here to help via his blog:
At Risk Advice.
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