Mon­i­ca Starke

Re­cent­ly I had to com­fort a moth­er whose 17-year-old son left to spend the night at a friend's house and nev­er re­turned home. He died from a drug over­dose.

My son came home from work the oth­er day and was very up­set. He had just learned that his friend's 16-year-old son had hung him­self. The prin­ci­pal of a school in the US told me that her 14-year-old son was just ex­pelled from school be­cause he was hav­ing sex with an­oth­er 14-year-old in the school li­brary. An­oth­er young moth­er called me in dis­tress be­cause her 14-year-old was try­ing to jump off the third floor of a build­ing.

Both here and abroad, our teenagers are in cri­sis. Once again, I have to urge the par­ents of teenagers to make sure that their teens feel a sense of be­long­ing, that they have a phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al sanc­tu­ary to come home to, and above all that they feel loved. Teenagers still need to be told, "I love you" by their par­ents. We al­so have to keep the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open and when we fail we have to try hard­er.

I know this is not al­ways easy. Some­times, I had to re­al­ly hum­ble my­self in or­der to reach out to my own teenagers. By that, I mean when all I re­al­ly felt to do was shout out in anger and frus­tra­tion, I had to con­tain my­self and make the ef­fort to be calm and pa­tient in or­der to cre­ate a win-win sit­u­a­tion that would not push my teenagers away from me–and this can hap­pen very eas­i­ly. I re­mem­ber how tough it was, but I still think we get good re­sults when we put in the work of be­ing avail­able to our teens phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly.

Amidst the school vi­o­lence, the teen preg­nan­cy and the es­ca­lat­ing sui­cides among our teenagers there is an­oth­er en­e­my that lurks, sub­stance abuse. I am con­stant­ly re­mind­ed by teens them­selves how easy it is to get drugs and al­co­hol. I am al­so con­stant­ly re­mind­ed by teenagers how con­fus­ing and com­plex the world is for them as they strive to find their place in it. They are con­fused by the ex­treme vi­o­lence at home and abroad, the high fail­ure rate of re­la­tion­ships around them, the dif­fi­cul­ties to find and keep jobs, the lack of true role mod­els, the dis­par­i­ty that ex­ists so­cial­ly and the list broad­ens as we keep fo­cused on all the chal­lenges we face in to­day's glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

It is im­por­tant to be aware of what's tak­ing place in our coun­try and our world but again, I urge you to be more fo­cused on your im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment and do all that you can to sup­port and pro­tect the chil­dren and teenagers that are in your care. If you are blessed with the chal­lenge of rais­ing a child or teenag­er, you have been man­dat­ed with a very spe­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn and grow so that you can suc­ceed and do the best that you can for them.

In ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al sanc­tu­ary I talked about ear­li­er, one of the strate­gies that works well is mak­ing sure that our teenagers keep busy –that their lives are filled with use­ful and en­joy­able ac­tiv­i­ties. Do not un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of mak­ing sure that they do not have too much time on their hands.

Part-time jobs may be dif­fi­cult to se­cure but there are al­ways so many jobs around the house and the neigh­bours' hous­es. Vol­un­teer­ing is an­oth­er valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty and a great tool for keep­ing our youths busy. Have them vol­un­teer at the lo­cal church­es, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, hos­pi­tals and oth­er places that are will­ing to work with you.

Do not run around do­ing every­thing your­self and then com­plain that they do not help. Most teenagers will help if you clar­i­fy what they need to do. Show some ap­pre­ci­a­tion, give en­cour­ag­ing feed­back and use these op­por­tu­ni­ties to build their self-con­fi­dence with en­cour­ag­ing re­marks, not crit­i­cism. Above all, be con­sis­tent –take some time to have an or­gan­ised ap­proach to help them un­der­stand what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties you would like them to un­der­take in the home. Use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to build a rap­port with your teenagers and keep them close to you emo­tion­al­ly.

Make sure that you meet your teenagers' friends and their friends' par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly if they are spend­ing the night and feel free to lim­it the num­ber of nights they spend away from you. Be very se­lec­tive as I feel the need to re­mind you that chil­dren and teenagers are con­tin­u­al­ly be­ing sex­u­al­ly abused by trou­bled peo­ple they know and trust. Yes, there are many chal­lenges but the joy that chil­dren and teenagers can bring to our lives es­pe­cial­ly as we grow old­er out­weigh the chal­lenges every time I count.

�2 If you have ques­tions and/or com­ments, please con­tact Dr Starke at thes­tark­e­re­al­i­ty@gmail.com or www.ct­clifeskills.com.