Trust Me, Mom--Everyone Else Is Going!: The New Rules for Mothering Adolescent Girls - Couverture souple

Cohen-Sandler, Roni

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0142001937 ISBN 13 : 9780142001936

Editeur : Penguin Books, 2003

Synopsis

Book by CohenSandler Roni

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Chapter 1

Moms, Take Heart

A NEW OUTLOOK

"Somehow my daughter seems to be slipping away. I know she's growing up, but I'm still her mother. I don't want to wake up one day and think, 'What happened to her?' or 'Who is she?' And yet I'm not sure what I can do. There don't seem to be any road maps for bringing up girls today. I always wonder about what is going on in my daughter's life, but I don't seem to get any real answers. I just want to know that my daughter will be okay. I want to know that she'll make the right decisions when I'm not around. When I get nervous about all this and try to talk to her, she just gets angry, but I can't help it. I find that parenting is so much harder now that she's a teenager. Maybe this comes more naturally to other mothers, because nobody else seems to be as confused as I am. On especially awful days, I think, 'You're completely lost; you have no idea what you're doing.'"
-Mary, thirty-four

"My daughter is only ten, but she's acting like a teenager. I guess I expected these sorts of problems when she was in middle school or high school, but I'm not ready for this now. In fact, I'm already at the end of my rope, and she's not even driving yet! My two older children were never like this. Sure, some of their friends weren't my favorites, but they were never consumed with all this social stuff like my youngest is. She's talking about issues that her siblings didn't mention until they were in their midteens. Even her language seems way too advanced for her age. Other than stopping the clock for a while, there doesn't really seem to be anything else I can do. Maybe I could use some help. My head is spinning!"
-Francesca, fifty

"I had no idea that being a mother could be this hard! I guess I thought that if my daughter and I were always close, if I taught her the right values and spent lots of time with her, that we would basically see eye to eye as she grew up. But she and I couldn't be less alike. In fact, sometimes I wonder where she's come from. Among other things, I've always stressed how important it is for her to be an individual, to think for herself. But she's completely swayed by what's in and, especially by what her friends do and say. We also have very different ideas about what's appropriate for girls her age. It really amazes me-and scares me-to think of how focused she is on boys, how eager she is to please them. How could this have happened? And how are we going to get through the next few years?"
-Gerri, forty-five

Nearly every time my telephone rings lately, it's the mother of a teenage girl who is confused, upset, or absolutely frantic about the state of her daughter's social life-her friends, her attitude, her boyfriend, her secrecy, her nightlife. Without exception, mothers are concerned about what exactly their adolescent daughters are doing, who they're doing it with and, especially, if they are safe. Whether your daughter is approaching or well into the teenage years, you too may question the quality of her friendships, worry about substances and sex, and have reservations about her romantic choices. Maybe you panic whenever you see a red flag that may signal trouble, making you wonder if you are completely crazy at times. If so, be assured that you are in good company. These days, no mother seems immune.

Perhaps because we have considered ourselves a more aware and progressive generation of mothers, we expected that our daughters would somehow make smarter decisions in their lives and bypass the typical teenage troubles. Unfortunately this turned out to be a fallacy. Mothers today share a nearly universal perception: Even girls who were once rational, reasonable, and levelheaded suddenly seem to be making stupid, frightening, or potentially dangerous choices.

These girls are not all troubled; these are difficult times. Since the publication of my first book, I'm Not Mad, I Just Hate You!, which dealt with conflict in the mother-daughter relationship, women have increasingly told me that their teenagers' social lives have become their number one concern. In fact, countless mothers have confided that they never could have imagined, much less predicted, their daughters' behavior. For example, some girls were caught using alcohol or drugs, sneaking out of their homes, and lying about their whereabouts. Others were found to have diaries or e-mail peppered with vulgar words or explicit sexual references. A few were even taken to emergency rooms or picked up by police or suspended from school.

These aren't evil girls from awful families but typical teenagers, some of whom are struggling, many with remarkable talents, who are nonetheless making worrisome choices. It may be difficult or even unthinkable to accept that your daughter, if she has not already done so, may soon join their ranks. Yet it is important to acknowledge from the outset that poor decisions, rash actions, and risk taking are as fundamental to adolescence as acne, braces, and the first kiss. It is just that you probably never thought you would have to deal with them.

Until now, it was always other teenagers who wove elaborate cover stories to elude parents who forbade them from certain peers and situations. You were sure that the open communication and trusting relationship you worked so hard all these years to establish with your daughter would eliminate her need for such subterfuge as a teen. The first time you discover that she has manipulated, deliberately misled, or outwardly lied to you, your whole foundation may be shaken. Is it possible that your daughter is being evasive, telling half-truths, or blithely ignoring your rules?

Similarly, some of you may gasp in shock and dismay when you discover that your daughters have not been victims but perpetrators of unkindness. Was it really your girl who started the vicious rumor, excluded the "loser" from the lunch table, or mercilessly used that lovely boy who had a crush on her? After discovering her thirteen-year-old's efforts to bad-mouth and ostracize a longtime pal, one mother maintained, "I never would have dreamed she would do anything like that. I thought my daughter would know better-and act better!"

Many of your daughters may make other, less serious but still self-defeating choices. While traveling across the country to speak to groups of parents, for example, I am frequently asked for advice about girls who develop unhealthy friendships and demeaning romantic relationships. Mira, mother to fourteen-year-old Phillippa, says, "I watch my daughter being excluded by her two so-called best friends, over and over, and yet she still lets them hurt her. Why can't she defend herself or, better yet, make more loyal friends?" Similarly, fifteen-year-old Loren's mother describes her daughter's pattern of "longing to be friends with girls in the popular crowd, who not only rebuff her but are often mean to her. It's heartbreaking." Norma, mother to seventeen-year-old Randy, is aghast at "the way her boyfriend seems to control her with his criticism, his emotional threats, and that awful pager."

Whether your daughter is placing herself in danger, tolerating harmful relationships, or engaging in behavior that makes your hair stand on end, you have probably found yourself, at various times, worried, frustrated, shocked, or disgusted. Confronted with her particularly bad decisions, you may even feel angry. As one mother put it, "After staying up half the night waiting for her to come home, I thought if she was still alive I was going to kill her!" You may have reacted similarly when your daughter was a little girl and wandered away from you. As you finally located her or pulled her from the street, your initial relief may have turned to rage as the enormity of what could have happened sunk in.

Even if your daughter is proceeding through adolescence in the slow lane, cautiously staying within the lines, you may be concerned because some of her friends appear reckless in their great rush to grow up. Or your daughter's shyness and preference for sticking close to home may make you concerned not about excessive socializing or harmful relationships, but loneliness and social inexperience. It is also possible that despite your own daughter's apparently good adjustment, you can't help but become alarmed as you look all around you. You may want to learn as much as you can about teenagers' social lives to avoid problems in the future.

It is the rare mother of a teenage girl, therefore, who feels she doesn't need help.

Skyrocketing Worries

These days the topic of your daughter's social life is likely to ignite instant contention between you two, along with a smoldering sensation in the pit of your stomach. Why is this happening? you might ask. It hasn't always been this way.

Since your daughter was a young girl, you have probably invested considerable thought and effort in teaching her to follow her heart while learning to get along with others. Still, despite your mindfulness, probably neither your daughter nor her life has been perfect. Perhaps her chattiness, possessiveness, or flair for melodrama has occasionally alienated others. Teased or disappointed by a close friend, she may have become furious, inconsolable, or vengeful. If your daughter acted without thinking, you may have helped her deal with the fallout of blurted nastiness or regretted self-disclosure.

Back then, however, the biggest social dilemmas were how she would handle a bossy friend, whether or not she should quit Girl Scouts, or whom she invited to (and could exclude from) her next birthday party. Sure, you may have been taken aback by the passion of her second-grade crush, but today the issues are far more serious, the stakes infinitely higher. You may be fearful about where she is headed, and worried that if she picks the wrong friends, she will be led astray or cave in to peer pressures with irrevocable consequences.

There are perfectly valid reasons for these fears. Though you may feel crazy, you are actually responding reasonably to a number of issues that are complicating your daughter's social life and therefore, your relationship with her. You may find it comforting that other mothers are struggling with these same concerns.

A Scarier World

If you have the sense that your daughter is growing up in a world different from the one in which you were raised, you are correct. Of course, the worries of undesirable friendships, traffic accidents, and teenage pregnancy have been around for generations. Similarly, despite the strong warnings you have issued, probably ad nauseam, your daughter could be one of the 52 percent of teenagers who admits to using an illegal substance by senior year of high school. But, without question, there are additional worries, wider choices, scarier dangers, and more intense pressures faced by contemporary teenagers, with fewer cultural protections in place.

As but one example, your daughter's use of PCs, cell phones, pagers, e-mail, and instant messaging makes it that much harder for you to monitor her social life, as well as to anticipate and resolve any difficulties that arise. In fact, you may be scrambling even to keep up with your daughter's knowledge of this technology, much less to establish guidelines that can limit or prevent its hazards. Similarly, unlike your own mother, you have to think about guns on playgrounds; angry, sexist lyrics inciting aggression toward girls at rock concerts; and the routine sex and violence in movies, television shows, and CDs. Even more alarming, there are the unthinkable possibilities: your daughter planning a rendezvous with a young man she met in a chat room, being raped after drinking a Roofie-laced soda, or contracting the fatal HIV infection. This new world requires a new approach, with new rules.

It may surprise you that it is not only mothers who perceive the world as scarier; daughters do too. A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that over 43 percent of teenagers surveyed believed they were having a harder time growing up than their parents had. These teens cited, among other causes, a faster pace of life, worries about a more dangerous world, and greatly increased peer pressure to use alcohol, drink excessively, and do other new drugs such as laced marijuana, ecstasy, and inhalants.

These data are consistent with a disturbing trend; although I have treated adolescents in psychotherapy for over twenty years, it is only during the past five years or so that girls have reported markedly higher levels of distress-and their mothers have dealt with correspondingly more distressing teen behavior. Interestingly, as I was finishing this book I came across a new study that corroborates this change. Psychologist Jean Twenge of Case Western Reserve University found that today's children feel significantly more anxious than did children in the 1950s. In fact, normal children ages nine to seventeen display more anxiety today than those who were treated for psychiatric disorders fifty years ago.

It is hardly surprising that your own apprehension slips so easily into overdrive. Perhaps on occasion you have extrapolated from your daughter's single bad decision to extreme or dire consequences. For example, the mother of a sixteen-year-old described that "after getting the inconceivable news that my daughter spent an evening at an unsupervised home with a boy generally regarded as trouble, I instantly became convinced that date rape, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and AIDS were just around the corner." Similarly, even the glimpse of a beer can or whiff of alcohol on her breath may result in panicky predictions of overdoses, addictions, and accidental deaths. Your memories of reading about tragedies involving teenagers and thinking, "That could be my daughter" are never far from consciousness.

Is it any wonder that whenever you are confronted with your daughter's poor judgment and risky behavior, you may think, "Has she lost her mind?"

Or just as likely, you fear you will lose your own.

She's Not Fully Mature

Because your daughter is still developing, you may have doubts that she is ready to handle a more dangerous world. It's not that she lost her mind, it's just not full grown yet. Techniques such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron-emission tomography) scanning have proven that your daughter's brain is still maturing through the teenage years and even beyond. Although this information may not reassure you that she is ready to take care of herself, it does clarify why the adolescent stage of development is, by definition, a minefield of impediments to good decision making.

For example, the corpus callosum, a structure that connects the left and right sides of the brain and is responsible for self-awareness, is not fully developed until the twenties. The temporal lobes, which facilitate emotional control and language, do not reach maximum maturity until age sixteen. Perhaps most important, the frontal lobes-the center of executive functions such as organization, planning, judgment, and the regulation of behavior and emotions-hit their peak growth spurt between puberty and young adulthood. Not only is the immature adolescent brain more vulnerable to trauma and drugs, but it also cannot manage stresses such ...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

From "queen bees" to "gamma girls" to the "odd girl out," adolescent girls are all over the news.  But whether a girl is popular or struggling to fit in, outgoing or reserved, her mother worries about how she is coping with her new, often scary, teenage social world:  Who is she with, what is she really doing, is she safe and, of course, is she happy?  In this essential survival guide, Roni Cohen-Sandler teaches parents to "use their BRAIN"—Be flexible, Respectful, Attuned, Involved, and Non-controlling—to build trust and help their daughters navigate these complex social waters. Addressing such issues as popularity, boyfriends, parties and partying, discipline, privacy, body image, and identity, Cohen-Sandler provides a new model for parenting adolescent daughters for today's generation of mothers.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books
• Date d'édition: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0142001937
• ISBN 13: 9780142001936
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 320