Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety. John Duffy
landscape for teenagers, and for children around the teen years.
And it all starts earlier, and runs longer, than you think.
Some of this stuff will feel quite difficult to read. Some of it is heavy. We are going to talk, in depth, about depression and anxiety, suicidality and loneliness, and sex and drugs. Some of the mandates I’m asking you to fulfill are difficult and may run against the grain of your parenting instincts.
I wrote this book for two reasons.
First, I think that, in order to be an effective, available parent today—in order to guide your child through the “new adolescence”—you need to be more fully informed, more “woke,” than any other generation of parents preceding you. Because there is no blueprint, I am attempting to provide one here.
And you will find my advice to be strikingly consistent:
•Talk to your children in an open and ongoing discussion, free of lectures.
•Pump up the balance in the Emotional Bank Account you maintain with your child, so that your words carry weight with them.
•Ask open-ended questions about issues they may well be struggling with that you are either unaware of, or do not fully understand.
•Inform yourself, frequently.
•Maintain your precious connection with your child, always.
This basic methodology will, believe it or not, consume less of your time, not more. And it will spare you, your child, and your entire family untold heartache for countless years—seriously. You will feel armed to serve as the ally, guide, and consultant your child needs to navigate the newly uncharted waters of a stressful, anxiety-provoking, and prolonged adolescent journey.
The other reason is to provide you with hope.
If you follow the guidelines I offer, I am confident that things will work out. That’s not to suggest you and your child will not encounter bumps and bruises along the path. These are not only inevitable, they are important. We will see that they provide the opportunities for the development of the competence and resilience your child needs to manage their world, to thrive.
So please, as you read on, do not be discouraged. There is a lot here. But if you follow the protocol, you can enjoy their adolescence together, and each challenge can bring you closer together, instead of rending you apart.
And your connection is so very important. The most painful moments in my office arise not when a family is in the midst of crisis. The most painful moments are those in which I bear witness to a parent losing their child in real time, right before my eyes, needlessly.
There is a lot of work to do. But there is good news here, too. If you read carefully and follow the guidelines offered, you are fostering the well-being of a unique and brilliant child—your child. As you will find, even if it is not yet wholly apparent to you, your child possesses a degree of depth, intelligence, and empathy that will move our world in the right direction.
Change is coming rapidly toward our children. I am grateful that you have picked up this book. Your child will be far better off for it, as will you. As will we all.
So, thank you.
Jason’s Story: What Are We Missing?
Jason is sixteen years old. He is bright and personable. He has a job he does well and shows respect for the paycheck he draws. He is an Honor Roll student, popular and handsome. He also manages the awkward setup of a therapy room with unusual grace. He can pick up the trickiest guitar leads by ear, eliciting no small degree of jealousy from his rusty therapist. By all accounts, life is good for Jason. He frequently cites that he has grown up privileged: nice house, plenty of money, generally sweet and loving parents. A seemingly uneventful coming-of-age story.
Jason has also, however, done two separate stints in inpatient therapy, one for suicidal ideation with clear intent to harm himself, the other for marked drug abuse. The drugs he ingested ranged from alcohol to marijuana, Benadryl in excess, Klonopin, Oxycodone, and a host of other prescription drugs, along with the occasional use of “club drugs” including Ecstasy and LSD. At one point, an ER doctor reported to Jason’s parents that he had been hours, if not minutes, from death when his ambulance arrived.
Now, you might be wondering how Jason, with this great life and this loving family, could possibly have ended up in these terrifying, life-threatening situations.
It’s a reasonable question.
Parents today are very involved—far, far more involved in the lives of their children than our parents were even a generation ago. Today, there are parent conferences, conventions, and Parent Universities. There are books and online groups and clubs and apps, all directing us toward improved parenting. I have had the good fortune to speak at many of these events, and to participate on many of these platforms. And lately, with permission, I have shared Jason’s story. The parental responses often surprise me:
“Clearly, his parents aren’t on it. Otherwise, they would know he isn’t okay.”
“This is on the parents. They must be missing the mark and selling you a bill of goods about being good parents.”
“This kid needs to take responsibility for his actions.”
“He needs a swift kick in the ass.”
But I can tell you with total assurance that these comments are missing the larger picture. For this is not just Jason’s story. This is, in many ways, the story of countless teenage boys and girls, both younger and older than you might think possible, across the country, across demographics, across socioeconomic strata.
This could be your child.
And the conventional solutions miss the mark as well, and are not really solutions at all.
Let me tell you more about Jason. He was a stellar athlete in grammar school, but quit sports around sixth grade. He earned straight A’s until roughly that same time. He hung out with friends, perfected moves on his skateboard, and tells idyllic stories of vacations with his family. He was the Academic All-American, the kid you want.
By junior high, as his parents describe it, the wheels started to wobble. He was looking down at his phone, engulfed in Snapchat and Instagram, overinvested in numbers of likes and views. He became deeply ensconced in video games, about which they knew nothing other than that they seemed unreasonably violent, and he seemed flat-out addicted to playing them. The rest of the time, he skulked up to his room and shut the door, the remainder of his day and evening shrouded in mystery.
Now, as far as they were concerned, Jason’s parents weren’t negligent. They were worried about him, so they tracked his phone whenever he was out, keeping watch over the moving blip on the map like military drone pilots, ready to strike and call the mission at any moment that looked dicey. They signed on daily to the school’s grade portal, collecting intel on not only cumulative grades, but each class skipped, each assignment missed, each quiz failed. Through a YouTube tutorial, they reverse-engineered passcodes for his phone and social media, allowing them real-time access to his texts, social media posts, and responses. They maintained a store of breathalyzers and drug tests in the medicine cabinet.
They amassed all the data that could possibly be available to a parent.
Alas, all they learned was that he was disengaged from school, disappearing into some “drug culture,” and slipping deeper into connections with his new “low-life, going nowhere” friends. And he was drifting further and further away from them. They felt as if, no matter what wisdom they offered, how often they addressed him in a positive tone, or whatever lightness they tried to bring to their relationships with him, he was drifting