“The need to be connected intimately to others is as central to our well-being as food and shelter. If we don’t get it right, we’re probably not going to get anything else in life right,” wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laura Sessions Stepp in Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. Is your teen’s need for intimacy being satisfied? Does she feel loved, valued, affirmed, secure? If not, she may be looking for love in wrong ways in the wrong places.
At creation, God pronounced everything to be good. Only the fact that Adam was alone was “not good” (Genesis 2:18). Adam needed Eve. We are relational beings; we need intimate relationships with each other.
Three authors who know the American adolescent scene well have written about their concern that something is “not good” with today’s teens. They lack the intimate relationship they need with their parents and other adults.
Patricia Hersch is a journalist who for years had been writing about the “dramatic and the worrisome” in the world of adolescents. Wanting to find out what “regular” adolescents were like, she spent six years following teenagers in their world — even went to school with them. She saw this lack of communication between adults and teens. “There is a frightening mismatch in America between the lives our adolescents live and the willingness of adults to absorb those lives and talk to teens before trouble occurs. This blindness . . . isolates adolescents from freely communicating with adults, and locks them in a tribe apart,” the title of her book.
Dr. Ron Taffel, a noted child and family therapist, wanted to find out why average kids — “the kids in your home, your classroom, or on your playing field — are getting into trouble, often serious trouble, with sex, drugs, vandalism, extreme risk-taking.” The children he interviewed told him the reason: “My parents don’t know me.” Either their parents simply weren’t around, or they were preoccupied with other things. Because the children felt that their parents (in fact, most adults) are failing them, they have gravitated to their peer group, the “second family . . . this collective force of peers and pop culture” that provides the sense of identity and belonging they lack. In The Second Family Taffel shows the extent and the effects of this transfer of loyalties.
Laura Sessions Stepp, who specializes in writing about adolescents and young adults, began to investigate the sexual and romantic lives of America’s young people as a result of two assignments that shook her to the core: one of these was to cover a sex ring — in middle school. She talked at length with girls in high school and college about their sex lives, trying to understand the sexual culture and wondering who was telling these girls that they were “worth taking more care with.” And wondering, too, who was reminding them about the power of sex and the possible long-term ramifications of their hook-up life-style. What she heard over and over again was that young people, male and female alike, long for honest conversations with older adults about sex and love. They begin to hook up in high school and by the time they get to college hooking up may have become their definition of a “relationship.” Yet even though everyone is doing it and it is expected, many don’t want it and don’t like it. Many felt their parents didn’t care, and that their only “family” was their friends.
Could this be true of your son or daughter — that he or she is hungering for more of your time and attention, and conversation about issues like these? Have you considered lately how much time you spend together, how much undivided attention you give your child? No cell phone, no Internet, no TV. Face to face conversation, listening, sharing. Especially, but not only, about sexual issues. How well do you know your teenager? One middle school student said to Patricia Hersch “You adults need to give us more attention. We are not as innocent as you may think . . . You need to talk to us and watch us and be alert.” Many parents responded to Taffel’s stories with “My child would never do such things,” but middle school children and teenagers repeatedly tell him that their parents have no idea what they’re up to.
Teens need their parents. They need other adults who invest in their lives. What can you do to stay connected — or to reconnect — with your teenager?
- Hear Stepp and Hersch: Listen to the kids. Hear what their lives are like, what matters to them, how things are going in their world. Listen and bring adult wisdom to the discussion. Adolescence is a journey, “a search for self in every dimension of being” (Hersch), and teens need adult help in making that journey.
- Talk to your teens about right and wrong.
- Share yourself with them. You need to know each other.
- Get to know your teen’s core group, his or her “second family.” This will help you to know your teen better.
You can learn from the second family what your teen needs from you:
