A Parent's Guide for Suicidal and Depressed Teens (19 page)

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Authors: Kate Williams

Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Life Stages, #Teenagers, #Self-Help, #Depression, #test

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PART THREE
DEALING WITH ADOLESCENT ISSUES

When an adult acts foolishly, when we want to pass judgment, we say he or she is "adolescent." Today's adolescents are adrift in a society that gives them neither the actual time and attention or a sense of tradition to try to sustain them. This is as true for adolescents in suburbia as it is for those living on the streets. The latter may be more damaged and in greater pain, but all adolescents live in a world that fails to embrace them.
BRAULIO MONTALVO

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15
The Family Community: Coming of Age

Can we offer our adolescents something of substance, ends as well as means to nourish their development?
ROBERT TAIBBI

Adolescents in our culture are in a tough situation. There is no rite of passage to mark the change from childhood to adulthood, so our kids kind of mush around in a twilight zone for a couple of years, gradually assuming adult responsibilities with no clear affirmation from society that they're going to make it into the world of adults, or even that they've been accepted. Other cultures around the world do observe rites of passage that help the adolescent move from the magical time of childhood to the world of responsibilities. The rite of passage is a marker, a boundary, a transforming experience, respected by adults as legitimate. You

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may know about many of these ceremonies, such as the vision quest among some American Indians.

In our present culture, what experiences are similar to a rite of passage? Are there rituals that mark the passage to adulthood? Voting? Driving a car? Drinking? For those who are religious there may be a ceremony such as confirmation or bar mitzvah/bas mitzvah, but these ceremonies are not acknowledged by the larger community. For some young men, coming of age may be marked by joining the armed services. Often it seems that young women announce their adulthood by getting married or getting pregnant or both. But while these gender-based behaviors may serve the purpose, they don't affirm the whole person in a nurturing way. It's become the responsibility of the family unit to deal with the enormous changes on a family-by-family basiseach family creating its own community and ceremonies.

What holidays does your family celebrate? What new family traditions would you like to have with your family? Who do you see as being part of your community? What could you do to start a new family tradition? To inspire you, listen to one adolescent's wish:


It's okay, I guess. I go home and watch my soaps and MTV, and talk on the phone, but I really wish my mom and I had more time. I guess you could say I miss her. ¹

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As parents we need to build a community for our children to be part of with us. We need to structure ways to spend time together and affirm their passage and worth as community members. We have too often believed the myth that adolescents want only to be with peers. Yes, peers are important, but when young people are asked directly about what they want, many say, "I want to do things with my familygo to movies, play card games, talk." We need to continue family activities even during times of crisis.

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16
Changes: Adolescent Loss And Grief

Loss is another word for change.
M. TATING

One of the primary tasks of all adolescents is saying good-bye to childhood. This task has elements of pain, as well as nostalgia and bittersweet sentimentality. For adolescents who are facing other losses such as the divorce of their parents, the normal task of saying farewell to childhood may be doubly overwhelming. When we think about the fact that almost half of our children have parents who have been divorced, we realize there is much grief work to be done.

Children need to say many good-byes: to lost pets, to grade school friends, to the timeless days of summer backyard play, to bedtime stories, and eventually to the daily nurturing love of parents. A person of any age who does not say good-bye to a real loss will continue to carry that loss. Losses

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accumulate in our psyche. They're like tin cans hanging around our necks, clanking and dragging along, interfering with our present reality until we face and release them.

There are steps we can take as parents and helpers to ease this process. We can identify losses with our children, we can let our feelings about our own losses come out, and we can learn new techniques for bringing some resolution to the grief. Most importantly, we can learn to listen when our children express pain over a loss. Experiencing the pain of loss is the first step in letting it go. It is a violation of the human spirit not to let someone experience a loss. In other words, when a loss occurs in our child's life, we listen to the pain and don't try to fix it. If a pet dies we should not gloss over the pain and get a replacement fast. We need to let the pain be there.

Identifying Losses

One way to begin to identify where we've been and what we've lost along the way is simply to make a list of losses. When we sit down and write out a list, we think about big losses and little losses from our whole life. We remember how it felt to be eight years old and lose a blue jacket at the park. We remember what it was like to be in seventh grade and lose self-respect when other kids teased us

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about the funny clothes our parents made us wear. We remember how it felt the first time somebody we loved moved away. We write down losses that other people might find trivial. We ignore the tapes in our head that say, "That was such a long time ago." and "That happens to everyone." and ''That was such a little thing, how can you still remember that?" and simply catalog the losses we remember.

My daughter and I have talked about losses, especially during therapy sessions when we were dealing with loss. I've made a list of my losses, and talked with her about some of my feelings.

My list of losses:

Loss of childhood and trust due to sexual abuse by my dad.

Loss of brother through death.

Loss of secure job, dropping out of graduate school to put my husband through medical school, loss of academic life.

Losses that came about from drinking and codependency, trying to please my husband (the stagnant years).

Problems with self-esteem.

Loss of cherry desk, marble table, and other furniture.

Little Bear, the cat who thought she was a dog.