The mother of a seventeen-year-old girl asked a question at the
end of a speech I gave on adolescent development. She appeared to
be a very caring parent who was concerned about her daughter's style
of doing homework. It seemed that the girl did most of her creative
work late at night, between the hours of 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM. She
asked what she should do to get her daughter to work earlier in
the evening.
"Is she completing her homework assignments?" I asked.
"Yes, she does very well at school."
"Is she getting enough sleep?"
"She seems to be. Sometimes she'll take a nap in the evening.
She says she's most creative late at night."
"Then what's the problem?"
"I think she should be doing the work earlier in the evening."
"It sounds like you disagree with her approach."
"Yes. I just don't think it's right. It's a real problem
for her."
Despite her good intentions, the mother was having difficulty
separating her own feelings from her daughter's actions. The girl
had apparently worked out a successful way to do her homework at
a time of day when she could do her best work, yet still get enough
sleep. The daughter seemed happy. The mother, however, could not
see the situation from her daughter's perspective and, therefore,
assumed that the daughter must be upset.
One of the most challenging tasks parents face as they watch their
children grow is abdicating control over their lives. It is a necessary
detachment, so much so that when you speak of a healthy middle-aged
man who has lived all his life with his mother, the listener will
usually and sometimes unfairly infer things about their relationship.
She must be domineering; he must be a milquetoast.
It is appropriate to control much of a seven-year-old's schedule.
It is inappropriate and self-defeating to try to exercise that same
control over a seventeen-year-old. Adolescents will, of their own
accord, rebel against parental controls that are constraining. "Be
home by midnight." "But nobody else has to leave that
early! Why can't I come home at two o'clock like my friends?"
Here, the parents' attempts at control are obvious and direct.
But there are other situations when parents' attempts at controlling
their children are subtler. In fact, they may even be initially
perceived by the children as liberating rather than constraining.
These approaches generate problems that are ironically bore out
of love, not anger or distrust.
The mother who picks up her teenager's dirty clothes in his room
is unknowingly fostering his dependence upon her. At the time, it
feels understandably good to both parties. The mother feels needed
and useful. The child has one less thing to worry about. The same
may be said for a father who knocks on his daughter's door every
morning to make sure she's awake and ready for school.
These are also battles for control over a child's life. It is
a way of fostering a kind of mutually acceptable helplessness on
the part of the child. Each side clings to an elusive and illusory
memory of a time when responsibilities were simpler and lines of
authority were clear-cut. Neither person must grow. Everything usually
goes well until one of two things happens: the parents become angry
or the children start living away from home.
College administrators regularly tell bittersweet stories of parents
who feel threatened by their children's imminent adulthood and have
great difficulty letting go during freshman year. Some parents place
daily wake-up calls to the dormitory. Others ask for class schedules
so that they can remind their children to study for exams. Their
relationships are frozen in time.
The issues raised by the frustrated parent the evening of my speech
were not related to her daughter's safety. There's no question,
for example, that you should not let a child who does not have a
driver's license go out for a spin in the family car. These types
of issues do not bring about ambivalent feelings. Rather, this parent's
frustrations were centered on relatively benign issues that were
more symbolic than dangerous.
One of the questions that should be asked by a parent who feels
resentful about doing something for an adolescent is, "Whose
problem is it?" If your fifteen-year-old daughter has a messy
room, who will suffer if she can't find something that she's looking
for? She will. If your thirteen-year-old son doesn't keep track
of his soccer team's schedule, who will suffer if he misses a game?
He will. If the twins make a late-night pizza and leave the dirty
dishes and utensils scattered about the kitchen, who cleans it up
in the morning?
Let's play out this last fantasy a bit so that the benefits of
letting adolescents cope with these types of problems on their own
become clear. Here's one of the many possible scenarios:
Your twin teenagers have left assorted pizza-encrusted plates and
pans in the kitchen from last night's snack. They know it's their
job to clean up their own mess in common areas. They wake up the
next morning a few minutes later than usual. Rather than face the
prospect of pizza sauce that, by that afternoon, will need to be
removed with a hammer and chisel, they decide to clean the mess
in the kitchen.
Now they're late for school. They walk into their first-period
history class midway through a lecture on the War of 1812. When
the teacher ask why they are late, they give the details of cleaning
up the leftover pizza. Their classmates laugh at them. They feel
embarrassed. The teacher assigns them extra work.
What have they learned? First, their actions, such as not cleaning
up their own mess at a more appropriate time, have consequences.
Second, telling people the complete truth (such as the details of
the burn-on pizza sauce) can sometimes work against you. They would
have been better off simply saying that they had no excuse. Fifteen
years from now they will probably not remember anything about the
War of 1812 except possibly the date, but they will remember those
two lessons. It will have been a school day well spent.
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