Raise Your Parenting AQ – Chapter 8
“Look Who’s Not Climbing”
Silence can speak volumes.
Adolescence is all about fitting in and feeling valued.
The absence of behavior can speak as loudly as any behavior. Especially when it is the absence of what parents know to be important parts of their children’s lives, such as interests and ambitions. On this day, Ann knew something was out of the ordinary with Tess, who had always been a serious student and musician.
“My Sexy Math Book”
Out of the blue, Ann says, “I wouldn’t marry a man who can’t balance his own checkbook or manage money competently.”
“Mom, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Your dad is good at math and I really like that in a man.”
“Is this some funny way of introducing the ‘birds and the bees’ talk, Mom, because I already know all that stuff.”
“We’ll deal with how you learned that some other time. What I’m trying to say is, smart people like smart people. It makes no sense to hide one’s intelligence. In fact, that is how you are attractive to other smart people. Did I say that right?”
“I know what you’re talking about. You are on that old ‘girls can be as smart as boys’ kick again, aren’t you?”
“Well, I was kind of wondering why a smart girl leaves her books and flute at school these days.”
“I’m getting everything done at school,” explains Tess.
“I was hoping more for the real reason, sweetheart,” replies Ann.
“Mom, there are certain kinds of groups in school. There’s the Jocks. There’s the Popular kids. There’s the Geeks, who carry books around. And there’s the Potheads. Everyone else is either in one of those groups or wants to be.”
“Which group do you want to be in?”
“Certainly not the Geeks. Kids just make fun of them and nobody wants to hang out with them except other Geeks.”
“So you want to be one of the Populars?”
“There’s little chance of that. No, I just don’t want to be seen as a Geek.”
“Oh, I get it, books = geeks = rejection.”
“Mom, life is not a math problem.”
“Oh, I thought I remembered a girl who once said, “Math rocks!”
“That was just a brief flirtation. I’m over that now.”
“Have you told your father that you and math are history?”
“We’re not history, Mom. We’re just keeping our relationship a little more low-key.”
“Like only dating out of your locker at school?”
“Kind of.”
“Well that makes sense. Secret meetings with your math book. Do you go to your locker in disguise and use a password?”
“Mom, you have really lost it.”
“No, I think you are the one who has lost it. You love math and I don’t think you have lost that love. You have just misplaced it.”
“Don’t analyze me.”
“I’m sorry. When the analysis jumps up off the ground and hits me in the face, it’s hard not to respond.”
“Huh?”
“If you think a boy will not like you if you are carrying a book, then there is something wrong with the boy.”
“I’ll get back to you on that one, Mom.”
“I expect to see the math book tomorrow night. And the flute.”
A failure to engage or a retreat from normal engagement is reason for concern and should evoke some parental response. In this case Tess was no longer as engaged in school or with her music as she had been; Ann noticed and questioned her about that lack of engagement. She reminded Tess that just because one area of her life was calling out to her, it did not mean that she had to neglect other important parts. Sometimes, kids perceive one area as having greater significance, or certainly more urgency, than is realistic. Not fitting in trumps everything, even in the smartest of girls. Not being attractive to boys is part of that major issue. If that is a big concern and the girl makes assumptions about what it takes to be attractive, she may challenge previous assumptions about what was important to her.
Ann is aware of the need to help Tess assess whether her actions fit with her long-standing interests and ambitions. That is quite different from her adopting the norms of the group as her set of aspirations, which is an unhealthy relinquishment of self and ambition. Ann knows that ambitions may shift in character at times; but the pursuit of competence should not change unless something has arisen to compete with it with enough urgency to unseat that valued activity, in this case, academics and music.
Sometimes it is not the close friends who are the unknowns, but the more casual acquaintances. Without clear understanding of what these acquaintances value and how they judge, the child is left to imagine how they are judging her. She may imagine that they expect things of her that are inconsistent with a path she has previously followed. Ann has noticed not only the absence of the math book and flute, but the added make-up and new jeans as well. It is not hard to guess that there has been a shift to a focus on physical appearance to impress a boy. It is also not hard to guess that this boy is probably someone Tess does not know very well, because most of the boys she is friends with are as serious as she is about studying.
Leaving her flute and geometry book well out of sight speaks volumes with a girl like Tess who is not only serious about school, but rather competitive. Ann knows better than to accept the excuse that she takes care of them at school, an excuse that works in most households. Tess assumes the cute boy prefers tight jeans to airtight proofs. He very well may, if he is like most boys; but he may have interests beyond that as well. Or there may be cute boys who like math. Ann is going to be sure that Tess considers all these possibilities, but not bringing home her books is simply not an option in this house, for any of the kids.
Ann is aware of the fact that kids can feel the pressure to hide their intellect. As a student at Berkeley, she and her friends did a fundraiser to buy books for some middle school kids in Oakland whose families expressed interest in having copies of text books at home to help their children with their homework and to allow kids to avoid having to deal with the harassment they sometimes got for carrying books home from school. *
Even kids with the best of intentions are not strong enough to manage the binds thrown their way. When Ann was doing her pediatric rotation, she once asked a teenage boy, “would you rather get an A in Algebra or get with the hottest girl in school?’ He looked at her like she was the most clueless adult he had ever met. Even her son, Tim, who was serious about school, gave her the same look when she asked him whether he would rather be the smartest kid in school or the most popular. She recognizes that even the best-prepared kids need support to weather the powerful pulls of peer culture.
Ann’s father, after retiring as a professor at the University of Chicago, formed a group of his fellow empty-nesting-but-restlessly-retired professor friends to provide tutoring in a South Chicago grade school. Each professor had a student to whom he made a commitment to tutor six hours-a-week in math, reading and writing until the student graduated from high school. In fact, since these same professors met weekly to swap stock tips and moan about their portfolios, they each put $1000 into a pool for each kid, with the plan of giving the proceeds to each kid who completed high school to use for post secondary study. Interestingly, even though these old professors were not into being best buddies, the kids valued the relationships because these men expected a lot of them and really helped them learn.
Self vs. Relatedness Bind
Parents need to ask about ambitions, especially when they are missing.
“Just Coasting”
Their oldest child, Seth, was not the talker that Tim was, nor was he as easily coaxed into talking as Tess. But Ann and Greg created the safety to talk when things were really important and Seth realized he couldn’t handle things himself. They also knew what was going on in his life and knew to ask. Seth was an exceptionally smart kid and he went to a high school to which kids had to apply and compete to gain entrance based on grades, test scores and recommendations. He was in the midst of a very competitive environment. He was certainly smart enough to handle the work, but the competition with peers, many of whom were pushed hard by their parents to be the absolute best, was hard for him to take. Ann knew that the marking period had ended and she asked Seth about his grades.
“Hey, did you get a report card today?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to show it to me?”
“I left it at school.”
“Well you can tell me the grades. You’ve got the memory of an elephant.”
“I got four B’s and two C’s.”
“What do you think of those grades?”
“Well, B means above average and C means average, so I’m okay with those grades.”
“Are those the grades you want?”
“Sure. They’re good enough.”
“They are really different than the grades you got last year, though.”
“Yeah. But last year was crazy. All I did was study all the time.”
“Yeah, you were pretty stressed last year.”
“I’m doing fine Mom. Why the Inquisition?”
“Well, these grades are such a change for you. I was wondering what was going on.”
“There’s nothing wrong with getting B’s and C’s.”
“Well some people think so. What do you think?”
“Well, I think getting B’s and C’s is better than staying up all night studying and worrying about every little assignment and every little answer I give on a test.”
“Yeah, you were a little over-the-top last year.”
“So I decided I don’t want to do that again.”
“How do these grades fit with what you are planning after high school?”
“Do you mean, are these grades going to get me into Harvard?”
“I didn’t know you were interested in Harvard.”
“I’m not.”
“But you have some other schools picked out that are pretty competitive.”
“Well, getting B’s and C’s from the University Lab School is better than getting A’s from most other places.”
“Really? Did you read that somewhere? Or is that what your friends told you?”
“Mom, everyone at the school is really smart. I don’t have to be the top of the class. In fact, I found out I can’t be the top. There are plenty of kids who will do anything to be the best.”
“Who says you have to be the top of the class? Why don’t you go ask your counselor what colleges will think of your grades.”
“I don’t need to do that Mom. Everybody knows that if you go to Lab High you’re smart and colleges will want you.”
“Well, what if colleges know that the average GPA for Lab High is 3.8.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it is posted on the school’s website under Preparing for College.”
“So what is it you want?”
“Well, actually, that is what I am trying to ask you. When I look at these grades and the amount of time I see you studying this semester, I have to think you are just coasting.”
“Well coasting is a lot better than being a part of that rat race where everyone is trying to out-do everyone else.”
“Do we need to talk about whether you want to go to the regular high school?”
“No.”
“Well, admission to Lab High was only the first step. You can’t just coast on the reputation of having gotten in some place special. You have the opportunity for a special education. There is some place for you between the strung out kid of last year and the coasting kid of this year.”
“So what are you going to do, Mom? Ground me?”
“No, something much worse, Seth. I’m going to make you keep analyzing what you are doing or not doing.”
“Oh, no, not that again! Dad! Where’s Dad? I know Dad wasn’t an A student in high school.”
“You think you’ll have better luck with the coasting discussion with Dad? Give it a shot. I just got to you first.”
Ann knows that Seth is not only a very smart kid, but also one who takes things very seriously and when he does something, he usually does it with great intensity. So, she knows that something is up with Seth. She is not surprised by the grades, since she has seen the change in his studying since last year. She and Greg decided to wait for the report card to come home before confronting him, waiting to see if he would get this figured out on his own. What seems to have happened to Seth is a reaction to the overwhelmingly difficult time he had the previous school year. He worked so hard he was making himself a wreck. The solution he was coming to was to just coast, and preserve his sanity. Besides, he had lots of support for this strategy from his two best friends who apparently were doing something similar.
Although those boys were not raising red flags at their houses, Ann knows her son well enough to know that he is avoiding necessary engagement. He is a smart kid and needs to go to a school that challenges him. The problem he is currently having is comparing himself with others and finding he does not want to compete. Ann and Greg will help him find a way to make school a more personal achievement process, where he is working to make personal gains, instead of worrying about where he stands relative to others. That is how he has been in the past and they are confident that this is just an understandable reaction to his trouble adjusting to the school. He may need some external structure to make this happen, but for the most part, Ann and Greg know that asking Seth to analyze what he is doing or not doing will eventually work. Their method of choice will be to keep him focused on his behavior and the reasons behind the behavior, rather than letting him avoid examining it.
Simply punishing him fails to move the conflict into the boy where it belongs.
Children opt to avoid because it allows them to skip all the feelings that arise when faced with binds, such as this one between ambition and safety. Ann and Greg know that there is plenty of ambition in their son. They simply have to keep it in front of him to wrestle with. Without their intervention, he has lots of distractions for how he uses his time. And he has a group of peers who will supply him with a set of plausible excuses to ease his potential regret for what he is doing.
One conversation is not going to turn things around for Seth. If the mediocre grades continue, Ann and Greg will continue to ask Seth to analyze his behavior. They much prefer that to taking an external approach where they are the holders of the ambition and force him to “save himself”. There will be opportunities to stir some ambition in Seth to counteract his avoidance. That will likely come with examining future opportunities (or lack thereof) and what kind of performance is necessary to get to those goals. For instance, going on college visits and letting Seth get excited about where he might want to go to school, yet find that his current GPA will not get him there is an ideal approach. Seth has shown some ambition for attending (computer) programmer’s camp in the summer. While he is there, he will be mixing with a number of kids who are not only very excited about programming, but also ambitious about their futures in programming. Ann and Greg know that after attending Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, Seth came home living and breathing space exploration and wanted to know everything it took to become an astronaut. There are no astronauts with low GPA’s. Instead of resorting to external solutions to Seth’s internal problem of avoidance, Ann and Greg will search for ways to stir up the ambition that Seth possesses. With some kids, that fire of ambition does not ignite until later. If that is the case with Seth, they will try to pick a college that does a good job of getting kids like Seth excited about some area of academics. There are some very good colleges for kids like Seth.* (see Loren Pope’s book, Colleges That Change Lives)
By virtue of knowing what developmental goals are pending and what the child’s interests and ambitions have been, a parent can recognize avoidance when it occurs. We know to look past the excuses or the norms (what everyone else is doing or accepting) to find the missing ambition. Keeping those interests and ambitions in front of the child forces a valuable internal struggle. Parents do this with genuine curiosity, not nagging or criticism.
“Now I Have Your Attention”
What if Ann had responded to Seth differently?
“Hey, did you get a report card today?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to show it to me?”
“I left it at school.”
“Well you can tell me the grades. You have the memory of an elephant.”
“I got four B’s and two C’s.”
“What do you think of those grades?”
“Well, B means above average and C means average, so I’m okay with those grades.”
“Are those the grades you want?”
“Sure. They’re good enough.”
“I can’t believe you are saying that?”
“What do you mean?”
“The average GPA at your school is 3.8. What do four B’s and two C’s add up to?
“It’s a 2.67 average. But I’m okay with that. I feel a lot less stressed this year.”
“You are less stressed because you are spending all your time with your computer games and your on-line friends.”
“Mom, it’s not like I am smoking weed and watching porn all day.”
“School is more important than anything you can be doing on the computer.”
“Mom, I’m not stealing cars, running over cops and randomly shooting hookers in some video game. I’m running a guild and building a community on line”
“It is still not a replacement for school.”
“I know it isn’t. The computer isn’t replacing school. I just don’t want to work so hard at school that I am all stressed out again.”
“Maybe if you spent less time on-line gaming you would have more time for school and be less stressed out.”
“Gaming does not replace school Mom.”
“Well until you get your grades back up, you are grounded from the computer.”
“I can’t do that! I’m the leader of my guild. I can’t just not show up.”
“Well, that’s what you have been doing with school. Just not showing up.”
“That’s really unfair!”
“You can’t sacrifice your future for some guild.”
“Mom, the guild and school are two different things. Until this conversation, I have been feeling a lot better than last year.”
“What I see are low grades and too much computer time. When the grades go back up, you can get the computer back.”
“Do you really think that my computer upstairs is the only one I have access to?”
“Well, it is the one I can control and I’ve gotten your attention.”
This mother is worried and unlike the Ann in previous versions, she chooses to handle her worry with more control. Instead of the last conversation, where Ann made the issue of grades an internal one for Seth, she has opted for an external solution. Seth is not a lazy kid. He is also getting old enough that he has made an independent decision about what is good for him with regard to his stress. Last year was just too much in terms of pressure and he did not want to go through that again. Ann’s worry about his future totally blinds her to what he is trying to tell her about how difficult it was to get straight A’s last year. She has also concluded that gaming is directly related to the decline of his grades and that limiting it will get his attention. She firmly believes that we work first, and then play, not the reverse.
This version of Ann is a high achieving woman, who has attacked her life and career with effort and more effort. Everything she does is top notch and she is handsomely rewarded for her success. She is a challenge to work for because she expects the best of everyone and she expects things to be done her way. She has loyal employees who work extremely hard and are well compensated, but she has also lost a number of them along the way when they have asked to transfer or Ann did the asking. The hospital’s board has been thrilled with Ann’s results and she continues to rise in the administrative ranks.
Seth is not a rebellious kid. His sister Tess would have battled Ann to the limit over this issue. She would have made life miserable for Ann, pointing out every inconsistency in the household, belittling her “suck-up” brothers for being Mommy’s puppets, and doing even less well in school to stick it to her mom. She would have made it abundantly clear, “you can’t control me.” She was like her mother in the sense that she always wanted to be in control.
Seth’s reaction to Ann will likely be different. By next semester, his grades will be virtually all A’s and will remain so all the way to medical school and Ann will deem her intervention a success. But on the inside Seth will be miserable. Ann has given Seth the message, “if you want a relationship with me, you need to do things my way”. This was a more powerful message than taking away the computer, an external approach to an internal problem.
Taking away his computer had a more profound effect on Seth than it would with another child in another family where the X-Box was used as a carrot to motivate. Seth used his computer to reach out and connect with others. He also derived a great deal of satisfaction and esteem from his ability to problem solve and lead his guild on line. In this portion of his life, he had fashioned a healthy and successful integration of self and connection. In her anxiety about grades and his future, Ann totally missed this aspect of Seth’s development and in the process set him back developmentally. She took this (self-connection) bind that he was wrestling with and made it a black and white, zero sum choice.
Instead of school becoming a blend of interest and ambition, it became another one of life’s necessary evils. Ann was convinced that she was correct in making the computer contingent upon grades. She totally missed the fact that Seth’s new found obsession with good grades was not in the service of getting back to his computer, but was motivated by his desire to never face the trauma of Mom’s disappointment ever again. He was determined not to be the family’s Black Sheep, which he already felt at times in comparison to his two socially adept siblings.
Seth is a sensitive kid. He has struggled to find where he fits, especially in relationships with others. His two younger siblings seem to struggle much less. Everything seems to come easy for Tim. Everyone likes him. He and their dad share lots of interests. Tess dominates a room when she is around. She makes things happen and people respond to her because of her strong personality. She is a lot like her mother in that sense. Seth is quiet and sensitive and does not seem to share the same interests of the family. He does not aggressively attack problems that stand in his way like Tess and Ann, nor is he a people person like Tim and Greg. Seth is more private and contemplative. (For a great book about the Seth’s of the world, aka, introverts, see Quiet, by Susan Cain.)
In the midst of struggling to figure out what is right for him and how to create appropriate balance in his life, his mother has come down hard with an external solution. To maintain his connection with her, he has to jettison the internal struggle and fall in line with her expectations. Seth is very smart and getting good grades is well within his capability, but he will be doing it for the wrong reasons. From this point forward he will be working hard so that he does not disappoint others. In the process, he has set his own needs aside. Eventually, this will break down. He will end up anxious and/or depressed, in a career that is not right for him. He may avoid getting into a serious relationship with a woman if he fears that it will rob him of the little autonomy he has left.
Ann presumes to know what is right for her son, instead of tuning into what makes him tick. He was in the process of trying to find what was right for him. In the previous example, Ann helped him consider all the issues and keep them in front of him so that the internal struggle yielded results instead of the avoidance Seth was employing. In this situation, Ann was scared of what would result from mediocre grades. All she could see were doors closing in his future. To manage her anxiety, she has learned to seize control. She was unable to tune into her son and his unique needs because she has long ago settled on a defensive style that has served her well, but does not include attunement, compassion and flexibility. She defines a problem and sets about solving it. She is a smart lady and she usually gets the solution she is after. In the case of a sensitive kid like Seth, she mistakenly thought she had solved his “motivation problem”. She will be proud of his grades and achievements, totally missing the internal workings and all the suffering. She will be clueless to the fact that she has set up an ultimatum for Seth: “if you want a relationship with me, you need to do things my way.” In other words, she has created a bind between self and connection, with Seth losing no matter what he decides.
Micromanaging is a defensive style that Ann has developed in her life to protect herself from disappointment. It persists because it has been very functional for her. She gets results at work, she earns praise, and her children are successful academically as well. Nothing has come along to convince her that she has taken an incomplete approach to life. If she continues to be able to control everything and everyone around her, she may never get the message.
Seth’s unhappiness will eventually become obvious and this could be a wake up call. More likely than not, this version of Ann will view his unhappiness as a problem that needs fixing and send him to someone with the right medication solution or the right time management recommendations. Both of these approaches will be variations on the wrong theme. The former merely turns down the intensity of his pain, while the latter helps him make the wrong choice work more effectively. If he is lucky, he will reach out for help because he cannot seem to create a satisfying intimate relationship in his life and then the internal work that got short-circuited will resume.
Ann dodged a bullet with Tess. Taking the approach with her that she had with Seth would have resulted in loud and profound external conflict instead of the internal sacrifices that Seth made. His tragedy was silent and went unnoticed whereas Tess’ would have been hard to miss. Tess realized that to get what she wanted, she had to keep certain people happy enough that they did not block her. She wanted to play sports, so she had to keep her grades up. She wanted privileges, so she did what was expected to earn them. But unlike Seth, she was never conflicted about doing her best. She simply did enough to satisfy the external standards so that she could get on with what she wanted to do. In this family, that meant keeping Mom happy enough that she did not interfere. It was not hard getting A’s where Tess went to school and that was just fine with her. She thought Seth was crazy for choosing to go to the Lab School. Tess was an eight cylinder car cruising down the road firing on four cylinders and no one was noticing. At least she got to drive where she wanted.
“Everything in Moderation”
Another potential scenario for a sensitive kid like Seth might unfold like this:
Seth spent every non-school hour in his room, reading science fiction, playing video games, or engaged in his role-playing games on-line. There were never enough books, it seemed, to keep him securely stocked. He had long ago drained the public library’s supply of science fiction and lately was even settling for some historical fiction, due to his limited funds. It was hard to argue with the fact that this kid was spending most of his free time reading. His gaming did not include any of the violent, antisocial qualities that characterize so many videogames. He wasn’t oppositional, defiant, disrespectful or even rude. He was not out past curfew partying. Compared to the obnoxious, in-your-face-with-defiance-and-rule-breaking kids next door, Seth was a saint. In fact the father next door offered to trade, either son, along with his boat and the two-week time-share in Oahu, for Seth, even up.
Seth was not causing anyone problems and as a result, was not coming to anyone’s attention, either. His parents felt relief that they had such a quiet, studious kid. The alarm bells did not go off for any behavior Seth was enacting. They should have been sounding for the behavior that was missing.
In moderation, Seth’s leisure activities represented healthy choices. In excess, they represented avoidance of important areas of necessary engagement. Instead of getting out of the house and engaging with friends, Seth was content to remain immersed in his fantasy worlds. In the real world of relationships, Seth had to worry about what others thought of him, whether he measured up to expectations, whether his friends found him interesting, and whether girls found him attractive. In his role-playing games, he could be whatever he wanted; he could start over if something did not work out; or he could play something where he set the rules.
Seth got by fine in school. He got a smattering of A’s and C’s, but mostly B’s. His papers were always written the night before they were due, and these brief episodes of “drop-everything-and-get-it-done” yielded satisfactory results. No one was complaining and it reduced schoolwork to its lowest level of annoyance. His parents rarely commented. Occasionally, when a C showed up on a quarterly report card, his mother would comment, but that was easily remedied by just enough effort in the next quarter. Avoidance defined Seth. Avoidance of engagement applied to any arena where he risked being deemed inadequate. Trying meant relinquishing control and submitting to the judgment of others and the potential for rejection or humiliation; or even the private shame of trying but not living up to his own expectations. He avoided any possible source of humiliation. In his books and games, he was never at risk for rejection or humiliation. Quite the opposite was the case. His fantasies afforded him power and success.
“Keep the Heat On”
In this version, Ann notices Seth’s avoidance of real world engagement:
Greg and Ann recognized Seth’s tendency to withdraw and avoid. Ann was good at challenging the “academic coasting”. She was getting good at recognizing it. But when the report card came home, she sat down with him to discuss his progress in each course. Seth did not need threats and consequences to motivate him. What he needed was a process that actively re-engaged him with his ambition and his interests. Left unattended, these did not squeak as loudly on their own. When he was immersed in his books or games, these were inaudible. Ann brought them back to consciousness. She returned him to having to deal with the bind of what he aspired to and what risks he had to endure to attain them. When asked, Seth had ambitions for his future that required success in high school. He says he wants a future involving scholarship and control over his own time. He was certain he never wanted a job where someone had control over him, who gave him orders. He has a curious mind and wants to put it to good use, probably in something like computer science.
Seth also wants friendships, including a girlfriend. But whenever he talks to a girl, he is interested in, he gets all bound up in worrying about what she thinks of him and whether he sounds stupid. Most of the time it is just not worth it. When he works up the nerve, he invariably spends sleepless nights second guessing what he did and said – resulting in a desperate need to avoid the girl for weeks until he knows that the dust has settled (to a good hard packed layer of clay).
When Ann asks about this part of his life Seth feels embarrassed and tells her everything is, “fine”. She knows better, because nobody that age should live solely between the cover of books. It is hard for her to be of help, especially when he is not asking for it. Occasionally, she will ask indirectly about his long-standing male friends – all of whom have girls they hang out with. When Seth admits unease, she asks him if he wants any insights from a woman’s perspective. If he says, “whatever, Mom, if it will calm you down,” she knows she has gotten the closest thing to a clear request for her help.
She reminded Seth that feeling anxious runs both ways. But he could never go wrong with asking a girl to tell him about herself. She said, “Just be genuinely interested (in her) and you can’t go wrong.”