When a Parent Has Cancer by Wendy S. Harpham M.D

Author:Wendy S. Harpham, M.D. [Schlessel Harpham M.D., Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062032157
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Helping Teens Sort Out Conflicting Loyalties

Encourage your teens to continue the work of separating and developing confidence in their independence. In particular, you can provide the encouragement and support they need to deal with the pull of conflicting loyalties. They can have unpleasant feelings no matter what they are doing because they are unsure how to be supportive of you without jeopardizing their social or scholastic life. Parents can help in a tangible way by offering sound guidance for when the children must be involved with the family, and when it is fine to be off doing their own thing.

When you discuss your teens’ various activities, be sure to separate your needs from your child’s when you talk about prioritizing choices. Help your teens do what is best for them overall. For example, let’s say that a father is in the hospital getting a bone marrow transplant, and his sixteen-year-old son is ambivalent about continuing on the varsity basketball team because he would have to be at the gym every evening. The teen feels pulled by clashing drives. On the one hand, he wants to play ball and satisfy his needs to vent tension, escape seriousness, be loyal to his social group, and have fun. On the other, he wants to visit his dad in the hospital with the rest of his family, and satisfy his need to be with his father, keep up with what’s happening in his family, and feel that he is being a responsible and loving son. The parents can help their child see that both desires are respectable and responsible. After reassuring him that participating on the team is important, his parents can help brainstorm ways to satisfy both needs, such as by visiting his dad at different times, or asking if the coach would stretch the rules and allow him to miss one practice a week, and so on. After presenting all the possible permutations, and discussing which ones are acceptable, the parents should let the child decide.

The next step is very important—the parents need to support the child’s decision. One child may feel best visiting the dad for a few minutes after school and continuing an uninterrupted schedule with the team. Another child may feel most comfortable sacrificing a season of play in order to be with the family every evening. In both cases, the child must be assured that his or her parents would be fine with either decision, and that both choices are equally responsible and respectable. This approach works if there is a mutual understanding that the parents will let the child know when the circumstances have changed, and therefore when the choices have changed. If the dad has to undergo surgery and feels superstitiously that he won’t survive unless his whole family is in the waiting room, the dad’s needs take precedence over the teenager’s. Or if the father’s condition becomes terminal, in most cases the children should be with him even if they don’t feel it is their top priority.

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