Drop the Worry Ball by Alex Russell & Tim Falconer

Author:Alex Russell & Tim Falconer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2012-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

Being “Bad”

I often tell that story when I give talks and when I get to the end, I add: “Good outcome!” That gets a laugh. I'm not joking, though. Given the range of possible outcomes at this point, this is actually quite a good one. Jamie learned that he cared enough about his teammates and coach that he was willing to change his habits. In fact, this is actually the kind of outcome we're looking for. Why? Because it's all about his relationship with the outside world and suddenly we can see him being concerned about the consequences of his actions: his standing among his peers, his coach's respect, the negative results of his drug use. This is exactly what we want him focused on.

Of course, from a parent's perspective, there is a better outcome—the boy stops smoking weed altogether. That's why my “good outcome” comment seems more like a punch line than a serious observation. In truth, this is not a laughing matter at all; but it is one many parents get wrong. When they do, they risk alienating their son and prolonging his wish to ignore the consequences of his actions and stay in the first world of emotional functioning.

Sex and drugs and rock ‘n' roll, the infamous trinity of teenage evils that I have riffed on for the title of this chapter, have long aroused parents' moral anxieties. When I advise parents on how to deal with these types of issues, I often have to help them work through their utter moral condemnation of their child's actions, before we can get to a place where we can start to work on solutions. “It's just wrong,” they say. “We can't accept this behavior.” “That's a zero-tolerance thing.” “It goes against our basic family values.”

Fine, no problem. Values are important and if kids don't learn them from their parents, where are they going to get them? The question is: how best to lead your child to truly adopt and operate according to your family's values? This is a pragmatic question, and parents can easily get lost when they think along simplistic good versus bad moral lines. Left unchecked, this approach leads eventually and inevitably to parental ultimatums. The endgame here is the position espoused by the now thoroughly discredited “Tough Love” movement: “Either you stop doing X or you don't live in this house.”

When you go there, there's no possibility of a solution, but it's where Amanda's parents, Aileen and Phil, were headed when I first met them. A 15–year-old in private school, the girl had thrived during the holidays at her summer camp, where she loved the outdoors and all the activities (such as windsurfing and wakeboarding) and the social world. Many of the campers had been going there for years and so they'd grown up together as a gang in the summers. Unlike Amanda's all-girl school, this was a coed environment, one she felt very comfortable in. After her first year of high school, she spent the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.