EMPATHY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND CHOICE

Janet Sasson Edgette, PsyD

child/adolescent/family psychology

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It's easy to be empathic.
What difficult is being empathic
while also holding your child accountable at the same time.

Fifteen-year-old Emily comes home from a week away at soccer camp. Her parents, younger sister, and grandparents haven't seen her since she left. They are looking forward to a dinner out together and some catch up time.

But Emily is in no mood to go out with her family. It was a long ride back on the bus and she's tired. She rejects the dinner idea out of hand, and storms upstairs toward her room, luggage in tow.

"Em, where are you going? We haven't seen you in a week, you could at least talk to us for a bit."

"Look, I'm tired and really don't feel like going out. I'll talk to you all later on." Emily goes up to her room and shuts the door. One minute later, everyone hears her talking on her cell phone.

Emily's mom turns sheepishly to her in-laws and says, "Well, what can I expect? She is a teenager, after all. And anyway, I don't want to ruin her first day back home with a silly argument."

Okay. So instead, Emily's mom allows Emily to ruin her first day back with her daughter.

A child's good choices deserve accolades. But her bad choices require a reaction from the adults around her that prompt her to consider a different choice the next time, not assuage her anxiety or frustration or embarrassment. What changes things is the child realizing that she stands to lose more than she will gain by not changing, and that all the old routes for escaping accountability (playing dumb, negotiating for the "next time," using the pretense of wanting to understand the rationale behind the rule as a means to frustrate with a seemingly endless series of questions, etc.) have been closed.

Bad choices place a responsibility on parents and educators and mentors to say, "Hey look, hormones or not, bad mood or not, adolescence or not, your cursing / sarcasm / stomping around / mean remark to your brother / contempt for my parenting / contempt for my teaching is not acceptable. I'll help you with whatever it is you're unhappy about, but I don't want to be at the mercy of your moods."

Many of the ways in which parents (and other adults involved in children's lives) inadvertently contribute to these problems are invisible to their naked eye. Myths about adolescence ("She's got too many hormones running through her to act sensibly"), protective excuses ("Adolescence is his last chance to have some fun, let's not make too big a deal about it"), and emotional blind spots ("He doesn't remember things well because of his ADD," or "He happens to have an anger problem, that's still not a reason to suspend him") cause parents and teachers and counselors to miss the red flags that would be telling them which kids are in real need of attention and intervention.

For example, parents of adolescents who are temperamental, anxious, or learning disabled will often wonder where to draw the line between helping their son or daughter to manage an especially challenging situation, and overprotecting him or her. I like to encourage parents and teachers to separate two things that often get glommed together unproductively: how difficult something is for someone, and how that person can be expected to handle the challenge.

Let's go back to this boy with the "anger problem." His parent and teachers would be instructed to separate his anger problem from his responsibility to act civilized even though he has an anger problem. Everyone gives a nod to the fact that controlling anger is/will always be harder for him than the next kid, but the boy is still called upon to pull his punches. If he doesn't, he receives the same treatment and consequence that anyone else would receive.

The important point is that this hot-tempered boy is being invited to play on a level field, while given whatever assists he wants or needs to play competently. This is essential for his psychological health. Only then will he truly learn to control his temper, rather than leaving it for the rest of the world to contend with. His self-concept and esteem take flight as a result of this stalwart show of faith/support on the part of the adults around him, and his expanding scope of self-control.

Ditto for a kid who forgets all the time or gets too easily distracted. In fact, by the time kids who have been diagnosed with ADD reach their teen years, many of them have learned to use their symptoms as excuses to subcontract out all memory functions. And guess who the highest bidder is? It's almost always a parent, way more worried than the child herself is about forgotten assignments, missed buses, and declining grades. But the truth is that in order for anything to change, it has to matter more to the teen than to the parent that the assignment gets in on time, the bus gets caught, and the grades go up.

Anxiety is not an anxious, or learning disabled,
or insecure kid's worst enemy!

What is a worse enemy to an anxious, or learning disabled, or insecure kid than anxiety itself is a parent's lack of confidence in the child's ability to manage that anxiety. Along those same lines, losing the opportunity to have a friend over because chores/homework/general courtesy was blown off is not the worst thing that can happen to a hot-headed kid with too few friends. What's worse for his emotional health and maturity is learning that he can get away with being rude to his mom only because having the friend over means more to her (as a measure of his social adaptability) than it does to him.