Bad Kids

A favorite pastime among older people is to sit around talking about what went wrong with the current generation of young people. This is not new; I suspect it has always been that way.

 Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings has run into a lot of trouble recently because he disciplined his son with a switch.  He was wrong to do so, but we must acknowledge that for many people this is the way they were disciplined as children, and this is the way an understanding of right and wrong was (literally) beaten into them.

 

My father used to spank us with his belt.  It was horrible.  I was not a bad kid, but I received more belt spankings than I can remember, often for “crimes” than in no way fit the punishment.  It made me angry and resentful.  I can look back now and understand why he did it; it was how he was raised and he didn’t realize it was wrong.  I know he loved me and thought he was doing the right thing.  But let’s be clear – it was wrong, period.

 When I got a little older my resentment turned to rebellion, as it does so often for kids in their teens.  Not just about corporal punishment but about so many things.  In a familiar ritual I started to rebel against just about everything my parents stood for, and to try all of the things they had tried so hard to keep me from doing.  I rejected their view of the world and decided to figure out what the truth was on my own.

 

Last week a good friend of mine confided that he and his wife were having trouble with their teenage son.  His grades are slipping, he is hanging with the wrong crowd, and he has developed a fondness for alcohol and pot and a number of other risky behaviors.  

 

I will call my friend’s son Brian (not his real name).  Brian is a good kid, and he is both intelligent and talented.  His parents are great people and good parents.  I have watched Brian grow up and his parents not only provided for his material needs, they made sure his spiritual and intellectual needs were met as well.  As is often the case, Brian has a sibling that is something of a polar opposite.  She is well adjusted with good grades, a strong work ethic, and good friends.

 

As I look around at my family and friends I see the pattern replayed over and over.  Parents raise multiple children who do not turn out the same.  My nephews seem to exhibit more rebellion than my nieces.  The same is true of my children.  As parents we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that if we have the same gene pool and environment then our kids should all turn out the same.  It is not true.

I think rebellion is something of a universal theme.  It does not manifest the same in everyone, but we all have to go through a process of looking at what we were taught as children and challenging those premises.  Obviously some “challenge” a little more and some a little less.  With some of us we seem to throw out everything, the baby and the bathwater, and start all over again, reinventing the wheel.

 

At seventeen we are not equipped to throw out all that we have been taught about right and wrong and the nature of the universe and form our own philosophy from scratch.  And we are vulnerable to so many influences that would lead us astray.  Like alcohol, and drugs, and charismatic idiots.

Each of us, even the most well-adjusted, has unresolved issues.  Perhaps there are things from our childhood such as belt spankings that we have not come to grips with.  Perhaps there are self-confidence issues, or “scripts” from childhood that keep playing in our head.  Counseling and reading good books and spending time in self-reflection can help.  But many folks choose to remain in denial rather than address things that make them uncomfortable.  Teenagers are especially unlikely to address issues in appropriate ways.

 

Like many people, I tried alcohol.  Beer makes you feel good and takes away your inhibitions.  It lets you run away from having to resolve conflicts.  And it often introduces you to new and interesting people who are running away from their own unresolved issues.  Together you can all agree that everything your parents taught you growing up is wrong and only young people like you with a bag of weed really understand what the truth is.

Different people choose different ways to escape.  I love watching the transformations on The Biggest Loser as very obese people lose lots of weight using proper diet and exercise.  But the diet and exercise are not the key to losing weight and keeping it off.  The key is to address the underlying issue that caused you to use food as an escape.

 

Every addiction, whether to food or gambling or porn or alcohol or heroin, is the result of someone trying to run away from unresolved issues. 

 

The addict has two separate tasks; the first is to overcome the addiction, and the second is to resolve the issues that caused the addiction in the first place.  The addict is emotionally frozen at the point where they began their addiction.  It seems impossible to see this, because the addict is in denial.  Even in the face of losing a job or flunking out of school or getting divorced, the familiar cry of “I don’t have a problem” is heard again and again.

 

Let’s be clear – food is not bad.  Having a cocktail or visiting a casino is not evil, unless you are using them inappropriately to avoid facing unresolved issues.  Haagen-Dazs is yummy, and a Long Island Tea makes you feel good.  Resolving painful issues from childhood is unpleasant.  Most seventeen year olds do not have the emotional resources to make the right choice.

 

Make no mistake, addictions and unresolved issues do not just affect young people or the poor.  Betty Ford fought alcoholism in the White House.  Bill Clinton jeopardized his career with risky behavior.  Barack Obama spent his youth smoking pot.  Kurt Cobain and John Belushi and Robin Williams lost their battles tragically, while experiencing professional success and being loved by millions.

 

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort experienced by someone who holds contradictory beliefs, or who holds a belief that is contradicted by the reality they witness.  This discomfort can be pretty extreme, and sometimes the attempt to deny reality can be intense.  Running away from our “demons” can produce some erratic and inexplicable behavior.

 

Brian’s parents took him to rehab.  He was not happy about that, and he said all of the usual hateful things about never forgiving them.  He didn’t need any help and was quite happy with his life.  Uh-huh.  I have never been in rehab myself but let’s just say there are a number of people close to me who have.  I can tell you it is impossible to understand your addiction until you get rid of it.  Looking back, things become quite clear and most people wonder, “What was I thinking?” 

 

Perhaps more to the point, the addict will often look back and say, “What were YOU thinking?”  Those people who enable you to stay an alcoholic or help you weigh 500 lbs. are not helping you.  After rehab, many people need a new set of friends.  Brian’s parents have done the right thing, although I know how painful it is to have your children say hurtful things.  I don’t know how this will turn out – only Brian can help Brian – but I know that tough love is often the only right choice there is.

 

I have seen this situation repeated in many forms over and over again, with myself and my siblings and their kids and my kids.  Many of my friends and neighbors seem to echo the same things.  These are “good kids”, who are in rebellion and making bad choices and ending up with legal and financial trouble and addictions to overcome.  I have seen people come through difficult times to go on and lead productive lives, and I have also seen lives end in suicide. Sometimes it is more than addiction and unresolved issues; sometimes there are true mental disorders such as bipolar disorder that need to be treated by proper medical care. 

If your friend or loved one is having trouble and going down the wrong path then you face a difficult situation.  Nobody can get in someone else’s head and fix what is wrong but you still have a responsibility to help get them back on track.  If you truly love and care for someone you cannot enable their bad behavior.

 

·         Let them know that despite their behavior you still love and care for them.  You can be critical of the behavior without being critical of the person.

·         Do not enable their bad behavior by buying them alcohol or fried foods or taking them to the casino.  Do not provide money for those things.  Do not tell them it is alright if it is not.

·         Set a good example.  You need not be perfect but it does little good to complain about someone’s pot smoking while you are drunk.  Take a look at your own behavior and issues and set an example in terms of dealing with them properly.

·         Set boundaries.  Parents may not be able to control their children’s behavior at all times but they can establish a clear and consistent set of House Rules and expect them to be followed.  Your boundaries must be clearly communicated and not arbitrary and you must be consistent.

·         When necessary, use tough love.  This has nothing to do with belts or switches.  It is about not participating in bad behavior. 

 

I ended up forgiving my father and mending our relationship before he died.  I realize he cared enough about me to want to see me do the right thing, regardless of how wrong-headed his methods were.  I came to grips with a lot of my own issues and resolved them, but I had kids too young and they had to live through that struggle with me as they grew up. 

 

Dad grew up in the early part of the last century when society’s attitudes were much different about a variety of issues.  As a society we still have a number of unresolved issues.  We have a lot of societal addiction and dysfunction.  In many ways we are in denial.  

 

We are conflicted and at the risk of stretching this analogy too thin I think our cognitive dissonance has in many ways reached a critical level.  Resolving our issues will be a painful process.  Hopefully as a society we can go through the rehab process and look back and wonder, “What were we thinking?”

 

The realities staring us in the face stand in direct contradiction to many of our accepted theories.  We are not “doing fine” and our present course is not serving us well.  We need to start following a different set of people and set some boundaries.

 

We need a more mature point of view as a society.  We need to realize there are consequences to our behavior and our children and grandchildren will judge us by what we do and the legacy we leave them.  I say it’s time we get started.  Let’s create a new paradigm.