TheTeenDoc.com » identity development

Teen Socializing

teendoc — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:00:11 +0000

There’s a heavy price for tryin’ to be Joe or Jane Popular. It frequently hits the most in a transition year. Ya know, starting middle school or high school or even college. Why, you ask…

Why, because it’s really hard to walk into a new situation and know no one. The desire to fit in and have a group of people called friends can break the best of us, but this is especially true when your teen is still developing a sense of who they are and they don’t have the confidence to sit at the lunch table or hang out on recess field on their own. This takes more than courage. It takes confidence. This is something your teen may not be so full of when they feel awkward and different most of the time. If they decide to let their academic work slide to be in the know during a rumor or get invited to that party then the only thing that will pull them back is their plummeting self-esteem as they add poor student to their list of adjectives that describe themselves. When this doesn’t sit well, your teen will dig up the courage to become who they are rather than whom everyone else wants them to be.

Teens are social beings. They learn and thrive by their connections to others. Understanding the balance of being social with everything else with which they need to excel is an art that only your teen can discover for themselves. Sure, you can add a threat or two for incentive, but ultimately it’s their show.

School isn’t for Socializing?

Your Teen’s Got Talent

teendoc — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:00:04 +0000

I once saw this woman on Oprah who could make rooster sounds. She could make a lot of sounds actually. Class clown stuff really.

She was good and she had perfected these noises that got her on Oprah. She left the Oprah show and was called by some entertainment show to host celebrity galas. The rest is history. Everyone has a talent. It may not get you to win a realty show and it doesn’t even always get you on a show, but what’s important is your teen knows how much this talent distinguishes them from others. Steve Jobs understood that his talent wasn’t designing computers as much as it was understanding the consumers likes and dislikes. This talent for appreciating the consumer experience was what made him make the so many forms of electronics including the personal computer the life changing event it was. He was incredible when it came to this. If someone had asked him what his talent was in high school, I’m not sure he would have put that into words in a very convincing way.

God knows what your teen does that blows the bugle boy’s horn, but make sure they understand how unique that talent makes them and in doing so gives them an edge when they’re standing there next to everyone else.

I Wanna Be A Rockstar!

teendoc — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:00:30 +0000

“I want to be a musician. I’ve been thinking about my passion and I think I want to be the next Missy Misdemeanor Elliot.” Well, we thought you were going to college. What about school?

The moment of truth, when your teen has the guts to tell you they don’t or rather they can’t fulfill your dreams for them and they have their own dreams. Your disappointment has to be tempered with the relief that they’ve found something they love to do. You wonder if they’ll really get the chance to do it, but you’re happy they’ve found something they see themselves doing. The disappointment can sometimes be so real that you feel a personal assault to all the hard work, possible prep schools and effort towards their education that you’ve put in. Understand that part of what you were hoping to do is raise a free thinker; someone who stands up for what they believe in. Why not start with you?

The job of the teen is to separate from who you are and who you thought they should be. In developing their own path in life they must develop their own identity. If that identity is music producer instead of lawyer or doctor then you have an idea of what Sy Kravitz and Roxy Roker felt like when their son asked for his college fund to make a demo. Maybe one day you’ll have the same feeling they had when they watch their son, Lenny Kravitz perform on stage in front of thousands of people. Priceless.

Another Thing About Posture

teendoc — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:00:57 +0000

Have you ever asked your teen to stand up straight? Well, there’s another reason to encourage improved posture.

Head up, shoulders back and chin up teaches your teen to own their space. They have a tendency to slouch and fall over on themselves which is indicative of someone who has doubt or questions their position in the relationship, but if you read up on the latest on body language expert articles you learn that these are also ways that people present themselves as demure and lacking in confidence. In other words, the posture thing is really important for a myriad of reasons.

Owning your space well is seen in behaviors like leaning back on a chair, draping your arm on the chair next to you or even flipping the chair around and sitting straddling it. These behaviors exude more confidence and actually serve to change the body chemistry to stimulate a sense of power in your teen. You may not want this done with you, but with a student that is bullying them, even a teacher that is bullying them or a future job interview you might want your teen to present themselves as someone who is not walked over.

Good posture is the start of good body language. When you ask them to stand up straight, you’re teaching them to own their space and stand up for themselves.

Don’t Touch My Stuff!

To Your Teen, “Be True To Yourself”

teendoc — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:00:01 +0000

There are few things that take as much courage when you’re a teen than being your true self. The self your teen was born to be despite your dreams for them.

As teens mature from infancy to the teen years, they start to know you fairly well. Your likes, your dislikes and your moods are all great information because it allows them to support you better so you can support them back. This is a problem when they don’t think you will support who they are despite your statements of unconditional love for them.

Your teen can be wrong, but when you tell them you’ll love them no matter what, they’re thinking, but you weren’t thinking I was going to have to say this when you said you’d love me. I’m thinking you might not love me if you knew this. This is especially true if you have cultural or religious reasons as the basis for some of your beliefs. A basis that has resulted from years of indoctrination and can only be changed by what seems like a miracle for your teen, this fear can make your teen keep their true self hidden from you.

This is what happened for the first transgender supermodel in the world, Lea T. Lea was born Leonardo and struggled with who she was her whole life. When she finally made the decision to be who she was she faced some ridicule and snickers, but her Dad was the one who expressed unconditional love for her while her Mom struggled with the challenges of culture and religion.

Be who you are and make the world come to you should be the mantra you give your teen. Years ago no one would have thought the world would have recognized the first transgender supermodel, today this is so. Let your teen be who they are and equally important go with the tendency to love your teen unconditionally so they can be true to who they are. It’s the only way they will ever truly be happy.

I can’t get a “B”

teendoc — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:00:53 +0000

“Well, I changed my class because that class was hard and I was going to get a ‘B.’ I can’t get a ‘B.’ Me? A ‘B’? I don’t think so. I have never gotten a ‘B’ in my life and I wasn’t about to start with some advanced placement physics class. “ Do you know this teen? Do you live with this teen? Life is going to be very hard when they finally earn that “B.” It’s a shame they missed the opportunity to learn the lesson in high school by switching classes.

If school comes easy enough to your teen then this topic never comes up or may come up later in university. However, for many teens whose grades are important to the next stage in life. This topic comes up a lot. These teens understand the importance of grades in terms of their future, but they forget to put it in context. Instead, the positive feedback they receive for their grades and the grades themselves become their identity. The grades become who they are. They are the A. So self-identifying as an “A” student will cause a major crash when they have to identify with another letter grade like “B” and heaven forbid, “F.”

Instead of realizing they are more than their grades, the feedback they receive has communicated that you are only good if you get the “A.” So they understandably become fearful at the thought of having to identify with anything other than that, thinking they might not be as loved, as liked, or as respected. It is this fear that makes them say, “I can only get As.” In other words, I don’t want the negative feedback from people. What will my parents think? What will my friends or teachers think?

So when you encourage your teen, you may want to encourage the behavior rather than the result. “I like that you’re persistent, tenacious or a hard worker. These skills are beneficial for a lifetime and allow them to look at a “B” and say, “I worked hard and did my best” rather than, “I’m not going to get positive feedback for a ‘B’.”

Graduating to Your Teen’s Uniqueness

teendoc — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:00:10 +0000

Your teen’s graduation day. A day of absolute pride for both you and your teen. Sometimes there’s a big whew! that they are graduating and other times there is such a sense of accomplishment to having squeezed every opportunity out of their high school experience. There are accolades for grades, service, popularity what there is no appreciation for and yet what may be the most important thing your teen learns while they’re in high school is who they really are. That prize is priceless.

As Josh Shipp’s rap states to the right, don’t let anyone tell you who you really are. He goes on to say the thing that really matters is to be honest. What he does not add although it is probably implied is that your teen needs to get to a point where they are honest with themselves. Honest about their talents and their weaknesses, honest their dreams and their failures and even honesty about who they are morally, politically or even as a partner and be true or honest to whom that person is. When they are comfortable with this person, they realize that not everyone will like who they are, but what is more important is that they like who they have become in essence who they are now.

This is a great foundation upon which to build the begining of their adult life filled with important decisions about career, spouses and social environment. Without being honest with whom they are, they are at higher risk of making poor decisions and being someone they aren’t for a large portion of their life happy with until they get the courage to be their true self. However, if you see it. If you get the glimpse of your teen’s confidence, their strength in the type of person they have become, their ability to know, “Hey I’m a type A kinda chick and I need a type A kinda guy!” confidence then you know that your teen has done the true work of their teen years. They have developed a true sense of identity and awareness for who they really are.

4 Tips on Compromise for Teens

Your Teen’s Self-love

teendoc — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:30:20 +0000

I want me to be friends with me. Self-love. You can’t love anyone else without it at least not well. You can’t be the best you can be without it. It isn’t directly taught and yet it is a part of everything you will teach your teen before they are an adult.

I want to be liked. I want to be popular. I want to be successful. I want to make a lot of money. These are all code for; I want to feel good about who I am. I want to like myself. Often times teens will wait for the admiration of others before they like themselves too. Of course, this isn’t just teens or Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson, etc wouldn’t have been so unhappy despite their extreme wealth and talents. No, teens really need to learn that others like you when you like you.

So instead the wish list should read, “I want to like me.” I want to like me a lot. I want to like me successfully, and if I get the love in return from others that I give to me, all the better, but this begins with your teen liking what they see when they look in the mirror -first.

Childhood Nicknames Can Stick

teendoc — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:30:10 +0000

“Daddy’s princess,” “Little Man,” “Gordo,” “Skinny Minnie,” these nicknames are in their own way endearing, but at some point when your toddler matures, develops their self-consciousness, and begins to take on the prejudices of society; gordo is going to mean fat.

Once gordo is no longer endearing, your teen will start to think about what their nickname means in terms of who they are. In this self-discovery, they may take on the identity of a fat person. This is when the nickname starts to stick. The baggage of that nickname can change the potential of your teen because they take on the nickname’s stereotype.

As teens start to develop their own identity rather than that thrust upon them, they internalize how other’s view them especially those in their immediate circle: immediate family, extended family, teachers, peers, etc. Unless your teen has another voice to counter the negative perspectives, they take on the identity of the negative nickname. Once they do that, they will take over as the negative voice, continue the negative thoughts that support poor self esteem and poor self-confidence.

People with poor self-esteem and poor self-confidence have a difficult time advocating for themselves. They are agreeable because they don’t want to stand out too much. They are concerned about criticism the attention might bring if they were to say something. Anything. These teens might settle because they don’t know they deserve anything better. They want people to like them so they choose their words wisely so as not to upset people. This is especially true if this is the way they were treated at home.

Nicknames are endearing terms that at some point may need to be tucked away with childhood. It gives the teen an opportunity to develop their own identity rather than conform to the identity thrust upon them.