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Key points
- Parents must beware eight dire risks for their growing adolescent.
- Prohibition can reduce exposure but can also magnify temptation.
- Preparation can provide education but also gives permission.
- Mixing prohibition and preparation is the most protection parents can provide.
It comes with the parenting territory: the instinct to shield one’s child from harm. The world is a dangerous place, and innocent children need to be warned away from what can hurt them: “Don’t play with fire because flame can burn.”
Adolescent dangers
And the dangers don’t diminish as the child grows older. Consider eight dire risks in adolescence that can victimize young people, risks about which parents justifiably feel afraid and which young people need to be wary of.
1. Social violence,
2. Accidental injury,
3. School failure,
4. Illegal activities,
5. Sexual misadventures,
6. Daring behavior,
7. Suicidal despondency,
8. Alcohol and other drug use.
(Eliminate the last of these risks and parents may dramatically reduce the incidence of the other seven. This is why a sober passage through adolescence can be safest of all.)
In general, parents have two ways to help their teenager cope with foreseen dangers—by offering protection and by providing preparation. Each has its strengths and limitations. Consider protection first.
Protection
Because protection is against possible dangers, it can arouse anxiety. It’s complicated. There is a built-in dilemma that comes with providing protection, whether sheltering or safeguarding. Not only does protection impose limits on experience and prevent much there is to learn, it can increase a sense of jeopardy.
Consider a 10-year-old’s frightened response to a neighborhood break-in. “This could happen to us!” And for several nights the early adolescent’s worries cause sleeplessness. “It feels scary to close my eyes!” So, to help the child feel protected, parents take a number of security measures: They re-key the doors, they put locks on the windows, and they install an alarm system, all to help the young person feel safe—only to discover that the young person is now more frightened than before. Why?
The answer is that the new protections provide hard evidence of the dangers lurking outside waiting to break in. While arming oneself can create security, it also affirms fears. Feelings of safety can exist only when there is no felt need for protection.
Prohibition
Then there are the most common form of parental protection, prohibitions. Parents declare in no uncertain terms what the young person must not do. Given consent by the teenager, parental prohibitions can help the young person stay out of danger's way. "Do not accept any drugs to feel good from friends because these chemicals can do you harm." And for a while, the young person may decide to remain substance-free. "I don't want to get hurt."
Then there are occasions when parental prohibitions backfire. To the adventurous, curious, or rebellious adolescent, prohibitions can seem like invitations to experience the forbidden—dangers that only add the incentive of excitement. Sometimes parents who want to “scare kids straight” with frightening possibilities end up only tempting young people on. "If it's that bad, it's got to be good to do!"
Growing up in a ruthlessly market-driven society doesn’t help. Thus, when laws and advertisers attach an “adults only” designation to some dangerous recreational activity, such a limitation may only tempt under-age consumers who are in a hurry to act certifiably more grown up. Prohibitions act as incentives. For example, the youthful allure of experimenting with cigarettes, vaping, marijuana, or alcoholis intensified. "I want to give it a try."
Of course, prohibitions can have protective value, as when the teenager uses them to justify not going along with peers. "My parents would ground me forever if I did what you're doing." Not willing to lose face with a personal refusal, the teenager may use the protection of a parental prohibition when feeling socially unable to say "no" on her or his own authority.
Preparation
Another way to address dangers in the teenager's life is with preparation. A problem with preparation is that it implies some level of permission. "Not doing this now doesn't mean that you won't ever do it, so we need to talk about managing the dangers before you do." Preparation is educational and treats dangers as challenges to be carefully met.
While protection limits exposure and relies on warnings and prohibitions, preparation allows more freedom and relies on instruction and often practice. The parent providing protection may say, “Don’t do that”; the parent providing preparation may say, “Try it this way.” Protection often instills fears; preparation often builds confidence. Both parental responses have to do with danger management.
Sometimes, fearful parents can have a hard time giving effective preparation when some adolescent danger is at stake. Feeling easily threatened, they can lapse into becoming threatening teachers. Consider the father and son who finally decided that the dad is not really cut out to teach the 16-year-old a dangerous behavior—how to drive a car. Why?
The answer repeatedly given by both about their unhappy experience was the man’s protective reliance on warnings and prohibitions, his lapsing into criticism and blame when he could not tolerate anxiety at his son’s trial-and-error learning, the teenager getting more nervous and angry in response. Every “driving lesson” drove them into unhappiness with each other.
“So we decided, and my mom agreed, that she would take over the instruction. She can stay calm and help me stay calm while my dad cannot.”
Managing the mix
Of course, protecting and preparing are not an either/or proposition since many decisions parents must make require a mix of both: saying "don't do” to some dimensions of an activity and explaining "how to do” to others. Go back to the issue of operating an automobile, for example. Parents might give a strong prohibition against drinking and driving, but they may give a lengthy training for how to navigate a car through heavy traffic.
One of the hardest dilemmas of parenting a young person through the dangers of growing up is this: "Should I protect my teenager and perhaps foster anxiety and ignorance or should I prepare my teenager and perhaps allow permission and risk?"
What to do? Maybe this: Provide as much preparation as you can, protect as little as you must, and hopefully know when it is necessary to give both.
