Shugetsu: What a Parent Should Do

I was inspired by a talk given by PSU psychology professor Leslie B. Hammer at the Pacific NW Association of Independent Schools conference, held at Catlin Gabel School on October 12. My notes follow.

When anxiety takes hold, the cognitive field narrows, the world collapses into good and evil, and it becomes impossible to evaluate relative risk. In this state, a B- on a child’s paper evokes a similiar response to the child being attacked.

There is a correlation between kids gone awry--kids stuck in a swirl of depression, sex, drugs or delinquency--academic pressure from parents, family disengagement, and elite schools. In fact elite schools have higher rates of teen dysfunction than poor schools. (This sounds incredible, and I wonder if the studies corrected for the fact that students in poor schools often self-select themselves out of school.) But even so, the more affluent, the more pressure, the more messed up the kids are. Correlations can be tricky: they don’t say anything about causes. So it’s not that grade-obsessed parents necessarily cause teenage misbehavior. Rather, parental response focuses on the concrete readout of a life in crisis, without focusing the underlying causes, without addressing the kid’s social and emotional experience.

Family life is about enjoying one another. Period. You need unstructured time; you can’t arrange to bond. Kids and everyone need unstructured time to allow imagination and creativity to flow.

Happiness, and the Causes of Happiness, consist of: giving and receiving love; finding and using your gifts; and living a meaningful life. Period. Once basic subsistence needs have been met--not “middle class” needs, but subsistence needs--there is no longer a correlation between money and happiness. With increasing wealth, proxy variables start to stand in for satisfaction: a new car; the college sticker on the car; building your kid into a designer package that will win admittance into a selective school, rather than the best fit for that person’s needs and growth. There is a dissatisfaction that sets in with progressive material status

Studies on the introduction of the internet to homes show an increase in depression and alienation, and a decrease in family time, once a household becomes wired. Screens do not develop relationships; people do.

Relationships are not a frill. They are critical to personal health, proper development, and success in life. There is this focus on academic “basics”, but studies clearly show that emotional health is crucial to educational success at all levels: when kids feel safe at school, they learn better and do not drop out. At all developmental stages, “Secure Attachment” is a result, and a cause of, attunement and responsiveness.

There is plenty of literature on Secure Attachment in early life, but what does it look like for a teen? If your kid can offer a strong “YES” in agreement with the following five statements, that’s a tremendous predictor of future success and well-being.