Parents Should ‘Trust Their Gut’ With Troubled Teens
“I don’t believe that every problem requires a therapist,” Townsend says. “Part of the job of parenting is helping kids succeed with problems. Help them come up with solutions.”
Parents of teens at risk often feel that they are walking through land mines. The threats to troubled teens today come from all sides - from a pop culture that undermines parental authority by promoting teen age drug abuse and irresponsible behavior, to sexual predators on the internet, to the possibilities of their teen being diagnosed with any number of “disorders”…what is a parent to think? Which expert do they trust?
Well, that is the problem solving that parents need to do while teaching their teens to solve problems on their own. Parents know their teens better than any expert but the one obstacle to that insight being useful is when parents ignore their gut.
Relevant Tags:denial, gut instincts, teens at risk, teen age drug abuse, troubled teens“Parents’ gut instincts are right on the money,” says Linderman, author of the new book The Teen Whisperer: How to Break Through the Silence and Secrecy of Teenage Life. “They say they knew it. They could feel it, but they didn’t want to admit it. They need to remove that denial. They need to see the reality of what’s going on.”
Stanton Peele, a psychologist, attorney and addiction expert from Chatham, N.J., is familiar with parents in denial. He says many parents are not realistic about expectations. “We think that drugs and alcohol are two bad things out there and we need to beat them back. We figure if we just warn and scare kids enough, everything will be all right. But we know that doesn’t work.”
