How To Handle Teen 'Firsts'

The first time your preteen or teen does something, it really is a big deal.

Child psychologist Dr. Lawrence Kutner of Harvard Medical School says the way parents handle their adolescents' "firsts" is crucial to the parent-child relationship as well as the adolescents' development.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm testing the amount of independence a child has is important during the preteen and teenaged years. They want to see what it is like to be like an adult. One of the key development tasks of a teen is to try to separate from his/her parents. Many of the important "firsts" (from a teen's perspective) have to do with that separation and from other tests of their independence.

"If you were to look at a job description for teenagers," he says, "part of that job description is to become independent, to separate from your parents. And this is often a time when parents want to bring them in closer to protect them, to make life easier for them. So there's this natural tension."

Generally, when dealing with activities that symbolize a rite of passage, parents should begin by not imposing their own memories about their own "firsts" on their child, he says. Remember that some of the things that were important to you may not be as important to your teen. Some of the issues have definitely changed. When kids are preteens and teens, it's important to be in tune to what is important to them and not to belittle that.

Some specific "firsts":

Falling in love

The first and most important "first" is love, and the subsequent loss of that first love. How parents deal with this is very important to a child's sense of individuality.

The first time is so important. Everyone remembers his or her first love for several reasons. It was the first time you were testing the way you think and feel about yourself. Crushes or first relationships are about seeing yourself differently. You are trying to see yourself other than as a kid and more like an adult. First love represents a separation from parents and sort of role-playing adult roles.

Parents should demonstrate a willingness to talk -– if the adolescent wishes to share his or her feelings. This is a perfect opportunity to learn more about one another, in order to establish a new stage of the relationship. Parents could sympathize by sharing their own heartbreaks, but don't use a patronizing "been there, done that, you'll get over it" tone.

How should parents handle breakup?

What we want to do is give advice, but parents shouldn't give advice. If you were a peer, you could give advice. The child doesn't want to get advice. It reminds him or her of being eight years old again. He or she wants you to feel sympathetic.

You need to acknowledge the intensity of the emotion. Let them know you are there if you need them. You don't want to criticize their boy/girlfriend. You also don't want to belittle their feelings. You can talk about how badly it felt for you. But don't patronize them.

Driving

It's one of those classic rights of passage. It gives teens one of the the same rights as adults. Teens get the endorsement of the state by getting an official document: a drivers license. It represents government-sanctioned proof that teens are getting older.

"You get behind the wheel," Kutner tells Storm, "and you can be just like an adult. The car doesn't care."

It's not a good idea, he says, for the parent to be the primary teacher: "You have this relationship based on their experience where your kid wants to test the independence, and you are likely to be more emotional, and they're more likely to be more emotional in dealing with you. You want someone less passionate about the relationship."

If you live in a big city and you send your child out for public transportation for the first time, "That's a good marker of development for the kids," Kutner says. "I was born and raised in New York, and getting a subway pass was almost as good as a driver's license. Being able to travel by yourself on a bus system or subway system is a way of showing that you have some independence and you have some power over your life."

First job

It's not a good idea, Kutner advises, for parents to help them get the job: "You can thp them and guide them, but often the whole process of figuring out, 'What is a job? How do I take on the perspective of the employer?' That's at least as valuable as whatever the job is. So you may want to guide them and support them, but if you say, 'Look, I worked out an after school job for you or summer job for you,' you've deprivd your child of that opportunity.

Parents, Kutner says, should think about volunteer jobs: "They tend to get more responsibility. They have more interesting work. They have an opportunity to move up the chain, and it's just a better experience all around for a lot of kids."

DETAILS FROM KUTNER'S WEB SITE:

FALLING IN LOVE

As adults, we almost always clearly remember the first person we truly, madly fell in love with as a teenager. We probably don't have as vivid memories of the second or third person. One reason for this is that falling in love as a teenager means that it is less frightening to let go of the intense and dependent relationship with our parents. Simultaneously replacing the parent-child relationship with another intense, more adult-like relationship with someone else, makes independence a little easier.

That means that "puppy love" is actually serious stuff. It's a chance for a child to feel (on a superficial level) what it's like to be an adult. That's also why breaking up with that first love can feel so horrible-especially if you're not breaking up by replacing that person and relationship with someone else.

RESPONDING TO THE BREAKUP

Don't rush in with advice. Many parents feel uncomfortable in this situation because it reminds them of painful episodes from their own adolescence. Remember that a breakup can be like a death, and a teenager (and an adult as well) may need to go through a certain amount of mourning to resolve it.

Giving advice will probably make your child feel worse because it sets the two of you up in old roles, and may emphasize his feelings of inadequacy or incompetence. Instead, acknowledge, what he is saying and let him know what emotions you are hearing in his voice. This shows him that you are listening, and helps him think through the situation.

Gently encourage your child to discuss how he feels about himself after a breakup. This is particularly important for young men, since many feel uncomfortable disclosing emotions, especially those that could be interpreted as signs of weakness.

If your child doesn't want to talk, don't try to force the issue. Let your child take the initiative to express his feelings in his own way. Applying too much pressure before your child is ready will make him even more hesitant to discuss the problem. Instead, tell him that you're available if he wants to talk.

Don't worry if your child never talks to you about the situation. That simply means that he felt more comfortable, at that moment, confiding in someone else.

Don't dismiss or deny the significance of the relationship. In an effort to be reassuring, parents sometimes say things like, "By the time you're thirty, you'll have forgotten all about this." But diminishing the problem will probably make your child feel worse since she now feels rejected by her parents as well. Besides, by the time she's thirty, she will not have forgotten all about this relationship; she simply will have changed her perspective on it.

Keep your opinions of the former girlfriend or boyfriend to yourself. It's tempting to lash out at the person associated with your child's pain. But keep in mind that people who have recently broken up, especially adolescents, often have ambivalent feelings about each other. If you criticize the former boyfriend, your child may feel even more uncomfortable and may begin to defend him.

DRIVING

For a teenager, taking the wheel of a car isn't really about transportation. It's about power. A driver's license is one of the first concrete, government-sanctioned signs in our society that a teenager is seen as an adult. It's a recognition that you've "grown up."

It's also a time of great stress (and often expense) for parents. That's one reason why it's probably not a good idea for a parent to be the primary or only driver's education teacher for his/her children; the relationship is too complex and the kids have too much to prove to you.

Note that for many city kids, being trusted to ride the mass transit system alone serves similar purposes. A subway pass isn't quite as cook as a driver's license, but you can get it at a younger age.

FIRST JOB (This is more complex than many parents think.)

Most adolescents look forward to getting their first job: it is a badge of their maturity and social worth, an important recognition of how they are changing. At their best, summer and after-school jobs provide teenagers with a chance to learn new skills, increase their self-confidence, and ease their transition to adulthood. At their worst, they offer little more than a menial wage in exchange for grueling, repetitive, mind-numbing, unskilled labor that teaches adolescents nothing about themselves or the world of work.

The experience of finding and keeping a summer or after-school job should not be taken lightly. Researchers have found that those first few job experiences have more significant effects on a child's future work habits than many parents think.

Getting that first job outside the home can be a landmark for adolescents. It's an event that clearly differentiates them from their younger siblings and schoolmates. It is often the first formal acknowledgement by adults outside their family and school that something they know or can do has value in the adult world.

For a child who's having difficulty in school, a summer or part-time job may be an opportunity to succeed. It can help him feel good about himself, perhaps for their first time in a long while.

But the symbolic importance of this rite of passage, combined with teenagers' inexperience with employers and job interviews, means that for many adolescents, finding a first job can be confusing or even frightening. It puts their self-esteem on the line.

In addition, many teenagers have misconceptions about what prospective employers expect from them. When a colleague of mine spoke to a group of fifteen and sixteen-year-olds about finding jobs, she found that some of them thought that they should be wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase to an interview for an entry-level job. Others in the room thought they could show up as if they had just walked in off the beach.

Perhaps more important, may teenagers don't understand that their employer needs to make a profit, and that their work should contribute to that profit. This is a particularly difficulty concept for many teens to understand, for it's unlike the relationships they have at home or at school.

Although it may feel as if you're doing your child a favor by using your influence to arrange for a job, that's often not the case. In many ways, the process of thinking about and searching for a job is as least as important to your child's self-concept as the work itself. Their sometimes-awkward attempts to figure out where to apply, and the daydreaming about how they will spend the money from their paychecks, help teenagers try their new and more adult self-images on for size.

The teenager who finds her own job will usually have a much greater sense of accomplishment. If you arrange for a job for your child, that denies the child's need to try out her new sense of independence and competence. This doesn't mean you should be uninvolved. Rather, you should play a supporting role instead of taking the lead.

One way for teenagers to express their independence is the way they spend their paychecks. As with allowances, a paycheck allows teens to work on money-management skills under the guidance but not the control of their parents.

For some teenagers, the sudden influx of money from a job gives them a distorted sense of personal economics. This misperception can have disastrous results once they can no longer count on their parents for room and board. Studies in the late 1980s at the University of Michigan found that fewer than 10 percent of high school students who had jobs contributed more than half their paycheck toward family living expenses. Fewer than 13 percent saved half their earnings toward their education. More than 60 percent spent most of their money on discretionary items such as clothing, entertainment and eating out.

Long before a child begins to work, the family should discuss that child's plans for spending and saving earnings. This is also a good time to discuss the family budget, and whether a child will be expected to contribute toward living expenses or schooling.

THE IDEAL JOB

The ideal summer or after-school job should provide adolescents with four things from a developmental standpoint:
*They should have an opportunity to show that they can shoulder some responsibility.
*They should be given a chance to learn and master new skills.
*They should feel that their work, effort and creativity are valued.
*They should be able to work alongside adults and deal with people who are different from their neighbors and classmates.

Unfortunately, most summer and after-school jobs obtained by teenagers offer few, if any, of these opportunities. Too often, their jobs require little training, are not creative, involve little responsibility, and isolate the workers with other teenagers. The sole reward they offer is the minimum wage.

Despite those problems, certain aspects of almost any summer job can help children mature. They get experience seeing situations from other people's perspectives. What's it like to wait on someone rather than to be waited on yourself? How does it feel to be nice to total strangers all day, even if you don't want to be? They also see how their behavior affects other people. (If you come to school five minutes late, only you will suffer. But if you're five minutes late to your job, someone else may have to cover for you, or you may have to work for someone else who's late.)

Volunteer Jobs: When you're talking to your teenager about jobs, remember that the best jobs often pay nothing at all. Volunteer work for non-profit organizations and social service agencies usually offer adolescents a much more valuable set of experiences than most entry-level summer jobs. Many volunteer positions require training and the acquisition of new skills. The work is more varied, and the volunteers usually feel more valued by the organizations than those who work for the minimum wage do. Volunteer work also often puts adolescents in touch with people from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds. This experience can help them become more sensitive to other people's problems.

Volunteer work can also pay off financially in the long-term more than a typical entry-level job. Employers of college-age workers are generally more impressed by a work history that shows how the teenagers accepted responsibility and followed through on projects than one that shows that she can grill a hamburger or operate a cash register.

If your teenager needs money, and you can afford it, you might even consider paying a token "salary" for the volunteer job out of your own pocket. It's an investment both in your child's future and in the quality of life in your community.

Dr. Kutner is the author of five books on child development and parent-child communication. He's the co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, and is on the psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.