{"id":1008,"date":"2016-02-23T05:35:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T05:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2016-02-23T05:35:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T05:35:19","slug":"damour-untangled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/damour-untangled\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Pick: Untangling Adolescence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"teenager\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you teach middle or high school\u2014or if you parent teens\u2014you have no doubt wondered at the chaotic muddle of teenage lives. How can adolescents possibly be so\u2026adolescent?<\/span><\/p>\n

As you stare in bafflement and awe, dread and bemusement, you may occasionally wish for a wise, insightful, humorous guide: a Virgil who can talk your Dante through the wild experience around you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, let me introduce you to your Virgil: her name is Lisa Damour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Introductions<\/b><\/p>\n

Dr. Lisa Damour directs Laurel School\u2019s Center for Research on Girls. (If you don\u2019t subscribe to their newsletter, you should:<\/span> https:\/\/www.laurelschool.org\/page.cfm?p=625&LockSSL=true<\/span><\/a>.) <\/span><\/p>\n

With this experience\u2014combined with her private psychotherapy practice, and her work at Case Western Reserve University\u2014she knows not only the research on adolescence and adolescents, but also their daily school reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

She understands teens, she understands teachers, and she understands schools\u2014and, she knows from the research. How\u2019s that for a guide?<\/span><\/p>\n

To help make sense of adolescent muddle, Dr. Damour describes <\/span>seven predictable and healthy transitions<\/span><\/i> that teens must undertake to arrive at successful adulthood. In her view, many of the puzzles of adolescent behavior\u2014and many of the questions on how to help teens effectively\u2014become manageable and even plausible when understood within this transition framework.<\/span><\/p>\n

No More Peter Pan<\/b><\/p>\n

In Damour\u2019s transitional framework, adolescents must first \u201cPart with Childhood\u201d to arrive at adult maturity. As teachers, we don\u2019t always know our students before they come to our classrooms, and so it can be difficult to know their younger selves\u2014and how hard they must work to shuck those selves.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the surprising behaviors of adolescence aren\u2019t so surprising when understood as our students\u2019 fierce attempts\u2014either knowing or unknowing\u2014to put aside childish parts of their past. Feisty rejection of adult authority, indifference to helpful guidance, abrupt swerves between competence and incompetence: all of these dramatic, teenly behaviors make sense when seen as their awkward attempts to negotiate this treacherous first transition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deep Pools<\/b><\/p>\n

One of Damour\u2019s strengths as a writer is her ability to conjure vivid analogies\u2014analogies that both clarify a situation and suggest how to manage it well.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example: when thinking of your role in a teen\u2019s attempt to part with childhood, consider a swimming pool. (Yes, a swimming pool.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The water represents the mature, grown up experience in which teens want to swim. And you\u2014the teacher, the parent\u2014are the edge of the pool. You establish the boundaries within which the teens take on their mature experiences. And, crucially, you provide a reliable handhold when they need to hang on to something solid.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this way, Damour explains one of the most puzzling and painful parts of working with adolescents: \u201cthe push off.\u201d After exhausting themselves trying out mature experiences, teens may need to swim back over and hang on to the pool\u2019s edge for a while. That is, they stay close to us, relying on our strength and support. And then, the need to part with childhood strongly reasserts itself, and the teen pushes off. Hard. Suddenly, adult support and experience are as foolish and useless as they were dependable and necessary just a moment ago.<\/p>\n

Although Damour does not say so, I think this \u201cpool\u201d analogy helps explain some difficult teacher\/parent dynamics as well. Sometimes, teens can hang on to \u201cedge-of-the-pool\u201d teachers in place of \u201cedge-of-the-pool\u201d parents: a hurtful vision for any parent already missing the close connection of years past.<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind the Lines<\/b><\/p>\n

Many years ago, I relied on a wonderful school counselor for guidance and advice. During one of our conversations, she said: \u201cI\u2019m not trying to give you a script here\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I interrupted her: \u201cWhy not? I really like your scripts!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out, her husband hated it when she scripted conversations for him, so she was avoiding providing me with lines.<\/span><\/p>\n

This counselor\u2019s husband would like <\/span>Untangled <\/span><\/i>as much as I do, because Damour provides <\/span>both<\/span><\/i> sample scripts to follow <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> the logic behind them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example (lightly edited with ellipses) on the topic of sexting:<\/span><\/p>\n

Find an opportunity to say something such as, \u201cI\u2019ve heard that some boys think it\u2019s okay to text a girl\u2026to ask her to send nude photos or do sexual things. This goes without saying, but just to say it, that\u2019s <\/span>totally<\/span><\/i> inappropriate behavior on the guy\u2019s part\u2026\u201d Your daughter might brush you off with, \u201cGeez, of course I know that it\u2019s wrong!\u201d but your breath wasn\u2019t wasted\u2026Your daughter will be glad to hear that she\u2019s not the one acting crazy.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, knowing both the lines and the reasons behind them makes her suggested words especially helpful.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMore Alike Than Different\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t look closely at the subtitle to <\/span>Untangled<\/span><\/i>, then I may have succeeded in keeping a small secret up to now: Damour centers her book on the experience of adolescent girls. (Perhaps Damour\u2019s next book will focus on boys. Potential title: emBATtled MAN)<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve postponed mentioning this focus for a simple reason: much of Damour\u2019s analysis and guidance applies equally well to girls and boys. And\u2014although she pauses every now and then to note gendered differences in adolescent experience\u2014Damour is refreshingly non-doctrinaire about those differences. As she writes in her introduction, \u201cFundamentally, girls and boys are more alike than they are different, so don\u2019t be surprised to discover that some of the stories and advice that follow speak to your experience of knowing or raising [or, I would add, teaching] a teenage boy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, while <\/span>Untangled<\/span><\/i> is informed by the experience of an all-girls school, it will benefit teachers of boys as well. (In fact, in her section on LGBTQ identity, Damour talks briefly about students who identify as transgender. In other words: gender is important in her analysis, but not absolute.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Final Thoughts\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Given my enthusiasm for <\/span>Untangled<\/span><\/i>, you may wonder if Damour is a relative, or a creditor. (For the record, she is neither. My niece did attend Laurel School, but they never met.) Although this is one of the most helpful books about adolescents I\u2019ve read in a while, I do think that teachers should approach it ready to make two kinds of translations.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, Damour focuses on families: adolescent girls and their parents (and, to a lesser degree, siblings). Little of her advice is framed specifically for teachers. As a high school teacher, I do think that the \u201cSeven Transitions\u201d framework is greatly helpful in understanding our students\u2019 behavior. Translating this framework to a teacher\u2019s perspective, in other words, should be easy to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, teachers will necessarily balance Damour\u2019s experience with their own; in some cases, we may simply disagree. I myself was surprised to read that\u2014in extreme circumstances\u2014she believes that paying students for grades is a least-bad option. For me, the other options would need to be dire indeed to resort to such a strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Damour writes not only about a teen\u2019s need to part with childhood, but also about several other key transitions: joining a \u201cnew tribe,\u201d managing emotions, sexual discovery, and so forth. In each of these chapters, her insight, knowledge of research, humor, and empathy all make this tumultuous time seem familiar and manageable to the adults who teach and parent them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Untangled<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was released February 2, 2016 and is available here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you teach middle or high school\u2014or if you parent teens\u2014you have no doubt wondered at the chaotic muddle of teenage lives. How can adolescents possibly be so\u2026adolescent? As you stare in bafflement and awe, dread and bemusement, you may occasionally wish for a wise, insightful, humorous guide: a Virgil who can talk your Dante […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}