MomsOnMonday: Prep for Parenting Your Modern Family
Posted on March 4th, 2013, 0 CommentsThe Teen Stage
Season 4, Episode 17
The Framework
Tonight on Modern Family the four teens are on stage. Luke has a case of adolescent-stage fright about sending a message to a classmate he has a crush on, but he eventually lands a first date with her when his dad helps out by on-line chatting as him. And Manny is crushed when the romantic dinner he planned for the new nanny – a dinner complete with candles, love poems, pizza, and tiramisu – doesn’t even make it to first bite.
Meanwhile, Haley accepts her mom’s invite for a dinner date, bails on her, and then rejoins Claire to watch Alex play in her new band. But after the concert, just when it looks like Claire might get to have a double daughter mom-date, Alex (acting just like a teen) blows her off instead:
Claire: We’re going to get some dinner. Do you want to come with us? You can bring your friends from the band.
Alex: Ummm, no thanks. We’re (pointing to the band) actually going out. And I have a ride home. So see you guys later.
Alex (to her band friends): Oh, my God! Sorry about that.
Haley (to Claire): Did she just apologize for us.
Claire: Yep.
Haley: But we were just being nice.
Claire: Sucks doesn’t it?
Claire has a theory about the teen stage and what makes teens act the way they do. Actually it’s an analogy that Phil gave her:
Raising a kid is like sending a rocket ship to the moon. You spend the early years in constant contact. And then one day, around the teenage years, they go around to the dark side, and they’re gone. All you can do is wait for that faint signal that says they’re coming back.
Flipping the Frame: My Notes
I can get onboard with Phil and Claire’s rocket ship analogy – at least as far as the moon. I can envision the soon-to-be-launched teen rocket being fueled as our kids’ physical maturation, their increased thinking capacity, and the intensified expectations placed on them all combine for their blastoff into adolescence. I can even use the Dunphy’s analogy to picture our kids extending away from us as they form their own identities. Our girls tend to extend away by revving their rocket engines in our faces while our boys tend to takeoff to their bedrooms and stay there for so long that they might as well have gone to the moon.
So I was right there with Claire and Phil on their moon mission for the firing of the rockets, the revving of the engines, and the takeoff. But when we got to the part about teens going around to the dark side and that all we can do is wait while they’re gone, I had to bail out.
We used to think that the Dunphy’s analogy pretty much described how things worked. For years psychologists told us that teens needed to separate from their parents so they could establish their own identity and become independent. We believed that during their early years kids were dependent on us – we were in constant contact as Claire put it. We thought of adolescence as a time when kids form their identity by venturing out on their own (to the dark side, so to speak) to discover who they are. And like Claire and Phil, we thought that about the only thing parents could do was wait, and if we waited long enough, our kids would eventually come back to us as fully individuated and independent adults. Sounds just about as plausible as when Claire described it, doesn’t it?
We now know that this theory about growing up is way too simplistic. Today experts agree that connection – not separation – is the foundation for strong parent and teen relationships. And this connection is not based on the dependence of a young child or the independence of a mature adult. Instead the connection is based on an in-between stage of interdependence.
Don’t get me wrong, though. If our teens are to do their job of forming an identity of their own, they have to keep us at arms length (hence the revving of their engines in our faces and the takeoffs for their bedrooms and beyond). If they didn’t work hard to extend away from us, they couldn’t be sure that the identities they’re forming are truly theirs and not just a copy of our opinions, values, and ideas.
So just to be clear: Our teen’s job is to extend away from us. And it’s our job to stay involved and connected to them– even as they extend away.
The BottomLine
Tonight Claire lamented to Haley: When you were little, we used to do everything together. And I thought maybe you were coming back around, and we could be friends again. I miss being part of my daughter’s life.
Take heart, Claire. Adolescence is a stage. It has an end. And while it’s true that conflict within families is particularly evident between daughters and mothers, it’s also true that the conflict typically increases and peaks during the early years of adolescence – around the age of thirteen or fourteen. So Haley is on her way back around.
Our kids do change. And it’s almost always for the better. It takes time, but they’ll eventually be friendlier on a more regular basis. They’ll be more cooperative, more responsible, and less argumentative. They’ll no longer criticize us constantly and disagree with all our ideas just because we happen to be in the same room with them.
Tonight Claire notices the transformation beginning to take place in Haley, remarking to Phil: Did you hear that?! First she complimented my fashion sense. And then she told me I did something right. I think it’s happening. Although Haley is not yet fully independent, we’re beginning to see glimpses of the adult she is becoming.
Flipping the Frame: From My Life as a Parent
We too can sometimes get a peek at the young adult our teens are working to become. Our best chance is often late night because that’s when teens tend to be most reflective and most able and willing to give us a window into their lives.
Even though I’m not quite the night owl my kids were as teens, I did find it was worth my while to occasionally make myself available late at night to connect with them. One word of caution though: I found that this was not the time to lecture or to probe them about some upcoming event in an attempt to calm my worries. If I did, the window into their lives quickly got slammed in my face. But if I stayed quiet and receptive, I was often rewarded with insights into their thinking and sometimes even a glimpse at the adult they were becoming.
Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences
• Claire and Phil talk about their kids going to the dark side of the moon during adolescence. When you think about the distance your teen has put between you and them, what kind of words or analogies do you use?
• Think back to your teen years when you were extending away from your parents. What kinds of things did you do to put distance between them and you?
• Have you noticed your teen actively extending a way from you? What kinds of things are they doing to keep you at arms length?
• Have you ever tried connecting with your teen late at night to get a glimpse into their lives? Have you found other times when you can get this kind of glimpse into the adult they are becoming?
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MomsOnMonday: Prep for Parenting Your Modern Family
Posted on February 25th, 2013, 0 CommentsWill Luke Be the Last Man Standing?
Season 4, Episode 16
The Framework
The verb “fall” and its various forms like “fell,” “falling,” and “falls” help shape the storylines of tonight’s episode. Claire heads to her college reunion and runs into the professor she fell for years ago. Phil, who’s supposed to be in charge while she’s away, keeps falling down. To be fair, he’s trying out some new frictionless shoes in anticipation of subbing on Jay’s bowling team for a tournament. Manny sings about falling flat on his face and picking himself back up. And Gloria falls and tweaks her ankle while reaching for a boa – something Mitch wants to borrow for the Oscar party he and Cam are planning.
Meanwhile, Cam is doing a movie-theme photo shoot so he can decorate their place for the party. Lily and baby Joe are his models. All goes fine until Lily glues a wig to Joe’s head because as she explains it: the “ Jane” Crawford wig kept falling off him. Mitch and Cam eventually cut the wig off – and with it much of Joe’s hair. Now they’ve got another problem: Who’s going to take the fall and tell Gloria?
Woven into tonight’s storylines about falling there’s a string of con artistry – all orchestrated by Luke. Both his sisters and Manny fall for one of his cons before the night is over. And with perfect sitcom logic, Jay becomes the fall guy for baby Joe’s haircut when Luke blackmails him by revealing that he’s on to how Jay’s team won the bowling tournament: They broke league rules by subbing in a pro.
As it turns out, Luke also knows a thing or two about breaking rules:
Luke (to camera): I have to get [a] letter signed because I failed my assignment on the Revolutionary War. I recreated the Battle of Bunker Hill using one of my old science projects. Seemed re-revolutionary to me…
Like all con artists, Luke has a good sense of timing. He has a knack for asking for things when his parents are busy or preoccupied. For instance, just as Claire is set to leave for her college reunion there’s this:
Luke: Hey, Mom before you go, you have to sign this for school. You don’t have to read it. It’s all boilerplate.
Claire: Honey, I’m running really late. Ask your dad.
And as a con artist, Luke can read people. He knows what makes his dad tick:
Luke: Hey, handsome. Can you sign this? Uhhh… You don’t need to read it. (He winks and nonchalantly points to the spot on the page where a parent’s signature is required.)
Phil: Never dooo… (As he grabs a pen and prepares to sign but doesn’t. Because just then the phone rings with bad news: Jay has found a better bowler to sub for the tournament.)
Flipping the Frame: My Notes
There’s no doubt about it. Luke is a good con artist. Most teens are. By the time kids become teens they can think abstractly, and they use their new, sharper thinking skills to their advantage. They can now understand the subtle nuances of interactions, so they can read people better and adjust their timing and their behavior to get what they want. And they can now articulate their ideas better, so they can manipulate the truth to talk us into things and lure us into thinking that we can trust them.
Teens can con us into thinking that they’re thinking like we do. But they’re not. Luke and his age peers lack experience. And they lack some of the brain development that allows adults to make wise decisions. Plus they don’t foresee consequences like we adults do. That’s why our teens need us to be their safety net – providing structure, monitoring, and guidance, as well as some explicit teaching to let them know what they need to do and why it’s important. And this explicit teaching is often best done through teachable moments.
Claire and Phil missed a teachable moment tonight when they failed to look at Luke’s fail notice. They missed a great opportunity to do some nudging and to rethink some of their parenting tactics.
But what if they had taken a look? How could they have responded in a way that might make a difference in the way Luke thinks about school and his schoolwork?
Here are a few ideas that the Dunphys (and the rest of us) might want to consider:
• Be there when they fall. We have to be willing to sometimes let our teens make bad decisions if they’re going to learn how to make good ones. But we need to be paying attention so that we’re there as a safety net when they fall – to comfort them if they need it and to reassure them that they can indeed bounce back. Being a safety net also means holding them accountable. When our teens make mistakes (and they’re bound to), we need to help them take an honest look at where things went wrong, how they contributed to the problem, and what they need to do differently next time.
• Allow natural consequences. Even though the Dunphy’s (I’m talking especially to you, Phil) might be tempted to call the teacher and get Luke off the hook, it’s generally better not to. To be honest, it’s not just Phil. Many of us tend to think our job is to do everything we can to shield our kids from adversity. Yet when we over-protect our teens from hardship, they don’t get a chance to develop the ability to overcome failure. If we want them to have long-term success, we need be willing to let them do some struggling. A rescue will just make our teens dependent on us in a way that neither they nor we want. And the natural consequences will teach our teens a lot about organizing and prioritizing.
• Strike a balance between monitoring and autonomy. When our kids reach Luke’s age, many of us parents become more demanding about grades and test scores. At the same time we become dramatically more reluctant to make and enforce all kinds of rules, including rules about studying and doing homework. This drop in parental involvement and monitoring is probably due to our recognition of our teen’s need for autonomy. However, the drop is probably too much for many young teens – including Luke.
• Coax teens to look into the future. Luke and other young teens can benefit from thinking about what they might want to do for a career someday. One way to encourage this kind of teen thinking is to ask them to make lists of the things they like to do, the things they like to learn, and the things they value, as well as the things they’re good at – perhaps even better at than most kids their age. And then talk with them about how their combination of interests and strengths might be used in a career eventually.
Our teens may change their minds and head in a different direction more than once. But teens who can articulate where they think they’re heading (at least for now) tend to work hard at school and to take hobbies and other activities seriously.
The BottomLine
Tonight, just after falling and tweaking her ankle, Gloria proclaims: I am now the new mother – the “I don’t know how she does it lady.”
All of us moms are that kind of lady. We’re plenty busy. And, believe it or not, the messages we send our kids about our work affects how our kids think about their work. In fact, our day-to-day modeling is our highest form of influence in our teens’ lives.
If we regularly come home from work downbeat and crabby, we’re modeling that work is something to be avoided. And because school is our kids’ workplace, we’re likely to see similar behavior from them. So at the end of the day, it pays off to try to summon whatever energy we have left and share the highlights of our day with our teens.
Flipping the Frame: Your Parenting Experiences
• Why do you think the writers for the show had Luke fall at the very end of the show? Was it a comment about karma catching up with him? Or did it represent one of those inevitable teen missteps?
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