Psychologist counsels RE parents on the adolescent journey
Psychologist and best-selling author Lisa Damour advised Ransom Everglades parents on how to weather – and better understand – the teenager’s bumpy journey from childhood to adulthood, offering a mix of hard-core research and hilarious anecdotes during her Feb. 26 appearance at Swenson Hall. Damour’s primary message: the adolescent years are inherently stressful. And that’s okay.
“That doesn’t mean anyone is getting it wrong,” said Damour, author of Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood and Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. “That is just the nature of this much change … The most powerful force in the life of a teenager is the drive to autonomy. They just want to be independent. You are either on that train, or under that train.”
Damour, the executive director of the Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls, explained the seven “jobs” adolescents work through as they make their way from sixth to 12th grades. Understanding those tasks and the teen’s often mystifying accompanying behavior, she contended, brings parents peace of mind and helps shape effective responses. “It’s their job to be hard and complicated,” she said to the audience of nearly 400. “It’s our job to bear with them.”
Damour offered practical advice on managing everything from teen romances to smart-phone use to procrastination. Yet a major point of emphasis for Damour, who writes a monthly column on adolescence for the New York Times, was that stress and anxiety are normal, healthy and even important to teens’ development. She advised parents to stand back and allow their children to learn to cope, while reassuring them that what they are going through is normal.
“It seems so critical that we fix the message about stress and anxiety because, where we sit now, kids get stressed about being stressed, and anxious about being anxious … “ Damour said. “The most constrained kids I see are the ones who have not been asked to handle situations they do not like.”
After her talk, Damour took questions from the audience, then signed copies of her books.
Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.