Your child's feelings are important

Your adolescent may put on bravado or an I-don't-care manner. He may appear callous and noncommittal, as if nothing you do makes any impression. But underneath he reacts keenly. He is at an age when his feelings are heightened and quickened.

Many times he is reacting with surges of feeling within him bigger than he can comfortably manage. They frighten him. And so, he tries often to cover up to himself as well as to you what he feels. His I-don't-careness is one of his coverings. His air of how-big-I-am is another. Actually he is deeply desirous of having you understand.

Many times he is daydreaming and fantasying inside him. He is stretching reality beyond its boundaries, visioning ahead into the future, often with mistaken ideas born out of the past. And strange though this may sound to you--it is often these mistaken ideas and fantasies which prompt him in how he behaves.

Take Tina, who has just turned fifteen. Her father had been died. When Tina was five, petite, alive, and full of dancing, her mother had had a boy friend. Evening after evening when this big man came over, Tina would whirl and twirl in giddy excitement, as delighted as her mother and showing it more openly, in the thrill of having a man around again like the daddy she had last seen when she was three. She would grow gigglier and sillier and wilder in her attempts to capture his attention.

"Don't be so silly, Tina," her mother would chide.

"Hey, girl, calm down. Do you want to scare me away?" the boy friend would banter.

Then came a sad day when the big man no longer came to take mother out. Tina didn't know that he and her mother had decided that they didn't fit together. Tina at five mistakenly imagined that the wildness for which she was chided and her glee in having a man around were the cause of his going.

At fifteen Tina had forgotten the whole incident. But whenever she met a boy who called forth small stirrings of excitement in her she would suddenly become aloof and condescending.

"I could brain her," her mother complained. "She's pretty as a picture. And yet when she freezes up that way she's left out of half the parties. I get furious at her. But I get even more furious at myself. What have I done wrong to make her like this?"

From Tina: "I don't know what it is. I just can't loosen up or talk or laugh or be gay when I'm with boys . . ."

Deep down inside her she unconsciously feared that if she were gay or giddy or silly, they would leave . . .

Like Tina's mother, parents today are apt to blame themselves for almost everything. They dwell on the mistakes they think they have made. They berate themselves unduly, not knowing that often a youngster's imaginings cause a lot of his trouble.

What was holding Tina back were her fantasies based on old, forgotten and mistaken imaginings. But her mother's irritation at her only made matters worse. As her mother came to understand that the fear of imagined things was blocking Tina, she grew more warmly sympathetic. In place of the push of mother condemnation, Tina gained the backing of mother love to help her through.

In adolescence many old unsolved fears crop up more frighteningly. Many old wishes stir more disturbingly. Many old imaginings press more vividly. Those of us who live and work with children need to understand the drives and wishes and fears that commonly propel them. Then, when a youngster behaves in ways that now seem inexplicable, we shall be able to say to ourselves, "Look, he isn't doing these things to spite me. Nor is he necessarily failing because I've been a failure. His faulty behavior isn't necessarily a result of faulty handling. I've made mistakes, naturally. But he is also in the grip of mistaken ideas. These have entered into making him do the foolish, frightened, unthinkable things he does. Since I see that I'm not all to blame, I feel less defensive and more sympathetic and tolerant."

This is heartening. As more of us realize that the blame for everything big and small does not have to rest on our shoulders, we can breathe a deep sigh, spread our arms wide and lift our heads higher. This frees us, in turn, to focus more profoundly on what we want for our child.