Teen therapy

I just finished reading Ron Taffel's book, Breaking through to Teens: A New Psychotherapy for the New Adolescence.
I have teenagers and I learned a lot. The viewpoint that Ron Taffel's offers is a great window into a world that I sit on the edge of. There weren't a lot of shocks - but if you haven't been listening to teens talk among themselves lately - this is a new world.


We had a class on Life Cycle and Development last fall and I was really disappointed. When we got to adolescence - the words of wisdom from our teacher was - kids don't say a lot. They say that they don't care. Her comments were directed at how to get this different race of beings to open up even a miniscule amount - and what work it is to do so. Well, that all may be true - but I was flabbergasted that we didn't talk about the World that teens live in today. What is going on developmentally for them - the hormones, the brain growth, the behaviorally specific information that are clues and insight into these young adults.


What I've seen with my teens is that the world they live in is not the one that I grew up in twenty years ago. Blame it on the internet, hollywood or the liberal media - how ever you look at it - things have changed. I was raised by parents who still live in the fifties. We were all raised by parents who were challenged constantly by new parenting paradigms which meant that there was a constant shifting of what was right or wrong. Tough Love, PET, and then back and forth between who seemd to offer the Key to effective parenting.


Ron Taffel is a very interesting voice of passionate support for the adolescence of today's world. A lot of what he says resonates with me. I can't believe what a pressure cooker my kids live in - and this whole notion of the Second Family is a truth that can not be ignored.


What I also find interesting is that Taffel trained with Salavador Minuchin back in the 70's and then turned to Betty Carter in the late 80's due to a shift in his own thinking about therapy. He offers up an interesting critique of Structural therapy as he also promotes his own Relational-Behavioral Therapy. Working with teens, he argues, needs to be different than dramatic moments in therapy (referencing S. Minuchin's work) - its about bridging the gap between the teen's world and the adult world through a relationship. It's about being real and emotional - bringing the real you into the room because teens know when an adult is just mouthing platitudes at them. Working with teens is finding the ways into their world - not trying to bring them into yours. It is recognition of how culture has been integrated by our kids.


Our children, Taffel says, are a reflection of adult behavior - just amplified. Our preoccupation with money, looks, the next high (whether it be some sort of drug or activity). Getting ahead in life, being sexy. Kick it up a few notches and the teen world starts coming into view. It's a mirror, of sorts, that illuminates the shadow of our adult culture.


Taffel doesn't just leave the reader with this rather ugly picture. He's got some great ideas of how to join with kids today - as well as offering some great advice for parents. And as a parent, I felt that most of what he was putting out there was dead on.