Stop Homework

Last year, Kerry Dick­in­son wrote often for this blog about the ways in which she was try­ing to change home­work pol­icy in her Danville, Cal­i­for­nia, com­mu­nity. At the end of the school year, the school insti­tuted a new home­work pol­icy. That doesn’t mean that Kerry has stopped. (Type her name into the search box to read about all of her prior activities.)

Recently, she wrote an arti­cle for the San Ramon Val­ley PTSA Healthy Choices Newslet­ter. I urge you to read it and I encour­age you to write for the print media in your com­mu­nity as well.

Teen Stress
by Kerry Dickinson

The San Ramon Val­ley is a beau­ti­ful, priv­i­leged, afflu­ent, and suc­cess­ful com­mu­nity. At times, life can seem almost per­fect here. Even in this com­mu­nity, how­ever, seri­ous prob­lems affect our teens. “Afflu­ent kids are two to three times more likely to suf­fer from depres­sion and to self-medicate with drugs than any pop­u­la­tion,” accord­ing to Dr. Denise Pope, speak­ing at a recent con­fer­ence in Marin(i). Teen stress can come from dif­fer­ent sources in our teens’ lives, includ­ing school, fam­ily, friends, and even extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, for example.

There are many aspects of school that can cause stress for teens. Ide­ally, teens should be engaged in school and self moti­vated (see “Com­mit­ment to Learn­ing” from the 40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets)(ii). Often, instead of focus­ing on learn­ing, how­ever, teens find them­selves under pres­sure with regard to grades, test scores, home­work, and the col­lege appli­ca­tion process. Teens are rewarded for their per­for­mance with regard to school, and this exter­nal moti­va­tion places much stress on them. Dr. Michael Riera spoke at SRVHS in Octo­ber and reminded par­ents that praise should be lim­ited to com­ments about their stu­dents’ effort, not their per­for­mance. For exam­ple, instead of say­ing, “You are really smart, you got an A,” say, “You really worked hard on that assign­ment (iii).“

The fam­ily should be the ulti­mate source of love and sup­port for the teenager (see “Sup­port” from the 40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets). Dr. Ken Gins­berg tells us that in order for our teens to be resilient, par­ents need to uncon­di­tion­ally believe in them and hold them to high standards(iv). Because this is the time in life when teens shift from con­crete to abstract think­ing, teens will argue with par­ents, prac­tic­ing their abil­ity to use abstract think­ing. Uncon­di­tional accep­tance and love will fos­ter greater com­mu­ni­ca­tion between par­ents and teens dur­ing these times of argu­men­ta­tion. As Dr. Riera explained dur­ing his lec­ture, par­ents are essen­tially the “man­agers” of their chil­dren while they are young. But as chil­dren become teenagers, par­ents are essen­tially fired as the children’s “man­agers” until their chil­dren are ready to rehire them at a later date as “con­sul­tants.” Con­sul­tants don’t lec­ture, but remind teens to lis­ten to the voice in their head that knows what is right and to oper­ate within estab­lished fam­ily bound­aries and expectations.

A teen’s daily life can be stress­ful because of prob­lems with friends as well. The 40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets remind us that a pos­i­tive peer influ­ence plays a major role in a teen’s life (see “Bound­aries & Expec­ta­tions”). A young person’s best friends model behav­ior for the teen. How­ever, Dr. Riera reminds us that teen atti­tudes are influ­enced more by par­ents than peers. Par­ents should be sen­si­tive to the fact that a teen can have a dif­fi­cult day at school because of issues that arise with friends. Dr. Denise Pope, co-founder of www​.Chal​lenge​Suc​cess​.org, advises par­ents to con­nect with teens at the end of the school day by ask­ing them ques­tions about how their day went with their friends, instead of focus­ing on aca­d­e­mic questions.

While extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties are impor­tant for teens, main­tain­ing bal­ance for a healthy lifestyle is crit­i­cal for teens so that they do not feel over­bur­dened or stressed on a daily basis. As Made­line Levine noted at the recent Stressed Out Stu­dent con­fer­ence at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, “we don’t have fam­i­lies on school nights any­more, we have machines.” Teens should be able to par­tic­i­pate in some cre­ative activ­i­ties while also spend­ing qual­ity, down-time at home (see “Con­struc­tive Use of Time” in the 40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets). Their lives should not be overly struc­tured and adult-directed dur­ing their wak­ing hours. When teens are con­stantly told what to do by adults (e.g., par­ents, teach­ers, coaches) they become frag­ile and afraid to make deci­sions and take risks on their own(v). Par­ents need to remem­ber that it is accept­able not to sign up their teenager for every avail­able extracur­ric­u­lar activ­ity. Down time, espe­cially for teens, is crit­i­cal for their men­tal, emo­tional and social growth and devel­op­ment. It is also crit­i­cal for stu­dents to get plenty of sleep(vi).

Teen stress is real and some of the causes can be related to school, fam­ily, friends and extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. Stress in teens can result in depres­sion, anx­i­ety, bulimia, anorexia, ulcers, cut­ting, drugs, drink­ing, cheat­ing, lying and even suicide(vii). While fam­i­lies are for­tu­nate to live in an area that offers so many choices to our teens, par­ents must real­ize that pro­vid­ing teens with every­thing, both in terms of mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions as well as over-crowded sched­ules, isn’t always the right deci­sion for the stu­dent. Dr. Wendy Mogel noted at a recent lec­ture in San Fran­cisco that “we wor­ship at the idol of our children’s achieve­ments” instead of hav­ing a broader vision of our students(viii). When adults focus on teens’ per­for­mance and achieve­ment over effort and a healthy bal­ance in life, they unwit­tingly rob teens of their young years and often cause them stress.**

Titles ref­er­enced in this arti­cle listed in the end­notes below marked by * can be checked out from the SRVHS Par­ent Resource Library located in the Career Cen­ter.
**Dr. J.B. Humphrey will be speak­ing at the SRVHS Par­ent Evening, Jan­u­ary 13th, 7PM, in the SRVHS Com­mons. His topic, “Got Moods?”, will cover ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment and related mood dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion, ADD/ADHD, addic­tion and more. Some of the symp­toms of these var­i­ous dis­or­ders are com­mon teen issues, some have other causes, such as stress and phys­i­cal or other emo­tional issues. All par­ents are invited to attend; there will be time for Q&A.

Ref­er­ences:
(i) Pope, Dr. Denise. Doing School: How We Are Cre­at­ing a Gen­er­a­tion of Stressed Out, Mate­ri­al­is­tic, Mise­d­u­cated Stu­dents* (Inte­grated Pub­lish­ing Solu­tions: Grand Rapids, MI) 2001.

(ii) See the 40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets on the SRVUSD web site. Or fol­low the links from the SRVUSD home page: “Com­mu­nity,” “Safe School Resources,” “Healthy Kids Sur­vey,” and “40 Devel­op­men­tal Assets Pre­sen­ta­tion.” This site also has a check­list par­ents can use to assess how many assets exist in their stu­dents’ lives to encour­age pos­i­tive devel­op­ment and success.

(iii) Riera, Dr. Michael. Stay­ing Con­nected to Your Teenager* (Da Capo Press: Cam­bridge, MA) 2003.
 — Uncom­mon Sense for Par­ents with Teenagers* (Celes­tial Arts: Berke­ley, CA) 2004.

(iv) Gins­berg, Dr. Ken. A Parent’s Guide to Build in Resilience in Chil­dren and Teens (Printed in the United States of Amer­ica) 2006.

(v) Hon­ore, Carl. Under Pres­sure: Res­cu­ing Our Chil­dren from the Cul­ture of Hyper-Parenting.* (Harper Collins: NY) 2008, pp12, 15.

(vi) See the EPIC arti­cle on Teen Sleep on the SRVHS web­site at www​.srvhshealthy​choices​.org/​R​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​s​.​htm

(vii) See the EPIC newslet­ter on Child and Ado­les­cent Depres­sion in the Novem­ber SRVUSD “Com­mu­nity Newslet­ter” or read it on the Dis­trict web­site or fol­low the links from the SRVUSD home­page to “Com­mu­nity,” “Safe School Resources,” and “Par­ent Edu­ca­tion Resources.” The arti­cle con­tains a num­ber of book and web­site ref­er­ences on symp­toms of ado­les­cent depression.

(viii) Mogel, Dr. Wendy. The Bless­ing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jew­ish Teach­ings to Raise Self-Reliant Chil­dren. (Pen­guin Group: New York, NY), 2001.

Posted in category Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on January 26, 2009 at 8:11 am
Permanent Link | 3 Comments »