The Hindu Business Line : Teen years... agony and ecstasy

"We as parents have instilled this feeling of selfishness in our children. All the time we give them the impression that their lives are much more important. You should get good marks, you should be a good swimmer, you should do this or you should do that." — Dr Thara Srinivasan

A couple of weeks ago Chennai-based psychiatrist Dr Thara Srinivasan, Director of SCARF, got a case of a teenaged boy who had tried to commit suicide by consuming rat poison. Fortunately, nausea prevented him from taking the full dose and his life could be saved. The petrified parents brought him to the psychiatrist and she found that the problem lay in the boy wanting to become an IAS officer but his father wanting him to become an engineer and getting him admission in an engineering college.

"Now the parents are very scared. Instead of pushing their wish on the child, parents should sit down and discuss with their children their strengths and weaknesses and take a joint decision on what course the child will take," she says.

Bringing up a teenaged child can be an extremely enjoyable experience or a nightmare depending on how parents handle the child during the teen years. "What's crucial is how we as parents handle our concerns, fears and anxieties about our children... sometimes we become overambitious in dreaming for them, and push on them our views on discipline, hard work and academic excellence. The result is chaos and misery," says a Chennai-based housewife who went through hell while her elder son stormed through his teens. Wiser after the experience she and her husband are doing a much better job of handling their second son, who is now 15.

Ask parents what their concerns are about their teenaged children and you'll get a barrage of responses. But the commonest concern is related to the time spent on the telephone or the Internet. Welcome to the age of communications!

Many parents are puzzled about their teenaged kids who can chat incessantly with friends over the telephone, but become maddeningly quiet when it comes to talking with them about school, college or other interests. Fortunately N. Srikanth, a Chennai-based businessman, and his 17-year-old son Krishna do not have this problem. On the contrary, they enjoy long chats, "talking about the world in general or how people behave. He is very perceptive and I enjoy these chats and am going to miss them when he leaves for law school shortly," says Srikanth.

Krishna is headed for a residential law school in Hyderabad and "at the moment my primary concern is that he should not fall in the company of undesirable elements, because after all parental influence will be lacking there. But my wife and I are keeping our fingers crossed that the upbringing we've given him will take care of this concern," says the father.

Of course, the more general concern pertains to Krishna "realising what he really wants to do in life and making a success of it." At the end of the day this is what all parents want for their children. The teen years are, of course, very crucial as this is the period when the son/daughter is neither a child nor an adult, and is battling with so many questions and anxieties that keep popping within the head.

On pressures that teenagers face, Dr Thara says these are both academic and non-academic. "The academic aspect is the pressure from the parents to do well, score between 90 and 95 per cent so that they can get the right kind of admissions in college and so on."

The non-academic stress is related to peer group influence. "This is much more present today than 15 or 20 years ago, and it results in changed behaviour patterns... from going to the disco, smoking, drinking and related issues."

She says in a metro like Chennai there are a lot of teenagers indulging in this kind of behaviour, the initiation of which might be due to peer pressure but the teenager continues with it because he/she enjoys it. "Some youngsters say that this kind of behaviour relaxes them... just like an adult gives the reason for alcoholism or smoking."

But such behaviour petrifies the parents "who are worried about what we call an anti-social personality. This includes frequent lying... beyond white lies that are common... on serious issues such as cutting classes, suppressing marks and hanging about a place where they have no business to be. Stealing money is becoming more and more common too. Unlike in the west, our teenagers do not work during holidays but want to spend more money. So they steal money. I know some youngsters from middle- and upper-class families who've taken away watches or jewellery and pawned or sold them to raise money."

Interestingly enough, while parents' concern over the long time teenagers spend on the phone or the Internet, and the kind of sites surfed, cuts across the gender line, parents of teenaged girls are constantly worried about the company their daughters keep.

When asked to spell out her concern, Sonia Roy, a working woman in Chennai, says, "Boys!" Priya, her 14-year-old daughter, has just started going out with her friends to a movie or a party.

"Of course, we try not to be paranoid about her going out with her friends and occasionally allow her to go to a party but with strict curfew. She has to get back home by 9 p.m."

Time spent on the phone is another major concern and recently the parents got her a cell-phone because it was virtually impossible to track the time Priya spent on the telephone, resulting in hefty telephone bills. So now the rule in the house is that while she can receive calls on the landline, she can make them only on her cell-phone. On the Internet too, rules have been spelt out and Priya is allowed to use the Net for an hour every evening.

When asked if she is worried about the kind of content the child sees on the Net, Sonia says, "There is nothing that these children do not know and there is no way you can monitor this aspect because even from as harmless a site as neopets.com, they can be led to porn sites. How much can you monitor?"

But once you realise and accept that a teenager's curiosity is a biological thing and "do not make it a taboo, this is not a problem. You can talk to them, and mercifully nowadays schools too have sex education in the curriculum. Once you make such issues open and discuss them, they are not bothered. Recently the family went through the trauma of a messy divorce, and we talked a lot to Priya on what happened and why," she adds.

Aarti Ramanathan, a colleague of hers, agrees on the trust aspect. "The basic thing is to be open and trust them. It is when you start hiding that you run into problems. My daughter Sukanya is 19 and very mature and dependable. In fact, I often consult her on taking important decisions on matters personal or related to the family, and she comes up with very relevant and mature suggestions. The trick is to treat them like friends, talk to them and give them the confidence that they can tell you anything." She also feels that it is important to give the youngsters enough to do. Sukanya is into tennis and music; and training sessions in both keep her occupied.

However, Aarti and her husband "differ a lot on how to bring up children. I tend to give her a lot of freedom because I believe that you must equip your children with the ability to know how far they can go and where to stop. But my husband doesn't think that space needs to be given to the child. Perhaps because she is a girl, she is closer to me."

That brings us to the all-important issue of fashion and clothes. While the belly-button piercing craze is yet to catch up in Chennai, there are parents who hate the idea of their teenaged sons going to school using hair gel and deodorants that make them smell like a garden, daughters make their parents ... most of the time fathers... see red when it comes to the length of their skirts.

As Aarti puts it, as Sukanya grew taller, her skirts started getting shorter "and her father just cannot stomach that, though I have no problems with it."

Sonia nods in agreement. "That's exactly what happens in my home too. If Priya is wearing a short skirt and a visitor comes, my husband is very uncomfortable and wants her to change immediately."

Adds Aarti, "I don't think we should make an issue of such things. On the contrary we should define their contours subtly so they know where to stop."

S. Vasanthi, a professional in Chennai, and her 15-year-old daughter Bhavana, are great friends. "She does very well at school so I have no concern about her academics, though I do wish she would spend less time on the phone and the Internet and that too rather late in the night," she says.

Like Aarti, she too has grown to trust her daughter's judgement on several issues. "I think these girls often give much better suggestions than the husbands can!"

But, of course, there are arguments too, "but when there's an argument or fight it is very important to resolve it the same day... or else they will sulk and you will be miserable, and that doesn't help anybody," she adds. Aarti agrees. "Often, in an argument or fight, you might have said something because you were tired or angry, which is not fair to the child. The important thing is to admit that you made a mistake and say sorry. That makes a big difference in the relationship. Getting angry or shouting doesn't help; when you discuss things calmly and without inhibitions, it gives the child the confidence to be able to talk with you."

But there are arguments of a different kind in her family... between Aarti and her husband over the freedom she gives Sukanya. "He feels that I give her too much freedom. But then there is a background. My mother was very strict with me and I have grown up in fear. She wouldn't even like me to speak in front of anybody... but I want to provide the opportunities that I didn't have to my child."

Married at the age of 17, Aarti was actually relieved "because I thought finally I would get some freedom and independence in my house." Thanks to the support from her husband and mother-in-law she went to college and right up to a Ph.D. "I'm constantly aware that the opportunities or space that I didn't get as a child should not be denied to my daughter."

Coming to parents deciding for their children what stream or career to take, Srikanth played a supportive role without pushing Krishna towards law. Even though Krishna did not "work as hard" at his academics as his father would have liked him to, the latter is proud that he "did extremely well in his entrance exams and got admission to quite a few law schools." When it came to choosing the best, the father spent a lot of time and effort in personally checking out the institutions.

But pressure tactics were out. "I nudged him gently in the direction where I thought his talent and competence lay. I do believe he has a flair for law," says Srikanth.

Krishna does not want to become a lawyer, and this is okay by Srikanth. "He may or may not become a lawyer... but at some point he wants to become a politician and I'm a little uncomfortable about that, " he says, adding quickly that eventually if his son does end up in politics "I'll be happy that at least somebody with commitment and integrity is getting into that profession."

Coming to the issues that cause friction between teenagers and their parents, Dr Thara says that the growing attraction between the sexes is a major cause of concern among parents in Chennai.

"Dating, girls and boys going to late-night parties and such activities have increased and as parents are still conservative they don't like it. But the youngsters just do all this on the sly."

On the prevalence of teen sex she says a few teenagers have told her they have tried it. It may not be a regular thing... it's more like an experiment and many of them are scared of HIV infection."

The major problem, Dr Thara finds, comes from the teenagers of today being "much more selfish and self-centred than was the case 30 to 40 years ago, especially when it comes to their needs. There are very few children who look at issues from the parent's point of view. If they want a mobike, they want it; they don't think: `Can my Dad really afford it?' And we as parents are also responsible because we have brought them up to instil this feeling of selfishness. All the time we give them the impression that their lives are much more important. You should get good marks, you should be a good swimmer, you should do this or you should do that." She says that by such behaviour parents exaggerate the importance of their children and make them believe that their needs are paramount and the world does not matter.

"How many parents tell their children, `let's go to an orphanage and visit somebody who is in a less fortunate circumstance than we are?' It's always `you should come first; you should get into an engineering college, keep up the good name of the family', etc. The inputs from the parents are also very self-centred."

Another negative aspect is splurging too much on the child. Many parents give their teenage children a few thousand rupees a month as pocket money. "So we as parents play a very central role, maybe quite inadvertently, in moulding the behaviour of our children and without understanding the repercussions. Many parents tell me we were denied a good childhood; we never had such opportunities or any money to spend when we were young... we never had this or that. So at least let my children have it. In order to satisfy some inner needs, they spoil the children."

Currently she is counselling a boy who was doing extremely well academically till class XI when "he fell into bad company and started stealing from home and taking drugs. Because of a lot of drug intake he became ill and got psychosis and started getting illusions at which point he was brought to me. I found that it was the chain of behaviour that had led to a psychiatric problem."

Ultimately his family paid a huge amount for a seat in a premier engineering college but he couldn't go beyond the second year and is now sitting at home. "I've suggested that let him do a degree course in commerce or some other subject, but our friend will not do that. He says, `I got a seat in the best engineering college and now how can I go through a mere undergraduate course?' The parents are at crossroads and stuck with a son whose future is bleak. The mother is prepared to keep him at home saying that he is not well, rather than face questions from the rest of the family on why he had to change college. The family status is more important. I feel our priorities are all misplaced. I've been trying to drum it into their heads that he should not be kept at home in this manner, but can't do much beyond a point."

Offering an interesting gender perspective she says, "With girls, things are much better. The bonding is a little more and there is less selfishness compared to boys. Also, girls are more focussed and have definite goals and are sure about what they want to do five years from now. But most boys either don't care or don't even think about the future. They just drift from one situation to the other. They think: Anyway my parents are there; if anything happens they'll take care. That is the kind of false sense of security that we are giving our children today."

Pictures by Shaju John and K. K. Mustafah

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