Dillan DiGiovanni believes Bieber may have everything he wants, except boundaries.
The truth is, I don’t know the first thing about super-stardom and what it takes to create a celebrity. I don’t really care. I can tell you what I do know: Justin Bieber isn’t a spoiled brat. He isn’t “losing it”. He is being a normal teenager. The problem he’s having seems to be the same as what has happened to all the other child/teen celebrities who unravel at the seams. He’s been cheated out of the thing every child/teenager needs to thrive: good role models with healthy boundaries. Justin Bieber is a mess right now because the people who manage him haven’t realized they were qualified to build a pop star but don’t know the first thing about how to raise a child.
I am not a parent who gave birth at 18, like Justin’s mother did.
I am not a media mogul/former party promoter hellbent on franchising the shit out of a talented kid, like Scooter Braun is doing.
I am, however, about the same age as both Bieber’s mother, father and Scooter Braun, his agent/manager. And here’s what I am and what I do know: I am a former middle school teacher. I am a former youth advisor. I am a health coach. I know a thing or two about teenagers and their developmental needs and I see a teenager crying out for help, begging for someone in his life who isn’t too busy ballin’ it up on his dollars to provide the guidance and boundaries teens need to form a healthy sense of self, maturity and morality.
From his first documentary, Never Say Never, I’ve seen Justin surrounded by inept young adults, people incredibly qualified at their jobs and painfully lacking in the awareness and expertise that is required to raise a healthy, confident and mature young adult.
To me, Justin Bieber’s behavior isn’t the result of having too much money or fame. From where I sit it is the result of one thing: lack of boundaries. I wonder if people notice the lack of experience both Scooter Braun and Justin’s own parents have at actually being parental role models. Justin has literally grown up surrounded by a bunch of (barely) older people who are acting like kids themselves. Pattie Malette was 18 years old when she had Justin and from the photos I’ve seen (because goodness knows I really don’t know anything real about this woman), she seems to be living out the youth and teenage years she didn’t really get to have when she was busy being a mother.
I don’t know what it’s like to have a 19 year-old son when you’re 37. I can only guess it was extremely difficult to give birth to him and have his father leave a few years later. My mom walked that same path but she was much older and she still struggled.
From what I’ve read about Scooter, he’s just your average 31 year-old dude. Nowhere in his job experience did I see much about him studying child psychology or knowing the first thing about adolescent developmental needs.
It’s painfully obvious that merely being a guy doesn’t really make you qualified to be a male role model for someone in the celebrity spotlight. Justin’s behavior seems to be the direct result of being raised by wolves, essentially. He’s been left to his own devices because the adults in his life are neither old enough or experienced enough to draw clear boundaries for him. I doubt they even know how or why they should. They didn’t consider maybe a child counselor would have made a good addition to the “entourage”.
You may be wondering why I care so much about this. It’s pretty simple: I spent most of my career working with youth and I feel like I know enough to see this whole thing from a different perspective. I think teenagers are awesome and largely misunderstood, including Justin. If more people realized this, they might stop attacking the 19-year-old kid and put their focus on the adults who have been in charge of him since the inception of his career. I think we should hold them responsible for what they took on and their failure to adequately guide and support Justin’s development.
Stop picking apart this kid and start demanding more from the people who should be spending less time filling their pockets with his profits and more time getting skills to support this kid before he self-destructs.
More on Justin Bieber:
-
Would You Treat Justin Bieber the Way We Treat Richard Sherman?
-
Justin Bieber Was Arrested (and I Don’t Care)
-
Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Biebers
—photo iloveJB123 /Flickr Creative Commons
See, in your review in response to my comment, you manage to get your point across without casting judgement on young single parents or judging what women do in their free time after their children grow up. Do you see the difference? Maybe replace every line where you referenced a teen or single parent with some other label of a marginalized portion of society that you might connect more with and you’ll see why people are taking offense to your words and judgments. Also, my sons, and daughter, were raised to know that when you offend someone with your words… Read more »
Hi Sue, I do see your point. My article was first and foremost of statement of advocacy for him. I admit I did lose sight of her personhood and could have made a much better case to support him with less judgment.
Dillan, are you a parent?
First, I think this conversation would be more valid without bringing the age of his mom into it. Older parents can be lousy parents. Young parents can be superlative parents. Stereotyping is not useful.
That said, if you feel he’s surrounded by *opportunistic* people, that’s worth discussing. But I’d like to see quotes and references, not rhetoric and conjecture.
Sarah, excellent point. As my friend shared, my points about blaming the victim (a teenager) and encouraging people to be more mindful about setting kids up successfully was lost in how I went about it. I have much more to say about parenting than opportunistic people so I’ll write about that. If I wanted to leave readers with anything about this, it would be not that she’s a bad mom but rather that this is beyond what most people can manage and more help would have helped everyone. It takes a village, right?
Wow. I am highly offended by your sweeping judgments. Your entire argument could have been made without referencing how old his mother was when she gave birth. Teen moms face enough stigma as it is. Many raise ethical, grounded, smart kids. Plenty of parents who have their kids when they are older raise kids with no morals or ethics. It’s about how you choose to parent, not how old you are when you start off. And then to go on and judge his mother now by photographs you saw? Tell me, what do you think a mother/woman/parent is “supposed” to… Read more »
Hi Sue, thanks for reading and sharing your opinion. My main reason for writing this article was to comment on responsibility. I am commenting on the intentional decision these grown adults made to build this child into a celebrity and what could have been considered as part of that to set him up better. It is completely unlike ordinary child-rearing, and to compare my comments to that doesn’t make sense. These people set out with a specific intention to raise this child in the spotlight of American pop culture. In my opinion, the instant they chose that, they were responsible… Read more »
I totally agree. Im not a super fan of Justin or dislike him either, but it is unfortuate to see people just putting him down and not considering why this is happening or that he may need help to get back on a good track. Of course there’s more to it then what we see, and it’s weird to me that people just seem to enjoy using the situation to insult him, a teenager.. It would be great to see Justin get some good role models in his life. From what ive seen hes a good kid, maybe a bit… Read more »
Hi Kate, thanks for reading and sharing your feedback and thoughts about my article. There is DEFINITELY more to this than I see, and I tried to account for that a few times in my article. Thanks for appreciating my perspective. It was to both identify that Justin is responsible for his behavior but only to the extent that the adults in his life have taught him these values by being responsible, themselves, for setting him up powerfully for life as an adult AS A MAJOR CELEBRITY. I saw, from where I sit here on the sidelines, that there were… Read more »
Bieber is not a normal teenager, and for his age – 19 – he has a remarkable long record of violence and alcohol and drugs. He is like all the others next to him, very rich, a celebrity and thinks he is above the law. This will work out for a while, but for sure not for always.
Hey Yohan, thanks for your comment. I don’t know for sure that he thinks he’s above the law. It seems he doesn’t at all have a grounded sense of reality, and it’s no surprise. He’s living a life many people never will. My article was exploring what he wasn’t provided as a child that has impacted his development. I wonder what steps his entourage will take in the coming weeks and months.
Now wait – I know it’s tempting to get all bothered over his behavior, but there IS something to what has been discussed. My parents died 14 months apart (with my high school graduation in the middle) and I was an only child. Though the LAW may say an 18-year old is an adult, they really aren’t, in any other way. There are SO MANY choices to make, so many possible paths to take, and I was sick of the way some of the older adults in my life at that time treated me, as if I were a pariah,… Read more »
Jeff, thanks for sharing your own experience. I think it was a powerful testimony to the point I was making and proof that legal age is really pretty arbitrary. It DOES sound like folks didn’t really step up to give you what you needed but from what you’ve shared it sounds like you were able to find your way, despite! I applaud your commitment to creating for your kids what you didn’t experience–that is the best possible outcome from the adversity you’ve faced. Thank you!
“If more people realized this, they might stop attacking the 19-year-old kid and put their focus on the adults who have been in charge of him since the inception of his career.” Right off the bat, you call Bieber’s behavior that of a “normal teenager”. I am glad that most teenagers do NOT act as disrespectfully and recklessly as Bieber has. You want less fingers pointed at him, and more at the lack of adults in his life. For how long do we let him be the “victim” and not take responsibility of his actions? He is now an adult.… Read more »
KC – You sound like the broken record of many people I have heard saying things like this… “Kids won’t take responsibility for their own lives these days”, “Where has resilience gone? No kids have resilience.” You are part of the ilk that sees everything in black and white. Your naiveté is apparent in your justification that because he has turned 18 and so is legally regarded as an adult that he should magically become a steadfast, no bullshit, cut and dried man who can take care of himself and a wolf pack to boot. The writer of this article… Read more »
Thanks for your post, George. I appreciate your support of my stance. It’s true I don’t know all the particulars of this celebrity’s life but it seems like you picked up on my point: adolescents needs role models with boundaries, not buddies, to become an adult. I think it’s unfortunate that the media and our country is hanging him out to dry and not mentioning the adults in his life who prioritized getting him a “swagger/image” coach and not a therapist or counselor to ride along in that bus to make sure he ate healthy food, got enough sleep and… Read more »
KC, I don’t see it that way, but I get that’s how this occurs to you. I don’t think legal adulthood matters when someone hasn’t been given tools to succeed and thrive. He’s lived outside the lines of what most people know and is expected to understand rules he was never really taught. I think it’s a disservice to an adolescent, celebrity or not, to hold them responsible for what the adults around him never provided.