[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
When she was five, one of our grandkids came home from kindergarten and told her mother that she was never again speaking to her best friend and that she was never again wearing the top that she had worn to school that day. “Why?” her mother asked. “Because Amelia said, ‘Aren’t you hot in that?’” our granddaughter replied.
When a child can take her friend saying, “Aren’t you hot in that?” as a sufficient reason to end a friendship, we see how easily even the idlest of remarks can be received as criticism and how powerfully we react to those perceived criticisms. And then when we are actually criticized! When, say, our teacher calls us out for not trying hard enough. Or when we tyrannically criticize ourselves. When, say, we criticize ourselves for missing violin practice (when all we really wanted to do was hang out at the beach). What does this all amount to? A lifetime of painful criticism.
If just once a day we receive something as criticism or if just once a day we criticize ourselves, that’s five thousand criticisms piled up by the beginning of our teen years. And isn’t a bright red pimple yet another sort of criticism? And isn’t hating the fit of our clothes? And isn’t knowing that we aren’t prepared for the test? And isn’t knowing that we are doomed to be short? And isn’t knowing that we are smart but not that smart or smart enough? Five thousand criticisms? Maybe a billion!
It is very easy to slide from all this criticism and self-criticism, this pestering and self-pestering that may become constant and chronic, to the belief that we are an abomination. Then we want to hide; we keep our head down; we slink around; we put on some weight to shield us; we create an imaginary life where everything is much better; and we are sad, because who wants to be an abomination?
How much of the so-called “clinical depression” that many teens experience is exactly the accumulated sadness that has turned their indwelling into a perpetual winter?
What is so amazingly poignant about all this is that the criticism, actual or felt, can be objectively microscopic and nevertheless do tremendous damage. It can completely switch a smart teen’s mind from her current heartfelt vision of the life she wants to lead and the career she wants to pursue to some other vision, one that has always been lurking in the background as the safer choice or “all that she can hope for.”
That idle remark from her chemistry teacher suddenly makes her think that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a doctor. That bit of rude, blistering pushback from the English Department’s resident grammarian, the one who never finds anyone’s sentences adequate, kills her dream of being a writer. I know from forty years of working with therapy clients and coaching clients that these dream-killing events happen all the time. It is amazing the damage that criticism can do, even if it is delivered as nothing more than a raised eyebrow or an ironic smile.
For parents
It is very difficult not to keep repeating a criticism like “You’re getting crumbs everywhere!” or “Don’t you own a comb?” or “Haven’t started your homework yet?” You keep repeating these criticisms because you keep seeing those crumbs, that unkempt hair, or those unopened books. But while it is very difficult not to keep repeating those criticisms, it is not impossible to stop repeating them. They have become your habit—maybe your bad habit; and a habitual way of reacting can be changed, if you’re inclined to change it.
Does your teen really need more criticism? Think about it: do you? Would you like to be criticized for all the things you could be criticized for? Wasn’t your chicken a little dry the other day? Do you need someone to point that out? Did you become the concert pianist you always meant to become? Do you need someone to point out that you didn’t? Did you lose something that you can’t now find? Would you like someone to call you a “loser” because of that? There is no virtue or value in piling on criticism. That piling on is the easiest thing in the world to do—but that doesn’t make it right.
For teens
Here is a headline that you must keep front and center in your mindroom, maybe in bright red neon: everyone has an opinion.
A given fact, that, say, you did poorly on a hard chemistry test, does not entitle your chemistry teacher to opine that you will never understand chemistry. And if he does opine that, that is just his idle opinion. Do not own that, do not take that in, do not turn that into jagged self-criticism, do not even hear it. Take it as rain pounding on the roof or as the cawing of crows rather than as words entitled to a place in your being. Those aren’t entitled words, entitled to be taken seriously.
None of this is to say that you are exempt from scrutiny. You want to know when you’ve acted badly. You want to know that you aren’t trying. You want to know when you’ve built a wall around you that maybe ought to have a door in it, to let others in, and some windows, to let in light and fresh air. But you do not need to hold that good understanding as self-criticism. That is awareness; that is honesty. You do not also need to put yourself in the docket and stand indicted.
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[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
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