Vexed Ed

Posted by fxckfeelings on May 9, 2013

For parents of kids in high school, it often seems like your goal is to get your kid through school, and your kids’ goal is to find every way possible to get distracted. Some of those distractions, like video games or music, are harmless, while others, like drugs or serious relationships, can go from a diversion to totally destructive. Sometimes when a kid seems over-interested in romantic relationships, it’s because the relationship with school needs work, but other kids would chose relationships over the best school in the world, just because of how they’re wired. In any case, parents, it’s important for you not to show anger or fear, regardless of how you really feel. Instead, if you can, sell the kid on school, sell the school on working with your kid, and if that doesn’t work, it’s time to homeschool your kid in managing intense sexual relationships. As long as you avoid guilt and blame, you can be a great teacher, no matter what curriculum you’re forced to use.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m 14 this year and in my second year of high school, and in my area there are a couple schools that I could’ve gone to. Unfortunately, there was only one co-ed school, and it had a “bad reputation.” My parents forced me to go to the other school, an elite girls school, instead. I didn’t like it even before I started going there, but I never knew it would be this bad. It’s really strict and I actually hate not having boys around. I’ve never been boy crazy but now I feel like I can’t stand it. And this year, I discovered this good co-ed school that I originally thought was far away but is actually closer than the school I go to now. I can’t rest until I get to move schools, but how do I convince my parents to let me move without telling them that I want boys in my life? They’re not the incredibly unreasonable strict type, so they wouldn’t have forced me to go to a single sex school if there wasn’t a choice. Still, I can’t say that I hate it because it’s a girls school! They’d never let me move because of that. It may sound silly but I’ve gotten really depressed recently. The school also has lots of other different problems, mainly the strict part. I hate strictness. It kills me, and I just want to be free. I feel like I’m suffocating and I can’t escape.

We rarely get letters from readers in their teens, probably because, when you’re fourteen, developing an independent view of the world and living under your parents’ absolute authority, feelings are one of the few things under your own control. It seems natural that your average adolescent’s response to a site called fxckfeelings.com would be “fuck you dot org.”

That said, we’re glad to hear from someone young, and it’s important during this stage to seek knowledgeable outside opinions, especially because so much of your time is spent with the same group of teachers and other kids your age. School can feel a lot like jail, except you learn things way more valuable than how to make wine in a toilet.

That’s also why it’s impossible not to have intense feelings about the school you’re in, and those feelings can make it much harder or easier for you to get an education. Just remember that your goal, given the sacrifices you make to go to school, is to get an education that will help you survive. It’s not to be happy, but to find conditions that will help you grow.

Depression can get in the way of your learning and growing, and it might be caused by the school’s strictness or all-girl culture, but it might not, and if it isn’t, then shifting schools and introducing boys won’t help. After all, if you think you’re distracted by boys now, when they aren’t actually around, imagine what it’s like when you’re surrounded by them. They also tend to bring out a nasty competitiveness in some girls, which opens up the possibility of a type of bullying that the UN probably recognizes as torture.

The reason that your frustration might be based in depression, not single-sex education, is because depression often happens like acne, in obnoxious bursts for no reason at all, and it can slow down your brain and make it almost impossible to learn. So if depression is part of your mood at school, day after day, make sure you talk with someone about what might be causing it and how to manage it.

If you were sent to an elite school and are now underperforming (I don’t know from your letter how you’re doing academically), then you might have a learning problem that could make any school feel intolerable. Of course, you may be having trouble learning because you’re very unhappy there, but sometimes the learning problem causes the unhappiness and vice versa and it’s hard to tell which comes first. Since a learning problem will follow you from school to school, be sure it’s not a major source of your frustration.

Strictness can be good if it’s friendly and provides support for good habits, but it can be terrible if it forces you to be someone you aren’t or drives you to sit still when you’re too restless. Ask yourself and your parents whether the teachers at your school like and accept you, or whether they’re trying to change you in ways that have become nasty and don’t work. Also ask yourself and your parents whether you have any ADD/restlessness problem that is a serious obstacle to school-based learning.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to escape a school you hate and the ideal school may well look like a low-pressure day camp with lots of interesting guys to hang out with. Before you dump your school, however, use whatever help you can get—friendly teachers, parents, learning specialist—to figure out what’s going wrong and what you need to make things work better. The lack of boys might seem like the obvious problem, but if you think life will be better with a distraction, then you have to ask yourself what it is exactly you want distraction from.

If you look into it, you’re much more likely to get the education you deserve, and still find time for some interesting dating, if not in the immediate future, then certainly after you’re done serving your time as a teen.

STATEMENT:
“I hate school and I know what the school of my dreams looks like, but life is hard and I intend to learn what I need to survive, so I’m going to figure out what needs to change to make school work.”

I don’t know what happened to my son when he began his third year of high school, but it sure had nothing to do with education. He’s a brilliant kid (his mother and I both have PhDs in sciences), but he spent all his time playing guitar, skipping school, hanging out in clubs, and then falling for a recovering alcoholic who’s at least ten years older than he and seems to encourage all of his bad habits (like avoiding school and smoking pot). He threatened to kill himself if we tried to keep them apart, but I wasn’t going to let fear stop me from helping him, so I got him committed to a hospital. They had to let him go, however, when they decided he wasn’t really going to kill himself. I tightened up the rules at home, but the moment he could do it legally, he moved in with his girlfriend. I don’t want him to lose his education or get tied up with a wife and children before he’s had a chance to discover what he wants to do with his life. My goal is to figure out what else I can do to help him, because I’ve seemingly run out of options.

You’ve done a good job of proving the hard way (which is probably the only way) that your adolescent son’s determination to plunge into adult relationships will not yield to normal educational priorities, no matter how persistently you create positive and negative incentives. No matter how doomed your efforts were from the start, it’s important you tried because, win or lose, you now know where he stands.

Don’t take it as a personal failure then that he’s following a riskier, scarier course. Not all kids who drop out of school or have intense, troubled relationships at an early age do so because of conflict with or neglect by their parents. Some are very emotional, bored, and/or stubborn by nature, and you and they just have to work with who they are. You sound as if you have a lot of love and acceptance in your relationship with your son, and that’s the important thing.

Stop giving yourself responsibility for saving him from himself, not just because it’s self-torture, but because, if you sound or act protective, you’ll have more conflict and moments where he simply won’t listen. Instead, after accepting his current decisions, become a teacher in adult relationships 101, speaking as you would to a fellow-but-less-experienced adult about the mysteries of partnership. As long as you stay away from feelings, yours and his, he may be interested in hearing your wisdom.

Respect the committed relationship he’s trying to create, no matter how dubious its future. Ask him about the facts of his girlfriend’s life that are most likely to affect that commitment, including her sobriety and ability to stick with work and past relationships. Make it clear you’re not trying to dissuade him or devalue her; just offering your usual method for identifying problems that can and can’t be solved.

Of course, he may disagree with your estimate of how much power he—or love—has to cement a relationship or control an addiction. As long as your disagreement is friendly, however, it need not drive him away and may actually reduce his immediate sense of guilt and responsibility.

You expect, of course, that he’s doomed to tons of unavoidable heartbreak dead ahead, and while you can’t protect him from pain, you can help him stand up against his feeling like a failure when things fall apart.

STATEMENT:
“I feel I’ve failed to protect my child from launching directly into a dangerous situation that could ruin his life, but I know I’ve done a good job and that the danger is just a part of who he is. I’ll accept the extreme parenting challenge by keeping my fears to myself while I give him good coaching on how to survive the coming crash.”