#2 Other Troubled Teens Can Help Your Troubled Teen More Than YOU Can
Teens Helping Teens
In traditional approaches to the problems of troubled teens, adults monopolize the giving of help. In contrast, our Boarding School demands that teens assume the task of giving help among themselves. This notion of helping is, of course, not original; civilized man has long been aware of the benefits that accrue when people are involved in mutual giving. Isaiah expressed this idea nearly 3000 years ago: "They helped everyone his neighbor."
Many organizations flourish mainly because they offer individuals opportunities to serve others. Through the Peace Corps, fraternal groups, volunteer hospital auxiliaries, Big Brother and Big Sister organizations, and the numerous other ways, people assume roles of giving. Those who work in education and the helping professions also derive a great deal of personal satisfaction from contributing to the well-being of others.
The Troubled Teen’s Needs
Throughout all of our "helping" we have not looked closely enough at the effect of help on the receiving teenager. Does being the recipient of help really make a troubled teen feel positive about himself? Are we somehow maintaining troubled teens in helpless and dependent roles? Being helpful usually has an enhancing effect on one's self-concept; needing help and being dependent on others often worsens the erosion of what may already be a weak self-concept.
In order for a teenager to feel positive about himself two conditions must exist.
First, he must feel accepted by others.
Second, he must feel that he deserves this acceptance.
Many traditional approaches concentrate on the fist condition and overlook the second.
Being Accepted
In the past, we have gone to great lengths to tell the troubled teen that he is really not so bad as he thinks, that he is worthy as a teenager, that he has many fine qualities, and that we accept him. However, just telling someone he is a fine teenager and treating him kindly is not enough to make the troubled teen view himself positively. The troubled teen often thinks we are being nice to him only because we feel sorry for him or perhaps even because we are getting paid to be nice.
Deserving acceptance
Despite how others relate to him, a troubled teen may feel he is not worthy of acceptance. He knows that much of his behavior is irresponsible and damaging to himself or others, and further, he does not believe he is really making worthwhile contributions to life. If he is to feel deserving of the acceptance, he must start making positive contributions to others and stop harmful behavior.
Figure 1.1 suggests the effects of Positive Peer Culture and traditional treatment approaches on a negative self-concept. Both Positive Peer Culture and traditional approaches strive to make a troubled teen feel accepted. However, in traditional therapy a teenager often continues irresponsible behavior, and traditional therapy seldom provides the means for one to be of value to others. In contrast, Positive Peer Culture expects that the troubled teen will both stop his irresponsible (hurting) behavior and being helping others. These are the ingredients of a truly positive self-concept.
Be Reasonable in What You Expect From Your Troubled Teen
Contrary to established notions, one need not conquer all of one’s own problems before being able to help solve the problems of others. Positive Peer Culture does not wait until the teenager can “cure” all of his own hang-ups before it expects him to contribute to others. Rather, the very act of helping others becomes the first decisive step in overcoming one’s personal problems, In reaching out to help another a troubled teen creates his own proof of worthiness: he is now of value to another teenager.
Knowing When Your Teen Needs Help
It is widely assumed that a primary determinant of success in therapy is that the troubled teen be able to ask for help, admitting to his inadequacy and need for assistance, In fact, our boarding school's experience has indicated that the troubled teen whose approach to us is “Please rehabilitate me” or “Think I need help and I feel you can help me” may be in worse trouble than the one who denies the need for help. Most often such an approach tells us one of two things: (1) this is a weak, helpless, ego-deficient teenager who is all too ready to surrender to his own inadequacies, or (2) this is a con artist telling the therapist what somebody seeking help is supposed to say. Neither of these possibilities speaks well for the troubled teens prospects for change.
Figure 1.1. Effects of Positive Peer Culture and traditional treatment approaches on negative self-concept
The teenager who tells us “You are not going to make me to change” is not saying he is unwilling to change. In reality, most troubled teens are considerable more receptive to change than are older troubled teens. What such a teen is really saying is that “I am not going to be changed by you,” A very different situation. Teenagers do not resist change: They only resist being changed.
Rather than hoping the troubled teen will come forth with a “cry for help,” Positive Peer Culture asks first that he be willing to offer help to others. While troubled teens certainly must learn to receive as well as to give help, the balance must be weighted in favor of giving-the only route to true strength, autonomy, and a positive self-concept. In Positive Peer Culture, the entire process of helping others is given highest status. The troubled teen does not have to be cured because he is mentally ill, punished because he is immoral, or enlightened because he is ignorant, rather, he comes to help others and thereby to receiving help with his own problems.
