Introduction:
Seeking to better understand what the literature had to say about adolescent development, I began to acquire books that were highly reviewed and focused on various aspects of adolescent development. All the books that I picked (last year) primarily involved raising teenagers by looking at what neuroscience has to say about it. The other focus was on the digital impact that cellphones, technology, and social media has on the students that River Trail Middle School serves. Simply put, I approached this project by asking simple questions of what others in the field are saying and how, if at all, do/should we approach it to continue to help our students.
As a new parent and amateur scientist, I recognize that anyone could find literature that suggests a specific point of view or bias. I have done my best to avoid this trap and sought to review sources that foster discussion. I do not agree or disagree with information within the articles but simply wish to distill what I read into common sense that might be able to foster a conversation or thought in your head, home and community. This has been a fun project to work on and I hope that it can serve you and the community at large.
The Book:
Damour, L. (2024). Emotional lives of teenagers: Raising connected, capable, and compassionate adolescents. Ballantine Books.
An urgently needed guide to help parents understand their teenagers’ intense and often fraught emotional lives and how to support them through this critical developmental stage from the New York Times bestselling author of Untangled and Under Pressure.
In teenagers, powerful emotions come with the territory. And with so many of today’s teens contending with academic pressure, social media stress, worries about the future, and concerns about their own mental health, it’s easy for them and their parents to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Parents who listen to this book will learn:
- What to expect in the normal course of adolescent emotional development and when it’s time to worry.
- Why teens (and adults) need to understand that mental health isn’t about “feeling good” but about having feelings that fit the moment, even if those feelings are unwanted or painful.
- Strategies for supporting teens who feel at the mercy of their emotions so they can become psychologically aware and skilled at managing their feelings.
- How to approach common challenges that come with adolescence, such as friction at home, spiking anxiety, risky behavior, navigating friendships and romances, the pull of social media, and many more.
- The best ways to stay connected to their teens and how to provide the kind of relationship that adolescents need and want.
With clear, research-informed explanations alongside illuminating, real-life examples, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.
Part 1:
Introduction
This book hits you in the face with the opening line. "It is a deep comfort to children to discover that their feelings are a normal part of the human experience." -Haim Ginott (1965). This line caused me to pause and approach the rest of the introduction with a bit more care than I traditionally do when reading these types of books. Simply, the book's introduction touches on the world of mental health, wellness, and the idea of feeling bad. The author argues that the wellness industry has taken over and, as a result, fuels the anxiety that teens feel because they don't feel a specific way all the time. Damour (2024) writes that, "To put it bluntly, somewhere along the way, we became afraid of being unhappy ( p.17)." And that this basic premise that companies and social media have "led many parents and teenagers to its logical corollary, that feeing bad is grounds for serious concerns" (Damour, 2024 p. 21).
The introduction concludes with the baseline of the 'normal' human condition by arguing that when we understand that we cannot "sustain an extended period of untroubled ease" (Damour, 2024, p. 21) this allows for the understanding of choices that face us when do we feel the full gamut of human emotions. So with this thesis outlined, it becomes apparent that to help our students and teenagers understand why they feel what they feel and what choices they have when they feel these things. It's not the absence of happiness that we should be concerned with but rather how we deal with it. I think of Mr. Stjern telling the 7th - grade version of me that old quote of, "it's not what happens to you but how you deal with it."
The trap then is to suggest that "feeling bad is grounds for serious concerns" (Damour, 2024, p. 21). What the author tries to highlight in the introduction is to accept and recognize the full scope of human emotion and feelings and how it all connects to form the capacity for resilience and flexibility, the stuff that life is made from.
Chapter 1: Adolescent Emotion 101: Getting Past Three Big Myths
Chapter 1 is lengthy and tackles three myths of adolescent emotion.
Myth 1: Emotion is the Enemy of Reason
"… when it comes to decision making, we ought to view our emotions as occupying one seat on our personal board of directors. Other spots on the board might be held by ethical considerations, our personal ambitions, our obligations to others, financial or logistical constraints, and so on. Ideally, these board members will work together to help us make careful, informed choices about how we will conduct our lives. And this metaphor, emotions have a vote though it's rarely a deciding one period and they don't chair the board" (Damour, 2024 p. 6).
I like the above metaphor because it reminds me of the Pixar Movie, Inside Out. In the movie, one emotion may take over from time to time,, but the human brain's complexity is not as simple as the cartoon makes it out to be. Everything works together to provide insight and data to inform our decisions and how to proceed further properly. Damour (2024) writes that "whether painful or pleasant, emotions are fundamentally informational." Emotions, when broken down, allow us to understand what's going on and how we're interpreting the data that we're experiencing. Later on the page, emotion is described as "a constant stream of messengers arriving with updates on how things are going"(p.8).
We have all witnessed and experienced our teenagers (ourselves included) engaging in the time-honored traditions of risky behavior. What psychologists have uncovered is that the teenage brain is often locked into a binary choice; "assessing danger in the cold light of day" and "I'm with my friends, and we're having fun" (p.13). These two binary choices allow us to understand that our teenagers can be both capable and reasonable in one minute, and when the environment changes, they change with it. In the middle school setting, I have primarily seen this at the lunch table, at recess, or in gym class, where the large number of students combined with the unaware pressure of friends have transformed some students into something that we may not recognize in another setting. It was comforting for me to realize that the "cold and hot cognition" (p.13) is completely normal for students to transfer and get into.
Myth 2: Big Emotions are bad for teens
This myth hit the educator in me hard. As I grew as a teacher, I realized that sometimes me trying to help them through something was not helping them at all. In fact, I was teaching them that I would do the work and that their role in my classroom was passive. The author touches on this by stating some major points that they felt as though were some of the pillars that they constructed that would be best for our students.
Pillar 1: Emotional Pain promotes maturation
Pillar 2: Teenagers are built to withstand a great deal of discomfort, and they mature as they do.
The trap that Damour (2024) then calls out the dangers of relying on the wisdom that our mistakes have given us. We can see further down the road than the youth we work with. We can see the train coming and know how it will end up if we don't move our hand to the wheel and alter the course. This is the trap.
Damour (2024) argues that without the subsequent crash that occurs from the mistakes that are made, we are robbing our youth of the opportunity to gain that same wisdom and to help them develop experience, wisdom, and the subsequent resiliency that we learn through our mistakes. They argue instead to walk the fine line between helping too much and not enough. "While adolescents benefit from learning how to swim through choppy emotional waters, they should never be allowed to feel as though that they're drowning. You know your child, should trust your assessment, and should guard against stressful situations that might overpower your teens coping resources" (Damour, 2024, p. 24). This tightrope that we have to walk can be imagined as a safety net, we're there when they fall so that the hurt isn't too extreme but by falling lessons and experience are earned.
Myth 3: With their amped-up emotions, teens are psychologically fragile
We have seen and been 'victimized' by the teenager's mood swings, and this can be concerning because we might look at these episodes as signs of turmoil and trouble. This calls us into action, to help, to solve, and to move towards a place of comfort and security. However, Damour (2024) writes that there are reasons to be reassured by these uncomfortable situations.
1. Teens carry themselves differently at home than they do in the real world.
What you see at home is not a real representation of how they're behaving in other avenues.
2. Mental health is not about feeling good; it's about feeling the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings.
Piggybacks on the conversation and idea that experiencing the spectrum of human emotions is a good thing.
3. Teens have defensive mechanisms that act like circuit breaks that help combat emotional overload.
Combating the three myths allows us (Parents/guardians and educators) to understand and accept the fact that students have to experience in order to learn, and though it may not look pretty or be pleasant to deal with, it's through these experiences that build the soft skills and wisdom that is necessary for us to develop into capable adults and human beings. We want to be there as individuals to help the kids we work with, and sometimes, that help may look different depending on the situation.
Hope you enjoyed reading this captivating first part of the book review! To make this experience more interactive, we invite you to share your thoughts, questions and comments. For questions and comments related to this book review, please email us at vvp79@hotmail.com or you can reply to this email.
Dr. Kidd will respond to your inquiries, offering insights from both his perspective as an educator and his detailed reading of the book.
