adolescents- salt in adult wounds

Adults and adolescence

Dean was having a talk with his Dad about his difficulties with work experience. It began to get out of hand. His Dad had worked in the same place for twenty years and pointed out that boring routine was just part of life. Eventually Dean exploded “you don’t have twenty years of work experience anyway- you've had one year of work experience twenty times- I want to do better than that!” After that sentence Dean and his Dad said more hurtful things to each other and then went in different directions to lick their wounds. At times in their conversation it would have been difficult to tell the difference between the adolescent and the adult.

The road through adolescence is often potholed with such destructive exchanges. It is made more difficult because an adult may well be feeling much of the same anger and confusion as the adolescent. In fact, adolescents and their parents may be struggling on the same road but heading in the opposite direction: Whereas adolescents are heading excitedly into the freedom of early adulthood, their parents are leaving it behind with varying levels of reluctance and success. The emotional turbulence of adolescence is closely mirrored in the adult middle years. Whilst the adolescent looks forward to life with increasing zest the parents are often looking backwards and wondering how to use their dwindling energies better. Parents and adolescents are in the same confusing place on the road, but travelling in different directions. One is heading towards young adult life, the other is slipping inevitably, and perhaps angrily, away from it. When psychologists look at adolescence they suggest at least three areas of change that signal the move from childhood to adolescence. Older adults are not immune from any of them

The first area is change in the body itself, an adolescent becomes overwhelmed and absorbed by the way their body is developing and how it looks to others. Fashion, make up, hairstyles and appropriate muscle development can seem vital to an adolescent in claiming their own identity and sexuality. But just as the adolescent gazes into the bathroom mirror for hours, their mother or father may well be surveying a less welcome set of bodily changes in their own wardrobe mirror. The fight to stay fit may still be won- but at a greater cost. The lines around the eyes and mouth need a more cunning camouflage and it is increasingly difficult to hide the image of their own ageing parents emerging from the wardrobe mirror. The body of an adolescent and the body of a parent are saying different things but the effect is the similar- confusion and change. For the adult, the adolescent focus on the body can only tend to emphasise their own loss of youth, providing much emotional fuel for a holy war.

A second area of change is in relationships. Adolescent development depends to some extent upon identifying with a group and distancing themselves from dependence on their parents. Letting go of dependence may be gentle or turbulent but engaging in new relationships will be both frightening and exciting. Friendships, gossip, betrayals, first love and group loyalty energise and exhaust the adolescent at the same time. But the adult’s relationships are not stable either. Perhaps a parent has broken up with their partner or their best friend has divorced in a way that questions their own key relationships. If all else is well an adult in their forties will be increasingly aware of changing relationship with their own parents: their health, dependency, talk of wills and the need for care. Just when they are being challenged to let go of responsibility for their children, the adult is also asked to sensitively absorb more responsibility for their own parents as they move to the end of their lives. Such reflection may leave even the mature parent in an emotional storm not too different from that of their adolescent child. The difference between the emotional storms is that the adolescent’s is focussed on the optimistic buoyancy of new beginnings whilst the adult storm will focus on re-negotiating established relationships and letting go as they move into older adulthood themselves.

The third area of focus for adolescence is the future. So much teenage time is spent dreaming and planning that they might seem to have left the present moment, and the planet, entirely. For the parent of an adolescent the future looks a little more down to earth. The time they thought they had seems to have evaporated. It is half time in their working life. For the adult it becomes important to re-value the time they have and they may resent the abandon with which their children treat time. Adult choices may well need to change in order to achieve some of the dreams they abandoned before the family arrived. Parents may feel the need to change their life style just at the time when their adolescent children need them to be most consistent. In fact, as the adolescent breaks away from parents, the parents too may quietly need to detach themselves from the adolescents in order to move forward on their own journey.

Don Bosco[i] was aware that working with adolescents would often be very confusing.  The challenge of walking with adolescents was for him a path to maturity and holiness for adults on their own spiritual journey. Parents, teachers, youth-workers and catechists all face the challenge on a regular basis. The Salesian charism offers each of them a style of working based on the good shepherd who guides and protects and seeks out what is lost. But Don Bosco also offers in the preventive system a way for the adult to grow spiritually. Through the experience of working with the adolescents their relationship with the good shepherd is tested and deepened. Working with adolescents invites confusion and Challenge. It opens up the valley of shadow of death hidden in each person where the Lord alone is the shepherd, guiding the concerned parent, teacher or youth worker to deeper awareness and greener pastures.

As the adult parent or teacher or youth worker begins to see the traces of age mark their own body they can become vulnerable and uncertain about themselves. In order to deal with the ingratitude and inconsistency of adolescents they need the deeper reassurance of a good shepherd from within themselves. The affirmation the teacher and parent need must come from a more intimate sense that they are known by name and accepted as they are by an inner wisdom. By giving time to this gentle acceptance the parent and educator can move deeper into relationship with an inner good shepherd and find the calm sense of an inner presence that lies at the heart of the preventive system. The adolescent of course, can easily shatter this new intimacy and calmness but that too, is part of the journey. Those moments of conflict may even lead the adult toward jealousy of their own children, resentment of the teenager’s open future or just sadness about the adult’s own lost youth. Or maybe, recognising the presence of the good shepherd in those darker feelings about work with adolescents, the parent or educator may find a gentler acceptance that their own journey has moved on. The good shepherd can then transform the tensions of the adolescent-adult relationship into a rich source of growth and a tailor made challenge to maturity and faith.

One of the greatest spiritual gifts adolescents offer to older people is their ability to rub salt into adult compromises with life. Their young and sometimes innocent questions remind us older people of how much is wrong with the world we are handing on to them. They ruthlessly remind us that it is already later in life than we think and how we play out the second half of life will be different from the first. Adolescents remind us that there is no standing still on the journey, no resting on adult laurels but rather a change in pace and depth of life. The adolescent awakens an urgent call in the adult to a deeper spiritual journey. Disturbing, confusing and idealistic the adolescents stands, like John the Baptist, inviting us to prepare a new way in what may appear to be the wilderness of our middle years. With the presence of the good shepherd and the wisdom of Don Bosco both adolescent and adult find richness in sharing that journey, even if they are travelling in different directions.

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[i] A saint and educator who established a way of working and a spirituality for parents and teachers in the second half of the 19^th centur

A salesian way of living

A new publication

This rule of life attempts to capture the Salesian spirituality of the ordinary. It is not meant to be clever and it requires little prior knowledge to appreciate. The energy of Salesian spirituality comes from mindfulness of a loving father within each person. This awareness gives hope, deepens meaning and lends resilience to relationships. This rule of life is intended to strengthen the awareness of a loving father so that, as Don Bosco reminded us “…people should not only be loved but they should know that they are loved.”

An extract.....

The only proper responses to this presence

liv£1.81ing within you and in those around you

are gratitude and loving kindness.

Gratitude opens you up to receive a family spirit

moving in all people and in creation.

Loving kindness becomes the outward sign

of the respect for this sacred presence

living at the heart of all people;

it breaks through the isolation of all individuals

and builds community.

Download  here £1.81
Buy it here         £6.00

One Review……

A Salesian Way of Life is a real treasure. The best 43 pages for the least handful of pence you are likely to spend for a while. We know that a 'Rule of Life' is common to religious communities, with roots going back to Benedict and other 'Greats'. But a 'Rule' might still be off-putting for some today, so it was an inspired little touch to come out with A Salesian Way of Life, and as the author, Fr David O'Malley, suggests the book is an invitation to 'be Salesian' whoever you are, whatever gender, faith background

The hidden work of parents and teachers

I remember taking care of some disadvantaged children on a summer holiday when I saw one of them on a fragile some fifteen feet above the ground. He was unaware of his danger. I remember speaking to him very calmly and patiently asking him to move to safety but inside I was full of a kind of terror that he would be hurt. My stomach was churning, heartbeat raised- all the signs of high stress. Yet none of that came through in my voice. Somehow I was acting a professional role and masking my inner stress.

We expect professional control in teachers and we find it in parents who may be seething inside at the arrogance or selfishness of their children but refuse to be provoked. This is wonderful self discipline. It saves situations and keeps all those involved calm and focussed through challenges. It enshrines the power of reason and talk to solve problems and teaches how to manage poor behaviour. Because it is not a gut reaction it allows respect to be maintained and the relationship preserved- it keeps things safe. But it costs.
The cost is psychological because the parent or the teacher has to split off strong emotion from the context. This inner work needs to be done consciously and reflected on later and perhaps talked about with others. The tension, anger, or disappointment needs to be earthed and the effort to control ones inner world recognised.Then the bridge between the professional/parental role and the inner world of the teacher or parent can be strengthened.
There is a hidden heroism about this work and it needs to be celebrated by parental support and strong school relationships. This is our work as educators and parents: not to share information but to build character and resilience in young people so that they can help to build a civilisation of love in the years to come.

Watch this video for a quick 1 minute description of this topic

The east and west of spiritual experiences among young adults

Alone in a quiet chapel in Eastern Europe, a young woman is making a retreat.  Without warning she suddenly feels that she is being hugged from behind with a great tenderness. She did not move an inch because she knew that no one else was in the chapel. She had been hugged by God, she told me.

On a hillside in a Mediterranean country a lorry is out of control, sliding down a narrow coastal road. It turns over and slides to a halt inches from a family car parked at a view point on the cliff edge. Watching from the back seat of the car is a fourteen year old boy who looks up at the huge juggernaut in shock. As he looks he is overcome with a sense of God’s goodness and protection for him and his family. Despite the shock he feels a great peace and safety. God’s hand has moved in his life.

It is the evening before his Granddad’s funeral and a young Belgian sits thinking about life and death. Suddenly he is overwhelmed by a feeling that everything is one and that somehow everything is God. It came with a huge sense of being loved and a strong sense of peace.

These stories emerged easily from a series of short conversations during a Salesian Youth event in Brussels called Eurizon. There were fourteen European national groups involved. All of those interviewed were able to recount an experience that brought them close to a presence or a power in their lives that was different from their normal sense of awareness.

The young people all spoke excellent English but they still found that words failed them in this area of experience. “I felt huge as a person, as if I filled the whole world, but very small and vulnerable too” one young person reported. Another person said simply “I felt like I was part of everything” None of the young people felt they had expressed themselves clearly enough because as one said “the experience was too big for words.”

Interestingly, few of the young people had ever spoken about these experiences to anyone else. It was too intense and personal according to some, too vague or strange according to others. When they were shared it was more likely to be with a friend rather than a family member. The experiences all happened alone, even if others were around, and were recognised as intended only for the individual concerned.

Sat on a cliff top in Malta a young adult is overcome by the beauty of the view. She is overcome too by a sense of peace and calm that seems to come from inside and soak into her from the outside as well. It is an experience that she goes back to when she feels low in spirit or in confidence. The girl hugged by God in the chapel finds that the memory of that experience sustains her through hard times and gives her an inner strength, a sense of partnership with God. The boy involved in the lorry accident above is strengthened in his trust in God and he finds it easier to do the right thing when under pressure.

All of these young people recognise the sacred nature of these experiences that have so much in common with each other. But there were also some differences in the way that different nationalities spoke about such moments in their lives.

Young adults from Eastern Europe were quicker to name such experiences as religious, as from God. Those from Western Europe were sometimes reluctant to put any religious label on their increased awareness. For the eastern Europeans it seems that these experiences confirm their formal religious faith and for western Europeans the experience seems to challenge formal faith.

For eastern Europeans there was a strong sense of duty emerging from the experience. They came away with a sense of obligation to do the right thing and to live morally and peacefully alongside others. For western Europeans the moral and social sense was almost entirely absent, to be replaced by an intense personal feeling. They were less likely than eastern Europeans to connect their experience to church or an external moral code.

For eastern European youth, church seems to be offering a strong setting for interpreting these experiences in a religious language. The church is seen as a trusted friend, a sustainer of people in time of war and oppression and a stable focus when government and politics are in chaos. In the west the church is seen as well meaning but out of touch with reality for young adults. Therefore the young person may prefer to hang on to the vague personal nature of the experience and is far less likely to share it with others. It becomes a privatised experience.

For all these young people the experiences have been life changing. For one Belgian it leads her to appreciate nature and to keep searching it for a sense of the sacred. For another eastern European, the experience has strengthened his conscience to do the right thing and admit his faults more often. For another western European youth, his sense of empathy has increased alongside a respect for nature and the environment. For another it is the challenge of coping with an illness through the energy of dream where she is embraced by a figure of Mary the mother of Jesus. For another it is the ability to work hard for exams with a sense of purpose and energy that were not there before the experience happened.

These life-changing experiences are scattered through young lives in a way that should reassure that they are never far from the presence of God. What they make of them depends very much on how the young people feel about their church and culture. I will leave one of the young voices to have the final word:

“I felt hugged from behind. It was so real, a real presence, that I had to look behind me to check. There was no one there. I felt so strong, so filled with life. I was connected to everything and everyone. Whatever happens to me, I know I can live from this experience for many years.”

In praise of head teachers

In praise of head teachers

The difficulty in appointing head teachers in schools is easy to understand. The role involves the balancing of complex pressures in a constantly changing educational setting. It demands resilience and a range of skills that few of us possess. They are a group of people who, in my long experience, are courageous, committed and are likely to be motivated much more by faith than by ambition. In common with many bishops they stand at the meeting point between the Gospel and the local secular world, between religion and a practical atheism. They also bridge the gap between home and school, between the almost industrial mentality of some educational policy and the self sacrifice of staff. They hold together different generations of teachers by maintaining an ethos and tradition that reaches back to former pupils and out into the wider community. They are people that can be stretched at times beyond their limits.

Yet the figure of the head teacher is often portrayed as a manager of target-based learning and someone who is only as good as the latest set of exam results. This mechanistic and almost industrial model of the role as arranging inputs (learning) and outputs (exam results) is a narrow and demeaning view of the head teachers role as the spiritual leader of a catholic learning community. The head teacher is undoubtedly responsible for learning and results but the quality of the learning will depend not just on what happens with the curriculum but also upon the relationships that make up the community. The exam results will only catch part of the learning that happens in the classroom and school community. Much of the richness bequeathed to pupils in a catholic school will only emerge in later life, in family living, parenting, commitment to citizenship and to church. The narrow culture of measurement and the repressive, almost medieval, practice of “blame and shame” leave our head teachers at risk of going over to the “dark side” and adopting narrow mechanical and superficial ways of working and thinking or simply burning themselves out with the loneliness and responsibility involved in holding so many pressures in balance.

As a catholic community we need to recognise and value the amazing men and women who lead our catholic schools in this country. They lead a church community within diocesan structures that are more difficult to maintain. Few people in our church community appreciate all the pressures under which they labour and we need to be aware of some of the issues with which they manage each day:

·       They need to continually improve results in order to avoid slipping down the written and unwritten competitive league tables that might lead to bad publicity, falling roles, amalgamations and even closure.

·       Head teachers have to respond clearly and quickly to new educational initiatives that can seem to come from outside the local community.

·       The head teacher has to provide ongoing and relevant training for all staff and be skilled in advertising, selecting and recruiting suitable staff as well as dealing with grievances and terminating employment in a just and Gospel-based way.

·       The demands of the local deanery for more effective religious education that will bring older pupils back to practice are a further complex and legitimate challenge to which a head teacher must respond.

·       Issues of health and safety, relationship education, budgeting and policy management are a regular and time-consuming focus for every head teacher.

·       In addition the head teacher is asked to maintain the spirit and ethos of the school so that each pupil and member of staff has the experience, whatever their faith background, of a gospel-based community where spirit and activity are integrated in each person.

These are just some of the roles that I know keep many head teachers late at work and at times distant from their own families. They take work home and live and breathe a role that begins to need the constant support of their whole family. They see themselves as setting the tone for the whole school, modelling a work ethic for colleagues and absorbing responsibility for tasks that are often difficult to delegate. Many head teachers with whom I have worked know that they are doing a good job and are very close to the limits of their energy for long periods as they balance the secular and spiritual dimensions of their role. What they sometimes lack is the recognition that bonds them supportively with the community in which they serve. The encouragement head teachers need will come only rarely from the inspectorate structure and more often from the local authority. The most important sustained support a head teacher needs must always come from within the school community; from parents, governors, pupils and staff.

Parents need to see beyond performance to the person of the head teacher as a spiritual leader in their community and not simply a service provider for the local authority.  Perhaps parents more than most others will recognise in the head a shared commitment and care for the young especially in the confusion of adolescent lives. Governors need to find time to read between the lines of the meetings they attend and support the head at times of celebration as well as during times of trouble or change. Teachers need to take good news into the head’s office and try to use the middle leaders in school to resolve problems before going to the head teacher. Pupils simply need to say thank you to the head teacher when they can, admit their mistakes honestly and enjoy the spirit of the school.

Saint John Bosco recognised the importance of leadership and offered the image of the Good Shepherd as a model for leaders of church based communities. It is a challenging model for the leader; to seek out the lost, establish safe places, and lay down ones own life at times for what really matters. Head teachers feel that responsibility to live the Good shepherd model at the heart of the school community. However, the Good Shepherd model is for the whole school community not just the leader. We are all called to shepherd the spirit of love, of truth, of justice and compassion in the school community. Therefore the head teacher also needs to feel shepherded through concern for them as a person. The head needs to hear good news as well as difficulties from staff. They need to hear praise and recognition for their role and their informal presence in school and the work they do beyond the school site.

Don Bosco’s believed that praise, recognition and encouragement gave strength to the inner spirit and helped people to remain humble and strong in the service of others. May we find time in our conversations to recognise, praise and encourage those men and women who lead our catholic schools. If they experience the warmth and understanding of their community they can then find even more strength to face the daily challenge to build, on our behalf, a new spiritual community in a secular age

Caught in the froth of measured learning

Many teachers face an impossible set of expectations from society in their educational role. Most teachers are motivated by concern for young people and feel that the focus only on measurable assessed outcomes diminishes their role and does not meet the needs of young people. On the other hand families and society now expect education to instill values especially moral responsibility in young people. But those expectations are not taken it into account when making judgements about schools.
OFSTED the schools inspectorate in England and Wales, have a wonderful evaluation document on spiritual and moral aspects of education. It is inspiring, useful and recognises the broader reach of an holistic education. But it lies on the shelf, gathering dust and is rarely used to evaluate and recognise the softer skills of teachers. In practice it doesn't count.

 Our politicians want teachers to produce measurable results within the term of office of  a government. They seem to be satisfied with a narrow view of education that will use exam progress as a sign of success when many young people  are falling apart inside. Faced with a spectrum of social needs that inhibit learning in some young people in every class a teacher has to assume some of the responsibility of a social worker in order to motivate young people to learn. This work is done individually, vocationally and at great personal cost to teachers. Because it is not recognised and approved it may wither on the vine of the teaching career- yet it is probably the most valuable work that they do.

In dealing consistently, patiently and personally with dis-functional elements in each class at teacher models respect and moral strength not only to the challenging young people but to the whole of the class.They teach young people how to be adults in society. The assessment based curriculum has almost squeezed out this vital aspect of learning to the impoverishment of the whole school community. There is no time for deeper learning and the development of wisdom has been replaced with the froth of information and measured learning.

Teaching: a matter of the heart

Today, all across the world, teachers are performing minor miracles. In every classroom they are engaging with young people in a way that brings them to life and fills out the school curriculum with the hidden curriculum needed to be a balanced human being. They achieve this miracle by dealing with each class and every student with respect, understanding affection and humour. These four aspects of relationships make teachers strong in laying down clear boundaries, warm hearted, empathetic and cheerful.

The students learn lessons modelled by the behaviour of the teacher.  The teacher, dealing patiently with outrageous adolescent behavior teaches a powerful lesson in relationship building. The teacher who is passionate about her subject transmits the energy for learning before content is considered. The teacher who can laugh and remain cheerful under pressure teaches resilience and the teacher who notices pain in the students can teach compassion. Such things are not on the curriculum but without them lives would fall apart and community would be impossible. We are teachers, not instructors because education is a matter of the heart.

respect, understanding affection and humour- the initial letters spell out ruah- the word for spirit in arabic and hebrew scripture- the energy that creates community.

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