Without any intention to offend, she said,
“You therapists talk a lot about self-esteem and adolescence like it’s all bad, like everything’s falling apart, but I don’t think you’re having a full public conversation about it. See, I think a lot of what happens to these kids is actually good. When the kids get their hormones, they get sultry and brooding and all that, but they also get so damn proud. Well, I think Nature has a solution to that. I think that solution is “low self-esteem.” I’d say, let’s have a little more of that low self-esteem in those adolescent kids. They need it! My kids all had their share of low self-esteem and all five of them turned out quite well, thank you.”
What a wonderful, even shocking comment this was. Pearl was talking about the normal narcissistic self-absorption that’s so common during early adolescence—a natural part of a child’s neural, physical, and emotional transition from childhood to adulthood. She was instinctively making the link between hormone flow, brain chemistry, and expansion of the core personality during puberty. She was further indicating from her experience that each child experiences “pride” a little differently and has individual internal resources with which to cope. I was being called to deepen my therapeutic thinking on self-esteem by a grandmother who wanted me, and all of us, to see all sides of the trend in self-esteem research that was burgeoning then. This grandmother seemed to me to be saying, “Don’t forget about human nature. It’s an interesting new trend, the self-esteem conversation, but go deeper. Look at the nature of each of these kids. Other things are happening in kids, too, that you’re simplifying too much.”
Indeed, because of comments like hers, my parenting experiences, and research into pubescent biology, I have found myself constantly reshaping my understanding of early adolescent children. And while raising two daughters of my own, I’ve found myself seconding Pearl’s ideas. These early adolescents who become dark one moment, then want a hug the next; whose self-esteem drops one moment, crests the next… each of them is unique, experiencing pride, brooding, toughness, vulnerability, and the whole range of emotions and behaviors in their own natural and particular way. Their whole sense of self is shifting from child to adult with the help of social signals, but from a base of internal experiences that they will probably never again perceive quite the same way. They are in puberty—and they desperately need us to nurture their individual natures.
Michael Vincent 09/10/07
Michael Gurian is a brilliant writer and thinker—as is the grandmother he quotes who applauds low self-esteem in teenagers. While I’m not sure I agree with that, I do feel that a lot of parents over-think what they are doing with their kids, and the result is a mishmash of inconsistency. I think parents who listen a lot see these changes happening in their kids, and they can better understand when their child is just trying a new personality on for size, and when they are really about to leap off the deep end. I’m trying to be that kind of parent.
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