Emotional Fire Walls

After attending the 3rd International Middle Schooling Conference, in Adelaide, a couple of weeks ago I was left with a vast array of information to sift through. Three weeks on and a few things have stuck in my mind, one of these was a comment by Michael Carr-Gregg in his Keynote How to Build a Resilient Teenager: The 5 Secrets to Building Tough Teens, regarding Emotional Fire Walls. Michael briefly commented that teenagers are hiding behind Emotional Fire Walls and not engaging or interacting with their families.

Teenagers come home from school and sit down at the computer or lock themselves in their rooms after school and claim they are researching, doing home work or simply having some down time by playing a game online or listening to some music. These activities continue throughout the evening taking away from family time; and teenagers (to a large extent) are no longer debriefing with their parents, spending time chatting about their day, discussing the various issues/challenges that arose and simply sharing their lives with their parents.

Some people may view these Emotional Fire Walls as a result of the boom in communication technologies over the past decade. Our teens are increasingly using the latest communication technologies. Be it instant messaging, email or text messages adolescents create and maintain their vast networks through a number of electronic means. However, when the going gets tough they are not sorting their problems out face to face but rather via other means. It is easier, emotionally, to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend via a text message than to stand in front of them and face up to the reality the effect your actions have on another human being. It is easier to slander another person via MSN than to walk up to them and air your feelings as you watch the pain register on their face. We know that the "Dear John" letter existed well before this generation of teens, that bullying has taken various forms and that people who don't want to face up to thier problems will use whatever means available to avoid the discomfort their actions will cause them. As such it is not solely the technological revolution that has created these Emotional Fire Walls but have simply become another vehicle available to teens who want to disconnect from the world around them.

The question is how do we break down these Fire Walls. The issue of teenagers using their home computers as an escapisim needs to be adressed from the home. Ideas such as computers being located in a common area, not a closed bedroom have been thrown around for some time. Whilst this is important to promote internet safety within the home and ensure teenagers are not being exposed to innappropriate content whilst online, it does not necessarily open up a line of communication between adolescent and their parents.

Doing Things Together a study on adolescent mental health and family ritual found that "youngsters with mental health complaints ate less frequently with both parents than the youngsters in the comparison group. They also shared less activities and practised less family rituals—union and life cycle—than the families of the youngsters in the comparison group, and showed a lower level of satisfaction in perceived family function." (E Compañ, J Moreno, M T Ruiz and E Pascual).

We know that adolescent mental health is impacted by thier sense of connectedness. In schools we aim to provide students with mastery, we understand that one significant adult can impact on a student's life and we strive to provide safe environments for students to take risks. Parents need to actively break down the Emotional Fire Walls set up by thier adolescent children; an opportunity for them to do this is: to sit down over dinner and create a family ritual of discussion with their teens, to allocate family time when the television and computer are off and to become active in their children's lives.

This is not my job, I am a student counsellor and I am not in these homes each day after school. I can't break these Fire Walls down at home. But I can build their resilience at school by explorinng Carr-Greeg's five secrets:
1 By being a Charismatic Adult
2 Providing opportunities for them to develop Social Emotional Competencies
3 Fostering their Spirituality (their sense of Menaing, Purpose and Belonging)
4 Encouraging Positive Self Talk
5 Creating opportunities for them to attain and acknowledging their Islands of Competence through healthy risks.

In doing this we can hope to make a difference.