Catholic Education, Pt. 8

Rev. Fr. Alain Delagneau

In this part of our continuing series on Catholic education, we will discuss the different stages of a child's development and advise parents on how to deal with them.

The Emancipation Crisis (11-12 Years)

This stage first shows itself as a kind of hidden resistance, of passive obstinacy. The child doesn't necessarily dare to brashly affirm himself upfront, but displays an attitude of disdainful boredom, especially toward his mother. This attitude remains consistent and can weigh down the entire family. The child drags his feet when asked to help. His disdain becomes more open. He thinks he is too old for advice and shrugs his shoulders when it is given (e.g., "Be sure to take a coat," "Leave on time," "Wash your hands."). He often expresses superiority or disdain at school for his teachers.

Puberty is not there yet, but nature is preparing its onset. In the case of a boy, he will begin at home to distance himself from his sisters. To be a real boy, he must be allowed to play with boys as old as or even older than himself. The pre-pubescent boy will put his little brothers aside to give preference to his older friends.

At this time, the mother, who up to now often has played the larger part in his education, should ease up, be less constant, detach herself from the life of her son, and give up her protective attitude. On the other hand, she must remain accessible when the boy wants to express his feelings or show affection. In the main, however, the mother must clearly give way to her husband now. The boy cannot bear feminine authority. He needs a masculine authority, that is, virile authority, tougher, less detailed, and also less lenient than that of mother. Virile authority is still affectionate, however, but is shown less by caress and emotion and more by principled living and exemplary duty. Though he may not be aware of it, the boy needs this virility in order to step out of childhood and into the critical stage of adolescence.

The Beginning of Puberty ( 12- 13 Years)

With the approach of puberty, the boy roughens and coarsens. Most often, he becomes a tease. He has need of boasting about all sorts of things, often exaggerating in order to sound bigger than he really knows himself to be. The desire to advertise achievement, however, can be utilized by the father to push his son higher, and this ultimately to setting his sight on heaven. A boy at this stage is very sensitive to reprimand–especially in public before an audience unknown to him–and will rebel against it rather than accept it. He is eager for freedom and independence, and family affection is not alone satisfying. He will show a tendency towards a corporal selfishness. He is hard, insensitive, always ready to satisfy himself without a thought for others. If he has not grown up used to work and hard play and is allowed to find solitude in fantasy games and laziness, he will become especially curious and attracted by indecent publications, software, and pictures. He will lose whatever taste he may have had for work and will slide into nonchalance and day-dreaming which corresponds to his selfish desire for sensuality. The fact remains, however, that he will feel a need to show his strengths in whatever area and attempt to attract attention and admiration for them. He will tend to tease girls, even his own mother, and engage in over-familiar behavior and gestures towards them in order to show a certain superiority even though it be false.

The manifestations of coming puberty in a girl are different from that of the boy. She tends to daydream. This fantasy is about nothing precise, really. She becomes moody, and her moods will vary from exuberance to melancholy without any seeming relation to external events. She dreams airily, unconsciously distracted by the feminine desire of loving and being loved. She looks for signs of sensitive affection from her friends by which she knows a certain selfish gratification. The rather childish vanity of boys finds its correspondence in the flirtatiousness of the girl who now becomes conscious of the attraction of her blossoming beauty.

Characteristics of the Difficult Age ( 13 -1 5 Years)

In this period of puberty one can find simultaneous and contradictory factors, e.g., instability, independence, a need to admire oneself, and a desire to love (whatever that may mean to a youngster) and to give oneself.

Instability

When a child is young, he is absorbed in the present. He is not preoccupied with other things. For the adolescent, the present is no longer enough, he starts looking to face the future. He dreams. He imagines being a hero. But all this is fleeting fancy. What is in fact going on is that the child is searching for an identity. This is why he is anxious, why he lacks self-control, why he doesn't rule his passions. He becomes inconsistent, extreme in his views, his behavior, and his feelings. Parents verbalize the behavior of children at this age by comments like, "I don't know him any more," "She doesn't know what she wants," "She just can't be relied upon anymore," "He changes his mind all the time." This instability is shown in various spheres.

Physically the child becomes less generous. Without good reason, he becomes less available. He is bored in games. He is erratic at school. He may start projects enthusiastically, but more often than not, he gives up and achieves nothing. Still, he tries here and there; he tries his hand at everything.

In feelings, instability becomes evident. Feelings may be bubbly one day but are gone the next. Friendships are not deep and most do not last. Within the family, the child at this age often is rude and distant. If you ask him why he no longer shows any thought or affection to family members, he will reject your inquiry. He will reply that he does not know why this is so, and, in fact, it is true that he doesn't because he doesn't understand himself.

Unless he is the rare individual that has received the forewarning of his parents graciously, the adolescent will not understand himself. He is in a chrysalis state. He is often without self-control. Alternately, he goes through extremes of utmost generosity and periods of cowardice, of sustained work and laziness and daydreaming, of eagerness in games and fatigue, of excessive sentimentality and cold indifference. Sometimes he may be embarrassed by his behavior and apologize for his attitude. Sometimes he will try to justify himself. The deep transformation the adolescent is going through is, in fact, a certain cross of confusion. He sees himself as unable to master himself. This makes of him a very weak person looking for diversions—oftentimes unhealthy ones—to distract him from this confusion and his deep personal feelings of ill-being.

Parents must be prepared to help counteract in their adolescent the excesses of a wandering imagination and a sensitivity which is near pathological.

Orientate the adolescent towards regular work with a precise goal. Though he does not know it nor why it is so, this is exactly what he needs. The work necessary to these projects may be large or small. In any case, their regular pursuit gives focus and their achievement offers healthy gratification. In this way the will is strengthened and the erosion of the powers of the soul is prevented.

This regular work can perhaps be related to a career to which he aspires or an authentic responsibility in the organization of the household. We personally suggest where possible that a young man be given responsibility for a small cash crop or livestock operation (e.g., organically-grown specialty vegetables or fruits, chickens, quail, etc.) For young women, creative handicrafts and quality baked goods are desirable. In any case, we must help the adolescent finish what he has started through his own initiative. He must develop a sense of duty and responsibility through his own initiatives with the support of his parents. Allow him to have more initiative by giving him the full responsibility of its realization and consequences. He must feel more free but at the same time must be aware of the responsibilities entailed by this freedom.

Because the adolescent often feels ill at ease in the family circle, he needs to have friends his own age. The challenge is not to oppose nor to unreasonably impede these tendencies, but to guide them. In proportion to the strength of your rapport with your adolescent, you will have influence over the choice of his friends and have confidence in allowing him to develop his friendships.

Independence

Independence has a few well-known characteristics, e.g., cut and dried judgments, a spirit of contradiction, to be too quickly judgmental or appreciative of people. It is the age when the child proceeds by brash, categorical statements. Deep down, the adolescent knows he is weak. He knows he is largely ignorant about many things. So, he gives himself airs of assurance and passes judgment on everything to assert himself, to show off. He can't bear to be contradicted. The way he passes judgment is aggressive and obstinate. Whoever does not agree with him is a fool even though, deep down, he is doing everything he can to keep from looking the fool himself. Therefore, he tries to impress his audience and asserts himself by opposing. Obviously, this does not mean he knows what he wants. It simply means that he wants to be noticed. He does not contradict to support his idea; he contradicts to refuse other people's ideas. In the mind of an adolescent, saying "No" is his way of having ideas. If you take him seriously he becomes argumentative. He insists on proving he is right. Even parents are not spared by the judgments of the adolescent because he wishes to appear independent of them and their counsel. He becomes impudent. This stage is dangerous because habits of pride develop and by dint of thinking that he is always right, he ends up killing the pangs of his conscience and finally warping it.

The great remedy for this aberrational behavior lies in the priest and the confessional. Parents must pray that the adolescent is willing to have recourse to this sacrament and have confidence in the confessor. The priest will help him to analyze his attitudes honestly and frequently and invite him to humble himself by admitting the subtle wrong through which he tries to delude himself. For some adolescents it will be the wise influence of a friend or an adult whom he admires and trusts that will remedy the danger.

The role of parents to deal with this situation will be strengthened by their proper judgment. They must not hurt his self-respect. They must not oppose him head on, but nor should they let him say or do anything he wishes. The skill consists in helping him, without ruffling his pride, to discover that the problem is not as simple as he saw it. The important thing is to talk with him, to treat him like an adult and not like a child on whom one imposes one's opinion. The great art of education here resides in conversations, in communication which is not one-sided. The objective is to help a mind that is without experience and is edgy with sensitive self-respect. The adolescent only confides in those who take him seriously and accept to examine with him on equal footing the problems which trouble him.

Along with this rather painful struggle for independence, you will also notice a self-consciousness about himself and his feelings. Generally, he does not want to talk about his problems and choices. These will only be revealed by his negative attitude. While he may say, "I don't have friends because I don't want to make any," what he really feels is a loneliness to have a friend. The adolescent is paradoxical; he tries to conceal his true feelings and aspirations while at the same time desiring to assert them. He plays hide and seek. The wise parent knows his child well enough to make a calculated guess about what's really going on inside.

Admiration

The adolescent is generally unsure about himself and wants to establish personal identity. His self-respect yearns that he be noticed, but he is aware that he does not yet have any serious reasons to be noticed. The yearning is so strong in an adolescent, however, that admiration at any cost replaces obedience and submission. He is fascinated by what he believes are superior human beings gifted with physical strength, brains, Hollywoodish social qualities, and financial success. Speed and violence are especially attractive to boys. Fashion, style, and sensate romanticism are attractive to girls. This is quite understandable because admiration is a mixture of freedom and submission; freedom because one chooses the object of one's admiration and submission since one bows to the person who fascinates. It is at this stage that false divinities in the world of sports, music, commerce, and entertainment can muck up an adolescent.

This is why parents must channel their admiration towards people who are worthy of it–friends, adults, and heroes and heroines of the past. If left to his own devices, an adolescent will admire anybody or anything. Ideally, this admiration should be given to parents. This is rare. Unfortunately, bad parents exacerbate the spirit of the world, which is already very strong against this.

The need to love and to give oneself

If we have agreed that a little child needs to be loved and surrounded by love, the older child needs to give love. For him, love should already consist more in giving than receiving. That is why the excessive demonstrations of affection from the mother will annoy him. As an adolescent he wants to choose his affections. He wants to take the initiative. This often makes him distant to the family.

The exception to this will be if the adolescent is successful in transforming old family ties into friendships. This can often be a painful trial for parents and they will say: "He does not love us any more," "He has become selfish," "He always goes out." It is possible that the older child can form true friendships, friendships which have the characteristics of genuine love, that is, to have a certain need of the other, having devotion toward each other, having constant thoughts of the other, etc. Selfish with the family, he is capable of giving himself entirely and being completely open with his friends. Some adolescents will be heady in showing off in front of girls their own age. They seem to want to attract them with their exploits (often foolish) and strength to provoke in them a feeling of admiration. However, they do not confide as true friends in the girls. They remain more open with their group of friends.

Parents are again reminded to encourage good friendships. Allow your older children the physical activity necessary for their development. Permit them to spend their energy in fruitful relationships. Try to maintain with them a relationship of trust and freedom.

In summary, the adolescent is a tormented little man or woman, worked up by confusing transformations which they know deep down they are not able to master on their own without help. Therefore they must be enlightened, strengthened, and guided with wisdom and proper judgment by their parents who allow to their older children a certain flexibility and consideration. This difficult and dangerous stage determines for a great part the rest of their life. The strength and virtue of our Lord, His Mother, and of the saints will help him and captivate him. He needs to discover a religion not of form and practice, but a virile religion which uplifts him and to which he can commit himself.

The blossoming of the adolescent is moving. In a few years his body acquires its adult vigor. Traits of character take shape. The heart is opened to honor and generosity. He will soon know the riches of love. The knowledge of duty is strengthened by the budding ideal. Conscience will be tested by temptation and strengthened. Faith takes deeper root. Adult life begins full of promises and ambitions.

(to be continued)

Fr. Alain Delagneau was ordained a priest of the Society of Saint Pius X in 1980 and is the head retreatmaster at the retreat house, Our Lady of Pointet in Escurolles, in central France. This article originally appeared in the French publication Marchons Droit, No. 44, 1988. It was translated by Fr. Gerard Ockerse, a priest of the Society of Saint Pius X, ordained in 1994, who is stationed at St. Joseph's Priory in Harare, Zimbabwe (Africa). This installment was heavily edited and adapted by Rev. Fr. Kenneth Novak.