So what do you tell your teenagers...
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Wednesday July 16 2008
'How are we going to tell the children?' is the biggest worry for families facing financial difficulties.
Teenagers may be angry at the sudden turn for the worse in the family's fortunes -- wondering why they can't have the designer clothes, latest trainers and treats being lavished on friends with wealthier parents.
Gerry Dowling of MABS in Dundrum, Dublin, says that parents find it very difficult to have to tell their teenagers about the family's money worries and then hearing how their teenagers' friends are getting 'this, that and the other'.
"I had one woman come in, very upset, after her 14-year-old had asked: 'Are we poor?'" he revealed.
"In general, the biggest problem parents face is struggling to moderate things without affecting the children too drastically and disrupting their lives -- particularly if they're approaching the Leaving Cert."
However, MABS encourage parents to pick a time to have an adult conversation with their teenagers about their financial troubles and approach the problem together, because teenagers generally want to be treated as young adults.
"People find it hard to do but in a number of instances are quite surprised at the positive and generous response of their children," Gerry said.
In one case, he recalled, a teenage son who had a part time job in a garage at weekends went straight up to his bedroom after his mother told him the family were having a bad time financially, came back down and handed his mother €100.
In a similar situation, another teenage boy decided to take up busking on the streets to make some money.
Orla McHugh, an adolescent psychotherapist at the Celtic Cubs centre in Dublin's Rathgar and author of the book Celtic Cubs: Inside the Mind of the Irish Teenager, has come to the somewhat startling conclusion that the recession may not be the worst thing for young people who had previously been led to believe that the world is their oyster.
"I think a lot of middle-class children have been very spoiled -- things have been given to them on a plate and there was a sense of entitlement," she says.
"Parents may even feel relieved that they now have an excuse to impose sanctions and cutbacks, as, before, they may have found it easier just to go along with what their children wanted."
However she concedes that the situation is completely different when it comes to families in real financial difficulty.
If parents have to sell their house and downsize, things will be particularly bad because self-conscious teenagers find it difficult to talk about and deal with changing family circumstances, such as parental separation.
In this situation, the strain on the family will be immense, she warned, impacting on parental relations.
Teenagers will mostly react angrily, lashing out verbally at their parents, and may act up by failing to abide by the usual rules, while in other cases, teenagers may become quiet and withdrawn.
- Nicola Anderson
