Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Members of Students Taking a New Direction (STAND) at Saratoga High School offer programs to help their classmates understand many of the difficult issues facing teens.

Time Zone

In overscheduled Silicon Valley, many parents are too busy to talk to their teens

By Sandy Sims

The teenage years have always been difficult for both parents and teens. A long time ago Mark Twain even joked about sealing kids in a barrel when they turn 13 and feeding them through a hole. These turbulent years between childhood and adulthood are when a person is defining a self, going through major physical changes, becoming aware of the opposite sex, pulling away from parents, becoming independent and defining values.

Teens today go through this stage in a much more dangerous and complicated world than the one teens faced 20 or 30 years ago. A casual sexual encounter risks death from AIDS; attending a party can bring students into contact with drugs. Cars are faster and alcohol, readily available.

On top of this, teens are maneuvering through a high-tech, high-speed world of instant information and too many activities. They need a stable home and an understanding parent while they roll through this chaotic and confusing time.

But here in Silicon Valley, especially in affluent communities like Los Gatos and Saratoga, teens are running into a major problem. Mom and Dad are caught up in the frenzied, competitive, you-can-do-it-all world of demanding jobs, community activities and physical fitness. Many parents are so stressed out that they don't have energy left over to help their children through these tough years.

Noreen Likins, academic adviser at Saratoga High School, recognizes these issues at her school. "Our kids are from very successful parents," Likins says. "These successful parents are often driven. You don't accomplish great success without being very ambitious and putting in long hours at work." Their children pick up this drive and actually start competing in kindergarten.

Aside from their seven classes a day at SHS, students participate in sports, music lessons, clubs and other activities. They care very much how they do in class because they also want to get into the finer colleges. If they play basketball till 10 p.m., they go home afterward and do their homework till 2 or 3 a.m.

"In fact," Likins says, "they joke about not getting any sleep." The ones who do well are the ones who can manage their time.

According to Likins, Asian students make up 40 percent of the SHS population; she says that while these parents are available to their teens and give them all the structure and support in the world, the parents put great stock in measurable success.

Likins has had students in her office worried about their parents' reaction if they got a B. "The pressure is enormous on these kids," she says.

Between overscheduled parents and over-scheduled teens, few find the time to sit down and just be together or to discuss some of the heavier social problems.

Patricia Hughes,vice principal at Los Gatos High School in charge of curriculum, guidance and counseling, finds these same issues plaguing the families at her school. "When we call parents to come in and talk about a child on drugs or a child that has some other serious problem, the parents are so overstressed with their frenetic lives that they just don't have time for another problem," Hughes says. She has seen parents look at a child, point to their watch and say, "Do you know how much work I'm missing?"

She has found that sometimes students actually hide their problems to protect their parents. She's had them say to her, "Please don't tell my parents. They've got so much going on."

It's important for these teens to have a caring adult to talk to, and the school tries to meet this need. "However," Hughes says, "with all the cutbacks in funds, there are fewer caring adults available to serve these kids." To help meet that need, the Teen Counseling Center provides 15 hours of counseling at Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools each week.

Some students are trying to meet this need themselves. Several LGHS students have created a newsletter called Reality Check. This little publication written by and for the students at LGHS presents open, frank discussions such issues as divorce, death, depression, alcohol, drugs and eating disorders. Each newsletter deals with one subject. It opens with anonymous writings by students who describe their personal experiences, feelings and ideas related to the subject.

For example, the issue on death has seven student pieces about the death of a parent or a friend (five parent deaths). These are followed by a section written by licensed marriage, family and child counselor Beckie St. George, who gives helpful information on the subject. Finally, on the back page is a listing of places the teens can go for help or to get further information.

"We started this newsletter [with the help of adviser Nancy Offer from Community Against Substance Abuse]," explains LGHS senior Lauren Goodwin, "because we knew kids were out there having trouble and not sharing their feelings with anyone. We wanted to let them know they weren't alone."

There's more, though. Reality Check may also be breaking a silence. Though the pressure to excel academically is enormous at Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools, Goodwin says, "The algebra test isn't our biggest problem."

The biggest problems for these teens are social and personal. In a letter to "parents" from an anonymous Los Gatos teen, the writer explains that the image of academic success hides a darker side of the teen's life, in which there's alcohol, date rape, eating disorders, depression, loneliness and drugs. The teen calls the parents to task, saying that the parents are in denial about who the teen really is.

"[Our generation] is raising itself and dealing with problems we are not equipped to handle," Goodwin explains.

"What teens need is someone to listen to them without judging them," staff member Ryan Giordano explains.

Parents often don't see a social problem because they believe someone in their family couldn't possibly have "that" problem. There is also the myth that as long as teens are doing well academically, they are doing well in all areas.

Alan Javurek, the director of the school-based program at the Teen Counseling Center, says that a lot of young people these days are on antidepressants.

He calls into question our fast-paced lifestyle. In the old days people stopped and talked on the stoop or the porch. "We had time to process things," he recalls. One result of our overscheduled lives is the loss of family rituals like eating together and going on picnics. "Dinnertime is a time to unload and process information," Javurek explains.

Back when families sat down at the dinner table and discussed the day's events, teens knew where their parents stood on issues ranging from local politics to the price of groceries. These days, when school counselors ask the teens what their parents think, the teens say, "I don't know." This leaves it up to teens to form their own values.

Schools are making an effort to deal with these social problems. SHS pays a small stipend to Lynna Taylor as the adviser to Students Taking a New Direction (STAND). This year STAND students created a one-week program on AIDS. They arranged for the AIDS quilt and one of the quilt's founding fathers, Michael Smith, to come to the campus for the opening ceremony.

That week all the classes had curriculum centered around the topic of AIDS. "The fastest-growing AIDS group is young women between the ages of 13 and 24," Taylor says. "There's so much drugs and alcohol," she adds. STAND will be having an equally large program on alcohol next year.

Not too long ago SHS arranged for Brandon Silvera, a former LGHS student who suffered a brain injury after a drunk-driving accident, to come and talk to the students. "It really brings home the problem when you hear someone like that," Taylor says.

Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools both bring in community programs to deal with specific issues. For example, both schools have contracted with the YWCA Teen Empowerment Program to educate the kids about date rape and dating violence. This program teaches students how to make better choices, to have respect for each other, to set boundaries, to learn to say no before it's too late and to help each other.

The leader also educates the teens with such facts as these: Most people are assaulted by people they know, and drugs or alcohol are usually involved. They show the students what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like. They look at the warning signs of an abusive relationship. Jennifer Niklaus, program manager of YWCA Primary Prevention Services, says, "Students sometimes leave the room crying because they recognize the signs of abusive behavior in their own families."

Niklaus considers the anonymous-questions section the most valuable part of the program. The students submit anonymous questions at the end of the first day, and the leaders address these questions the next day. The discussion is lively, and the students are talking about real problems they face. Some have been date-raped or are in abusive relationships. "The teen can be in an abusive relationship and a parent not even see it because the boyfriend or girlfriend seems like such a wonderful person," Niklaus says.

Community organizations such as CASA and the Teen Counseling Center are aware that parents can be overwhelmed by the daunting task of raising teens in today's world. "Often parents don't know how to be available to their teens," Niklaus says.

Nicole Bitter and Susan Dunn, both MFCC interns at the Teen Counseling Center, explain that all parents have enormous challenges today. Their families may not be dysfunctional or pathological. They may just need tools to help them with communication and parenting skills. "Parents lose the sense that they are supposed to be in charge," Bitter explains. Bitter and Dunn, who are both certified family-wellness instructors, conduct a family-wellness Series that is presented by the Teen Counseling Center. This program is for the whole family. Children and their parents attend. They learn how to build trust and how to negotiate with each other. Parents learn how to listen to teens and find out what the real need is. "Sometimes the shift in behavior isn't very big for either the parent or the kid," Dunn says.

"It's much easier to say what we don't want than what we want," Bitter explains. "Saying what you want is a step toward help."

Maybe with some help, parents in Silicon Valley can slow down and find out what these teens need from us. Maybe it's just a little quiet time, a walk, a dinner. One of the positives in today's society is that there are resources for parents and teens to get help.

If you are struggling with a problem with your teen, call the Teen Counseling Center for information at 354-7648. The Internet also offers some down-to-earth articles on raising teens at www.parentingteens.com.

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