Between Form and Freedom: Guiding Teenagers Through the Dangerous Years

By Hawthorn Press

Between Form and Freedomhas a wealth of helpful insights about teenagers, offering a wise look into the souls of children and adolescents. Betty Staley invites you to explore the vibrant nature of adolescence ? the search for the self, the birth of the intellect, the release of feeling, male?female differences and character.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawthorn Press
• Release date: Feb 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912480494

Book preview

themselves.

Introduction

Being an adolescent today

As parents, we often forget our adolescent years. We, too, had to find our way, leave behind the customs of our parents, and venture into a strange and wonderful world. The ideals, values, and goals we live by today were formed during our adolescent years. The memories of activities of those years are with us today as adults. The ideas we thought about, the people we admired, the image we carried of ourselves – all these live within our adult personalities. I have often heard adults comment that they are grateful not to be adolescents in today’s world.

Back when I was a teenager, standards were pretty straightforward. There were good girls and bad girls, and the lines were pretty clear. Of course, we got into trouble. We drank and smoked, but we couldn’t damage ourselves as easily as kids today can. We might have fooled around on weekends, but we respected our elders, we did our homework, and we carried out our chores. We worked for pocket money and had very little extra to spend.

The message was clear. You were good or bad. You knew what the risks were and you were careful. Quite a different situation exists for today’s teenager. The pace is fast, the costs are high, and the risks are great. Young people today have to make their way through a world that tells them, Be appealing, be sexy, be cool, be aggressive. Enjoy, experience, and be smooth. What does this mean?

By the time pre-teenagers enter seventh grade, they are aware of marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, sexual perversions, abortions, homosexuality, divorce, promiscuity, suicide, violence, runaways, and child abuse. Their sophistication makes the teenage experiences of their parents seem to be back in the Dark Ages. Such a precocious awareness of difficulties and dangers affects youngsters so that they feel insecure and lack trust in the people around them.

They had expected the world to be secure; they had thought adults knew what they were doing; they had believed that life was worth living. These expectations have been shattered for this generation which lives with divorce as a common experience, with the loneliness and insecurity of parents who turn to their children for companionship, with the threat of climatic change now a greater perceived danger, and with a general lack of belief in divine guidance or protection.

Is life worth living? Is there any meaning? Is there a future? These are the questions that hide in the shadows of the young teenagers’ minds. Messages in the environment call upon youngsters to get stoned, make lots of money, have a fancy car, attain power, feel good, and make it in the world. There are fewer voices in the environment telling them how to build relationships, live meaningfully in their communities, how to care about other people, how to take responsibility, how to heal the earth, and how to find God.

It is a tribute to the strong nature and good will of youngsters that they remain interested in positive contributions to society despite the destructive words that drum into their psyches, despite adult cynicism about politics and social change, and despite the social ills they see around them. The Divine persists in each young person, celebrating the higher meaning in life.

Young people want to serve, they want to make a difference, and they want to find effective models in the adult world. They look for adults who commit themselves to action, to principles, to ideals. They respect adults who care enough to set limits, who have expectations of them, who talk with them, and most of all, who believe in them.

Many, many adults give endless hours helping teenagers find their way through this confusing period of life. We parents cannot live an isolated existence. We cannot bury our heads in the sand, pretending that our children don’t see or hear what is going on. We cannot, despite our most sincere efforts, protect our children from harmful influences without completely isolating ourselves from modern life. We can, however, raise our children to be sensitive, caring, responsible people. We can guide them through these dangerous years.

To do this, we have to help each other. We have to seek help from agencies when necessary. We have to look for appropriate schools and summer programs. We have to be willing to make major changes in family life, to provide strong guidance, to ask hard questions, and to evaluate our priorities. Today we cannot afford to be casual parents. Parenthood in the 21st century is a difficult and conscious task – the most challenging and worthwhile work there is.

The view of the human being put forth in this book is based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, scientist, and seer who was born in 1861 and died in 1925. Steiner’s world-view is called anthroposophy, or spiritual science, and is based on a spiritual perception of the universe. Students of anthroposophy have developed Steiner’s insights into practical spheres including education, architecture, medicine, social organization and agriculture. Over four hundred Waldorf schools located in many countries across the world offer a vital creative approach to learning, based on Rudolf Steiner’s view of the child. Parents who have become interested in these ideas have asked me to develop them further in the context of child raising and family life. Other parents who have neither contact with Waldorf education nor with Rudolf Steiner’s views have responded to what I have been able to share through my own struggles and insights during lectures and parent workshops. They have asked me to elaborate these thoughts and share them. In response to these requests, I offer this book.

PART I

The Nature of Adolescence

Chapter One

How do you get to be an adolescent?

Phases in child development

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.

William Wordsworth

The child enters life

William Wordsworth, in the words above, shares a living imagination of human incarnation. Our birth is a sleep and a forgetting – yet so often we think of our birth as a waking and the world we have left behind as enclosed in a dark sleep. Ancient cultures spoke of a golden world left behind when the soul descended to earth. The earth, the new home, was then experienced as a land of shadows.

When we are born, we forget the world that has previously been our home. Gradually, we come to know our new home – the planet Earth.

Although we do not remember our pre-birth state, dim memories live within the soul and emerge from time to time as the child grows and comes to accept the imperfections of the everyday Earthworld.

Life unfolds in seven-year rhythms. Each of these life-phases has a special quality. During each, some capacities are lost and others gained, and during the middle of each, the child is especially sensitive to memories of pre-birth experiences.

The child’s thinking is very different in each phase, which means that learning is radically different, depending on the child’s age. In the first stage, between birth and age seven, the child thinks through doing and learns through imitation. Between seven and fourteen, the child thinks in pictures and learns through the feelings. Between fourteen and twenty-one, the young person thinks conceptually and learns through the intellect.

The first phase: birth to seven

During the first seven years, children’s energies are directed to growing, walking, speaking, and thinking, as they establish themselves in the family. The love and care surrounding the young child lead it securely into the world, minimizing the dangers and welcoming it into the human community.

Young children explore the world by imitating the actions of others. They crawl, walk, run, dig, and throw. They are busy all the time becoming familiar with the earth, their new home. Young children are connected to the world through their will-activity and through their senses. They take in all that meets them through their senses and imitate what is in their environment.

Because they think through doing, they learn through imitating.

As soon as someone in the environment is doing something – chopping wood, hammering nails, beating eggs – young children are there to do it also. They throw themselves into these tasks with gusto.

By the seventh year, this phase comes to a conclusion. The child’s physical body is basically complete. The child has mastered the human abilities on which the rest of life will depend – the ability to walk, to speak, and to think.

The second phase: seven to fourteen

The second phase is the heart of childhood. It begins and ends with a new state of consciousness expressed through physical changes. The marked physical growth of the first phase of childhood comes to a final expression in the change of teeth – from the uniformly shaped milk-teeth, already under the baby’s gums at birth, to the individually shaped second teeth. The second phase ends with the maturation of the sexual organs, changes in the larynx, a growth spurt in the arms and legs, and increased activity in the thyroid gland.

During the second phase – from seven to fourteen – the soul develops. Children leave the security of the family and venture into the larger world of neighborhood and school. They come to feel at home in the wider circle of their community. They relate to this new world with their feelings, which are expressed in extremes. One hour they are happy; the next hour they are sad. They love you; they hate you. They say no; they say yes. They feel powerful; they feel powerless. The parent is overcome by the rush of intense feelings which the youngster expresses. Just as the parent tries to deal with the feelings expressed, the youngster’s mood changes, and the adult is left nursing confused and hurt feelings, unsure what the youngster was actually trying to express.

The feeling life is developed in private, in a world of dreams, hopes, and fantasies. As their inner worlds develop depth, children begin to have secrets. The two worlds – the inner private and the outer public – interact, causing tension as children slowly learn to feel comfortable in both worlds.

Because the child approaches the world in this way, the most natural way of learning is through the feelings.

As children experience their new feelings, they show an increased interest in adventure stories. They relish the swing of emotions that they experience while listening to or reading a story filled with terror and suspense.

Their imaginations are filled with picture images, and their state of consciousness is a dream state where one image follows another without logical sequence. Indeed, the kind of thinking children do during the main part of the second phase of childhood is picture thinking. Out of this kind of thinking, they develop a sense for things rather than an understanding of things.

Toward the end of this phase, puberty occurs, heralding adolescence. The children have developed their habits, attitudes, temperaments, self-images, and social skills. Now, everything is thrown into chaos as the youngster passes into the next stage of life.

The third phase: fourteen to twenty-one

The third phase – fourteen to twenty-one – is the ‘official’ period of adolescence. During this phase, children learn through the intellect. They move from picture thinking to abstract thinking. Then, youth experiences the range of human emotions, ideals, goals, and expressions of personality as it prepares for the spiritual birth of the individual self, the ego, somewhere around the twenty-first year.

At this time the young person is able to act with self-direction and objective judgment. Childhood is completed.

Chapter Two

Stages of adolescence

Please understand me.

I am happy.

I want to be free

To fly in the wind.

My hair is a wing

My hand will propel.

My heart will love

Forever.

Me

Ninth grade girl

For the child, adolescence is new territory, uncharted and unexplored. Even parents often feel as if they are trying to navigate this unknown territory without a map. Imagine how the adolescent feels!

Adolescent development occurs in two recognizable phases which can be referred to as negation and affirmation. In the first phase, negation, adolescents want to oppose everything, they want to refute and criticize the world. In the second stage, affirmation, adolescents try to find their way into the life of the outer world. The polarity which expresses itself during adolescence is similar to an earlier polarity expressed when three-year-olds said ‘No’ to everything, followed by four-five year-olds who embraced the world with a mighty ‘Yes’.

Negation

In the beginning of adolescence, young people are searching for their spiritual home, which expresses itself unconsciously as an undefined inner longing. Boys and girls look for the wonderful or the perfect, and when it cannot be found, they feel let down and disillusioned. Then the outer world seems strange and disappointing. They see ugliness where they had expected beauty. They see human weakness where they had expected perfection. This is frustrating and depressing. They become defiant, test everything and everyone – particularly anyone representing authority. They oppose everything that is out in the world and side with the underdog, especially against adults.

Adults are nothing special is the unspoken motto of many rebellious teenagers. Such teenagers may go so far as to torment an adult. However, if that same adult should do anything to cause the young teenager discomfort, a pained, withdrawn, and hostile response is evoked: No one understands me.

It is not unusual for cyncism to develop out of unfulfilled expectations. Some adolescents never recover from their initial disappointment in the world. As adults, they feel justified in abusing other people to compensate for the previous hurts and disappointments they have suffered.

Disappointment causes the loneliness of adolescents to intensify, and this makes life very difficult for the adults, who, in this situation, can do nothing right. There are even moments when thought is absent and adolescents are capable of violent action, untempered by thinking. Out of curiosity, they may be outrageously rude, set a house on fire, or even pull a trigger. Some adolescents feel so removed from other people that they wonder if anyone anywhere thinks or feels as they do. They question whether there is a friend out there for them, and the search for a friend becomes an overwhelming priority in their lives.

The role of the ‘crush’

Adolescence is the time when something akin to the Romantic Era of history is experienced in the individual life. The young person wishes to feel part of Nature as in Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonie

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone.

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Because the young person’s soul has become free and the feelings are more active, a deep longing for the spiritual world is felt. The soul’s unconscious search for its lost spiritual home is characteristic of adolescence. Although many young people have deeply religious experiences, they usually keep them private or share them with only a trusted few.

The young adolescent longs to meet a kindred spirit who comes out of the spiritual world. How many songs describe the soul-mate as an angel or one who comes out of a dream? The soul realizes that it does not yet fit into the physical world, and it yearns for a creature to help it feel whole again.

The search for the spirit expresses itself in the soul life as a ‘crush’. In this state, the person being adored does not have to be near. In fact, to adore from a distance is more satisfying because the adored one is not subjected to scrutiny but is held up to be worshiped. Godlike qualities are often projected onto the person who may be of the same sex or of the opposite sex. Teenagers model themselves after relatives, family friends, and teachers. In addition, girls tend to choose movie stars, camp counselors, rock stars, or upper classmen, while boys tend to choose slightly older boys, sports stars, historical figures, movie stars, television heroes, or rock stars.

In the crush, the object adored represents perfection. This helps the adolescent deal with the disappointment that the world is not perfect because he or she can concentrate on a figure who does represent perfection. Sometimes, a very close friendship produces the same effect as a crush. The best friend fills a similar role as the adored one, and best friends, their identities often merged, do everything together. They dress alike, enjoy the same music, share the same observations about people, and cling to each other in the storm of life. In the crush, adolescents feel the reflection of the higher world; heaven is in their hearts. Between thirteen and fifteen, the crush reaches its greatest intensity, although it may continue on into the late teens.

The crush may be projected onto an activity or an idea as well as onto a person. Teenagers can become fanatically devoted to a game and lose all sense of time. The game may involve a complicated system of rewards and punishments through which the youngsters can test their intellectual skill, or the game may be based on chance, which has its own excitement. They may devote themselves to a sport with similar fanaticism, using every possible moment in the day to shoot baskets, practice pitching, or kick a soccer ball. Sports have helped many teenagers get through the early adolescent period without becoming too obsessed with themselves. If the adults concerned with the sport create an atmosphere of support, cooperation, and camaraderie, the youngsters can receive great benefit. If, on the other hand, adults foster cut-throat competition, creating pressure on the teenager to win at all costs, they are doing nothing to help the youngster move out of self-obsession, but, in fact, are intensifying unhealthy self-preoccupation.

With a crush, something evokes the kinds of feelings that once were experienced in a far simpler way in the childhood experience of God. That something may be a person – either close-by or unattainable – an idea, or even an activity. At some point, however, adolescents can no longer keep the adored object at a distance. They must connect personally. Teenagers fantasize how the connection will be made, how they and the object of their worship will come together. The youngster may imagine becoming a tragic figure who lives and dies for an idea. Perhaps the teenager will be the only person in the crowd noticed by the cherished singer. This fantasy meeting between the adolescent and the object of adoration carries a storm of emotions which is of great importance for the further development of the individual, and it leads the adolescent over to the second stage of adolescence – affirmation.

Thus, the first love – be it baseball, a cultural hero, or an older girl or boy – often is the bridge from the stage of negation to the stage of affirmation at about fifteen or sixteen. No experience will ever have quite the impact on the young person as this event does. Its power lies in the innocence and freshness of the experience. However, the kind of influence this strong experience has on the developing person depends on the way the crush is resolved.

Transition

The fifteenth-sixteenth year is the pivotal time for adolescents. Teenagers are coming into their own, and they are beginning to accept the world as they see it. This usually begins to happen at the end of tenth grade and the beginning of eleventh grade.

At this time, teenagers are coming out of the extreme of being either too withdrawn or too aggressive and are beginning to laugh more, to feel accepted, to be accepting, to be friendly and outgoing, to be communicative, to relate better to teachers and parents, and to understand their siblings.

Boys still hang around with boys but now they look at girls. Girls hang around with girls and survey the boys. There is usually a friendly in group in each class or school made up of popular and successful girls who spend endless hours on the telephone, laughing and talking about everybody. Their exuberance and energy, their optimism and expansiveness are infectious, but it is sometimes doubtful whether they are having as good a time as it seems.

The pressure to act in a certain way so as to be part of this group can cause tremendous strain. The price paid for acceptance is the sacrifice of inner growth for outer rewards. Girls who are not included in this group may have a hard time finding where they belong in the social life of the school. Boys also are affected by social pressure although they may not be as conscious of all the ins and outs of the groups as the girls are.

One of the problems of the transitional period is the attempt to do too much. In their eagerness to embrace the world, teenagers often take on too many commitments, which they then have trouble honoring, or they take on such difficult challenges that they have difficulty living up to expectations. They try to think about too many things or plan too many activities, and there is simply not enough time to do everything. This exuberance and confidence also leads them to experiment with danger. Fifteen-year-olds often take risks and test limits, not so much out of insecurity, as a thirteen-year-old would, but because they want to taste life.

Affirmation

After this turning point, the way is prepared for the stage of affirmation, which comes during the sixteenth-seventeenth year. The stage of affirmation is characterized by the transformation of love from early sensuality and self-interest to love for another human being and for the world in general, for affirmation is not limited to love of a person. At this point, adolescents begin to search for ideas or for a picture of the world with which they can be comfortable. The stage of affirmation is the time when the search for truth begins. Adolescents now search for religious answers, for ideal political systems, and for the next step in their education. They become concerned about their future careers.

In the earlier period, young adolescents are not familiar with the world. What they experience is separateness, hostility, and opposition. This evokes distrust and even hatred from youngsters. Slowly, however, teenagers begin to question, analyze, criticize, and doubt, and gradually the distrust and hostility toward the world is transformed into a longing to do great deeds for the world. The young people come to express joy in the world.

This is often stimulated by powerful experiences in nature. The youngster feels, How good it is to be alive, and a period of stability follows in which he feels less tense and less hypersensitive.

As teenagers feel more confident, more comfortable with themselves, they become more realistic about life. They begin to appreciate their freedom and respect their responsibilities. With this change come a sense of humor and patience. Relationships with parents and siblings become more comfortable (although teeenagers still prefer to be with friends).

Parents are appreciated and cherished, and adolescents begin to feel free to approach them for advice, feeling less threatened and more able to participate in the give-and-take without losing their identities. The adolescents become more self-reliant and more poised. Life becomes relatively peaceful, and fewer arguments occur. Sometimes, older adolescents comment that their parents are becoming smarter or wiser, or at least easier to live with.

With time, crushes fade and in their place come real life relationships. More immature boys or girls may hold on to their crushes for a longer time and often with members of the same sex. At this time, the tables turn and the older adolescents become the object of crushes from younger teenagers. It is amusing to watch eleventh and twelfth graders deal with the admiration of the seventh, eighth or ninth graders. Not quite sure how to handle the situation, the older students often try to be sensitive in the way they respond to their youthful admirers.

Late adolescence: eighteen to twenty-one

As teenagers step across the threshhold of their eighteenth birthdays, they enter young adulthood and are ready for responsibilities. Learning and maturity now become based on life experience. The focus of their development lies in finding a relationship to their times, to the culture in which they are living, and to the people who embody the ideals and values of the cultural age. In the book Phases, Bernard Lievegoed writes, "In everyday life among other people he can create his own free world between the laws of the spirit and the laws of nature … The margin of freedom which is the lifesaver for the adolescent may be found between mind and matter. What is important is that despite limitations imposed by physical circumstances and by cultural taboos and the accepted norms of the concrete social situation he makes something that is totally and absolutely personal."

Whether the young adult is working at a job or at school, there is the need to make a personal mark on life, to see what the limits are, to find one’s mentors. It is important during this time to develop social skills, to make strong personal connections with people. These are the years in which the young person finds career direction, is exposed to new interests, travels, experiments with living arrangements, and works at a variety of intimate social relationships.

Young adults should not make commitments that tie them down. This should be the time of developing judgment, of flexibility, and of forming the picture of one’s life. Youngsters who become tied to adult jobs and to family matters before twenty-one become responsible adults, but they often take longer to find their direction. They need time to explore, change, and change again.

(In the many years I have been a teacher, one of the most pleasurable experiences has been talking to graduates. The changes they go through in the three or four years after graduation are exciting and often unpredictable. Teenagers who were determined to go into one field of study turn one hundred and eighty degrees and go in a different direction. They find so much that is new and challenging, that is calling to them, that is fascinating. Life, the great teacher, is so interesting for them, and it is wonderful to share their insights.)

Those who feel tied down have a harder time exploring new aspects of their personality. They, too, learn from life, but sometimes what they learn is quite discouraging. They often go from job to job and grow quite discouraged when they find that it is not easy to support themselves. After the initial satisfaction of being on their own, there is a let-down. Why? Rather than discovering new aspects of themselves, they feel stifled and confined. They are not finding out who they are in the world. Those who travel, study, work at an apprenticeship, or learn a craft are developing themselves as people. They are expanding their horizons and exploring their skills.

Dangers

If they are not presented with ideals or do not have feelings of comfort about their origin, if they do not find a close friend or object of love, if there is nothing that comes to take them out of self-preoccupation, adolescents can be drawn too strongly into the physical-sexual life as their main source of satisfaction. They are encouraged to do this by movies, television, radio and advertising. The budding young adult can become trapped into sexual preoccupation through overstimulation from outside. With nothing to balance this preoccupation, adolescents become hard and tough. They are thrust into eroticism or the will to power.

Our cities are filled with young people who have nothing to lift them out of their despair or sensuality and whose lives become a series of exploits with few goals other than immediate pleasure or power. When we study biographies, we can see how one special event – a meeting with a person, an experience with music, a kind word, a book given at the right moment, or an experience in nature – can shake these youngsters loose from this trap and set them going on a wholesome and meaningful path. Those caught in poverty, minority discrimination, or crime often fall into a despair that drags them down unless they have one of the above experiences to free them.

Drama is a special help during this time. By stepping into another character, the young person can experience fear, compassion, terror, joy, and humor. In fear, the person breathes in most strongly. In loving devotion, the person breathes out. The rhythm of breathing out and breathing in of emotional experiences helps the soul establish its independence from the body in a healthful way. Through drama, adolescents are able to try out roles, experiment with anger, confrontation, sensitivity, compassion and sacrifice, and to vicariously experience what happens to people in different life situations.

Another helpful area for teenagers is interest in world events. By becoming familiar with the issues, by learning how different policies and attitudes are