April 24, 2009

Speaker helps parents relate with teens
Parenting Doctor to speak here April 28

By Kathy Gray
of The Chronicle

     Dr. Ann Corwin wants parents and teenagers to come together and say “Aha!”
That’s the reaction Corwin hopes for when she presents What is This Alien Thing Called Adolescence?“ Tuesday, April 28, at 6:30 p.m. at The Dalles Wahtonka High School.
     “What we’re going to focus on is understanding that the teenage brain function really is different from the adult brain and why there is a disconnect between parents and kids,” said Corwin during a phone interview Thursday.
     Corwin, nationally known as The Parenting Doctor, will cover four main topics she calls the “Four B’s.”
     Belonging
     “Where do I belong? Where do I fit? What does my life feel like at this particular crossroads in life?”
     Corwin will talk about the importance of peer groups and their ability to relieve pressure for teens and put pressure on adults.
     Becoming
     “What am I going to become? A policeman? A fireman? It may be that simple,” Corwin says. “Am I going to go to college? If I don’t go to college, will I disappoint my parents? What does what I’m doing now have to do with anything, really?
Bodies
     “Their bodies are changing more in adolescence than they do in any other time in life, except their first year in life,” Corwin said. “In the first year we celebrate those changes ... But we don’t brag about changes to a child’s body when they’re in their teen years, which affects them just as profoundly. What do I do with my body? Is my body a symbol to my peers? Are parents always complaining about the clothes I wear?”
     Breaking away
     “It’s so important for parents to understand that kids breaking away from family actually helps them build trust in themselves,” Corwin says. “Interdependence. That’s like a gift we need to give children, but for parents it’s really scary.”
     The evening is the culmination of Corwin’s day-long visit to The Dalles, where she’ll be talking with parents and professionals in a variety of settings.
     Corwin wants to help parents better understand teens and vice versa. She spoke about music as one area where teens and parents might face conflict. She says music has a key purpose in adolescence: to help teens in “brain pruning.”
     “In the first five years of life, the brain is like it’s on fire, growing like crazy, like a really sophisticated phone network. It’s going nuts, so it can prepare a child to go to school,” Corwin says. “In the teen years, the brain starts to slow down and prune itself so it can hang onto the things that are pertinent. The brain becomes more selective.”
     But music may be a source of teen conflict with parents who don’t like the music or the message, or who don’t want their teen to play music while doing homework.
     “Hopefully, by the time you leave the room, you’re not thinking of your child as an alien, estranged, scary and confusing,” Corwin says. “You’ll approach the relationship with kids with far more understanding and acceptance of change.”
     Sticking with the music-during-homework conflict, Corwin suggests, instead of making an ultimatum a parent try an experiment.
     “Let them listen to the music while doing homework,” she says. “If they turn in their homework and get good grades, then they can work well with musical stimulation of their brains.
     ‘‘If it comes back and they didn’t do so hot, maybe music isn’t the best way to help them concentrate.”
     The issue isn’t much different from adult situations, she adds.
     “One worker may say to me, ‘I can’t work unless I’m near a window,’” she says. “Somebody else my say, ‘If there’s a window I might be distracted.”
     Corwin is a parenting consultant with a doctorate in marriage and child therapy and 35 years of experience.
     “Over the years, I have learned how important it is to help families understand how relationships are formed,” she says. “The technical word for it is attachment. How do you connect with your kids to form health relationships?”
     Corwin says her life’s work has been to help families understand what patterns look like with their children, so when oppositional behavior occurs, parents know exactly what to do.
     “I teach problem-solving skills, so parents know how to solve problems for themselves.”
     Sometimes parental behavior inadvertently reinforces negative actions in their children, Corwin says.
     “The thing that’s so confusing to parents is that 90 percent of the time, it’s totally unintentional,” she says. “You’re trying to teach children a lesson and what ends up happening is when you don’t understand attachments and connections, you actually make the connections inappropriate.”