No life is free of crisis. What defines us and helps shape our character is how each of us deals with crisis in our lives when it suddenly emerges.
It sometimes seems that our children have a crisis every day. Their skin breaks out; they lose a good friend; they get a bad grade; someone criticizes what they’re wearing. There can be a seemingly endless list. All these events are traumatic to a teen.
Tom Tozer and Bill Black pose for a portrait Monday, March 28, 2016 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.As parents, however, we know the difference between major and minor episodes in life. The important thing is how we respond to the challenges our children face and how we handle our own issues. It’s like performing triage. We adults have learned how to address those crises that need immediate attention, put secondary crises aside temporarily, and discard what are simply minor annoyances.
We’ve probably all experienced events in our own lives that have shaken our world, sudden sharp turns that have thrown us off course. In response, we struggle, we mourn and we ponder. Psychologists say that we normally cope by focusing on the problem and trying to develop a solution or by working through an emotional response – taking a temporary break, focusing on something else, trying to understand the offending person, talking to others, writing about the event or finding a way to forgive.
How we choose to deal with the crises in our lives is important to us and to our kids. We need a strategy, and we need to remember that we have an audience. We’ve said it many times before – we are role models for our teens. They look to us and learn from us. If we respond in anger, seek retribution, resort to substance abuse or simply give up in defeat, our kids will consider these viable options.