From: Frustrated Mother
A frustrated parent writes about a teenage son who procrastinates, stays up late, and resists responsibility despite repeated attempts to motivate him. This letter explores when procrastination is less about laziness and more about autonomy, pressure, and the shifting dynamics between parents and adolescents.
Dear Douglas,
My son is in year 11 of High School here in Hanoi. He and I have been butting heads for the past 6 months over his amazing ability to procrastinate. He chats on-line or is writing on Facebook and then is trying to finish assignments at 1 or 2 a.m. on a week night. I am really tired of checking on him, cleaning up after him and hearing his excuses. I find it almost impossible to get him up for school in the morning. His father and I have tried everything we can think of to motivate him to take responsibility for himself. We are at a loss. He hasn’t always been like this. Does my son need counseling? What can we do?
Frustrated Mother
Frustrated Mother,
From the time your son was a toddler you have been giving him responsibilities that have been commensurate with his age and development. There was the age when he first poured his own juice, tied his own shoes, made his own bed, cleaned up after he got food from the fridge and stayed out until midnight. It has been an on-going process of giving and receiving…the parents (and other adults) give responsibility and the child receiving it. Ideally this continues until the child reaches the point when they are ready for adulthood and the ability to function independently. More often it hits some snags.
As the age of independence becomes closer, the fears and tensions surrounding the process become more intense. Beneath your frustration you might feel a fear….that he will not be ready , that he will fail, that you will have failed as parents and that when he leaves, after all your hard work to raise him well, there will be bad feelings between you and he. You may find yourself in a power struggle. The more unhappy you are with him, the more he tends to resist your efforts to influence him. It becomes a vicious circle.
My advice to you is that you consider coming into counseling, before you ask your son, in order to reclaim a less emotionally charged perspective, to assess what is inside and outside of your control, and to develop strategies for communication that prevent, or diminish, the likeliness for power struggles and frustrating outcomes. The fears and frustrations belong to you and the more that you can own those, the greater the likeliness that you can discover how to be effective in communicating to influence change. It is always difficult to stand by someone who is not doing well…whether it be with a physical illness, a depression or when they may be performing below their potential or avoiding responsibility. This transitional period is normally quite difficult for both the teenager and parents. We are almost always better off when we can tame our own fears and frustrations and recognize the limits of our control. Sometimes it takes some outside perspective and a few new tools to know how we can effectively support the ones we love.
