Dear 21st Century Dad, my daughter has had the same boyfriend for seven months. She doesn’t seem to trust him very much. Upon three occasions, she has been jealous of a rival girlfriend. Last week her boyfriend dumped her. For the rival! I think it’s because my daughter has been trying to control his every movement. She’s sixteen going on fourteen and has fallen into a tangle of despair and jealousy. I’ve picked up snippets of conversation around the house and she’s talking about revenging her loss by embarrassing him on his Facebook account (an online social networking service). I think she has his password.
I don’t know what to deal with first: the potential for her online slander, or the emotional hurt that must be leading her to be this stupid.
Girls! I don’t understand them. I’m a single parent. The older my daughter gets, the less I think I understand her.
Dear Befuddled by Relationships,
Wikepedia states, “Jealousy typically refers to the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that occur when a person believes a valued relationship is being threatened by a rival. This rival may have no knowledge of threatening the relationship.”
Let’s point out that the desire for revenge is not limited to young girls. Our daughter is suffering. A broken heart is hard enough to deal with; that she must resort to malevolent activities in a misdirected venture to restore her wholeness has been the grist of many an author’s meal since writers took up pens. How do we keep our daughter’s romantic drama from enmeshing her in further emotional entanglements?
The short term action is to find out if our assumptions about online slandering are correct. If they are, put an immediate stop to her online shenanigans. A server could ban her from further Internet use. Worse, her friends will eventually discover her abusive forays, and maybe abandon her. Who can trust a gossip and rumour mongerer? Being ostracized could be a harsh but appropriate payback.
If she hasn’t yet used the Internet to harm others, explain to her the sanctions we will impose, the first being to remove her Internet privileges until she is ready to use her privilege in a benign manner. If she has already abused her friend, contact him and have them meet. The two can resolve the harm, between themselves. Perhaps a school counselor could help or refer the case to a mediator. Resolution Dispute Centres may exist in our community. An appropriate start to their resolution might be an online apology.
The long term results of her Internet abuse could be worse. Internet information sticks around forever. Wait until our daughter presents herself to a job recruiter and is requested to explain her pernicious behaviour. “But I was only sixteen,” may kick our daughter off the short list. One unsavoury web mistake can be like a criminal record, except no organization exists to grant us a Pardon. Our daughter has to realize her private thoughts become public epitaphs in a world wide information net.
Can we understand the deeper question of why our daughter is jealous, and why she must resort to revenge?
Psychotherapists say the root causes of jealousy are a lack of trust and a low self esteem. The lack of self confidence that we express can be situational; in one set of circumstances we can feel ourselves to be on solid ground and we act with authority. In another set of circumstances, we feel that we are walking into a black hole. There is no solid ground, no stability. Our actions exceed the correct bounds. We push aside the truth, and become prepared to use harmful methods to minimize our losses.
How often do we compare ourselves to others and realize we are missing a piece of ourselves; we are not whole. We can fill that empty space with other people, but we need to be able control them, especially if they are not wanting to be at our ready service. Jealousy is not one of the seven deadly sins, but it does sit in the back pocket of Envy and gives rise to Anger. Our daughter is willing to go beyond correct bounds to keep her friendship intact. Definitely, a lose-lose situation!
Can our daughter visit a therapist, join a girls group that is mentored by a wise adult, or talk to a wise adult? Can she discover a person to whom she can let down her defenses? Can she discover a person whom will listen deeply to her explanation for her behaviour?
As parents, we can blame our children and suggest they always have a choice between right and wrong. We think that a dysfunction in our children, for no rhyme nor reason, seems to pop out of nowhere. Through insightful questioning, we may discover that our children’s problems result from not only genetics, and community influences, but also our family environment. We have an immense influence upon our children.
In Everyday Blessings, Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn write, “In our view, an automatic, unexamined, lowest-common-denominator approach to parenting, whether it manifests in overt violence or not, causes deep and frequently long-lasting harm to children and their developmental trajectories. Unconscious parenting also conspires to arrest our potential growth as parents as well. From such unconsciousness come, all too commonly, sadness, misses opportunities, hurt, resentment, blame, restricted and diminished views of self and the world, and intimately, isolation and alienation on all sides.”
As parents, our obligation is to learn and practice conscious parenting. Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests we study meditation techniques that anchor our observation to the present moment. As conscious and mindful parents, we will be the best mentor the child can have: fully present to each moment as it passes, ready to act with appropriate measure to each circumstance, compassionate, and fully energized by life.
Presence is contagious. Is there a greater gift we can offer to our daughter?
Here's a poem by translator Daniel Ladinsky.
Jealousy
And most all of your sufferings
Are from believing
You know better than God.
Of course,
Such a special brand of arrogance as that
Always proves disastrous,
And will rip the seams
In your caravan tent,
Then cordially invite in many species
Of mean biting flies and
Strange thoughts-
That will
Beat you
Up.
From: “The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky. Copyright © 1999 by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Google:
1. Jealousy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. F] Community Accountability Programs Information Package
3. mindful parenting -- Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn - YES! A Journal of ...
Key into YouTube:
1. Paris Hilton – Jealousy
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