He’s Not Lazy

Empowering Your Son to Believe In Himself

Adam Price, PhD

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© 2017 by Adam Price

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Excerpt from THE PROPHET by Kahlil Gibran, copyright © 1923 by Kahlil Gibran and renewed 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4549-2645-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Price, Adam, (Psychologist), author.

Title: He’s not lazy : empowering your son to believe in himself / Adam Price.

Description: New York City : Sterling Publishing Co., 2017. | Includes

   bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016009991 | ISBN 9781454916871 (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Teenage boys--Psychology. | Parenting. | Maturation

   (Psychology) | BISAC: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Life Stages / Adolescence.

   | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / General. | PSYCHOLOGY /

   Developmental / Adolescent.

Classification: LCC HQ797 .P75 2017 | DDC 305.235/1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009991

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To my family: Beth, Jonah, and in loving memory of Sam.

Introduction

Recently I bumped into the mother of a young man I treated some years ago, a boy named Kyle. This is a moment of truth for any child psychologist. Usually our patients graduate from therapy and move on to the next stage of their lives; we rarely get to find out whether our efforts had any lasting effect.

When I first met Kyle as a tenth grader, he was floundering in school. Though he didn’t exhibit the warning signs of a truly troubled adolescent—drug use, outright rebellion, cutting school, or violent outbursts—he’d grown completely and utterly apathetic in the academic sphere. He was seriously phoning it in, which is why his parents had given him the nickname “Mr. Bare Minimum”—he did just enough to stay above the fault line, getting a D in Spanish and a mix of B’s and C’s in his other classes. Although he did see friends on weekends, when he was home Kyle spent most of his time in his room, curtains drawn, in front of a computer screen. He was very difficult to rouse in the morning and was often late for school. His parents were so worried that Kyle’s lack of motivation would have very real repercussions on his future, they went so far as to have him tested by a psychologist for learning disabilities. The psychologist observed, “Kyle has lost his motivation to succeed at school, and does not do his homework. Instead he prefers to text his friends, listen to music, and play video games. He feels that nothing about school interests him, and has failed several tests that he did not study for.” Yet the doctor made no suggestions about how to help Kyle get more motivated. After reading the report I understood why Kyle’s parents were so frustrated—his IQ was in the ninety-first percentile.

They, like so many of the parents I see, were overwrought. How could a boy with so much promise risk his future by not even attempting to earn the grades that would get him into a “good” college? Nothing they did seemed to make a difference. Grounding only made Kyle belligerent, but backing off left him to flounder even more.

Kyle was typical of the kind of patients I’ve come to see more and more of in the practice I maintain in New York City and New Jersey—boys described by teachers and counselors as “good kids,” but who very obviously lack the motivation to succeed in middle and high school.

Much has been written about the kinds of pressures kids are under today. But the media coverage tends to focus on the problems of the super-achieving academic elite—kids who are enrolled in multiple Advanced Placement courses and volunteering at the local soup kitchen while mastering an obscure Chinese classical instrument and holding down spots on several sports teams. Though these kids, whose parents take a Harvard-or-bust mentality, are under real pressures—as evidenced by the very disturbing rise in the abuse of stimulant drugs as study aids—there is another, typically overlooked class of boys who manifest their stress in different, less obvious ways. These are the boys I worry about—the ones who make time for Netflix®, video games, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and friends, but not for school. Many, like Kyle, do the minimum that’s required in order to get by, flying under the radar of official “trouble” while causing their parents plenty of grief and consternation.

Though they look like they’re impervious to academic pressures on the outside, their behavior is, in fact, a direct response to the stress they’re experiencing. Contrary to appearances, these kids aren’t just lazy—they’re overcome by demands that they fear they simply cannot meet. And so, in the face of pressures they feel they cannot handle, they choose to “opt out” of the competition altogether. These opt-outs are the subject of this book.

There is no question that our achievement-oriented, competitive culture has created a pressure cooker for today’s adolescent. Teenage boys are extremely sensitive to this stress, and as a psychologist I see its victims daily. Bright and capable boys complain of feeling inadequate and ineffective. But rather than working harder and staying up later, they react to this pressure by shunning their work altogether, propping up their fear-based rebellion with justifications like “I am not going to be one of those nerds who have no life,” or “Tests don’t measure intelligence or help you learn, so what’s the point of studying for them?” They protect themselves by turning to avoidance and denial—the primary coping mechanisms of adolescence.

The world through which these boys are navigating is infinitely more complex than that experienced by their parents. Regardless of the quality of their schools, kids these days are being asked to juggle like never before. Over the past twenty years, high school students have added an extra class to their school days, with 7 percent also taking more rigorous courses. As much as technology may enrich the learning experience, it has also created an information overload for students. Teachers email assignments to kids after class and deadlines are pushed to midnight, thanks to Turnitin.com. Gone are the days of handwritten term papers and poster-board presentations. Now students must be able to create flashy Excel® slide decks, participate in wikis, tweet reading responses to their classmates, and post on class Facebook pages. Their extracurricular activities are generally plentiful and varied—part of a hyperextended college prep process begun as early as elementary school. Meanwhile, their friends are texting (incessantly) and their online world of choice awaits, buzzing with messages and notifications as soon as the dismissal bell rings, if not throughout the school day.

This increased volume of work, stimuli, and play requires the organizational skill of a business executive. But teenage brains aren’t maturing any faster these days. The adolescent brain is a developing entity, with many boys still in the process of obtaining the focus, attention to detail, and planning capabilities that are called for by these increased obligations. There is a growing consensus among psychologists, physicians, and educators that adolescence extends well into a person’s twenties, when the brain is fully “matured.” So it’s no surprise when the obligations go unmet, particularly by boys. Nationwide, there’s been a well-documented decline in the number of boys who attend college—with girls more likely not only to be accepted, but also to earn better grades and to graduate. Boys are also much more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and with behavior disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—diagnoses I see in many of my patients.

The big-picture problem of boys and learning is not news—to the contrary, it’s been the subject of a vast ongoing national discussion, with many education specialists theorizing that boys are at an intrinsic disadvantage in a classroom that discourages their natural tendency to be active and competitive. But where does this leave parents of underperforming teen boys in the here and now?

The day I ran into Kyle’s mom, I was relieved to learn that he had made it to and through college after all and was now working in software development; there were even plans for graduate school afoot. Kyle was a perfect example of a kid who needed the pressure dial turned down in order to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. While on the surface, opt-outs do look lazy, dig a little deeper and you will often find a very conflicted boy, one who wants to do well but is afraid to fail, and so does not try. This book will help you suss out these hidden obstacles and help your son face his fears.

There is lots of research about motivation, but very little practical advice that applies to teens. Teens are complicated, so we need to have a comprehensive approach that accounts for all the moving parts. This book is divided into two parts. In part I, I will help you to take a fresh look at your son and to understand all of the radical changes going on inside his body and mind. We will need to get our heads around how boys are different than girls. The way they learn, relate to their friends, seek status, and talk about their feelings: These all have bearing on how we approach boys who opt out. By the end of this section it will be clear to you why your son is not lazy. You will then be ready for part II, which is chock-full of suggestions to get you out of the conflict stage and into the problem-solving stage. I have worked hard to offer meaningful insights, and then turn these into actionable steps you can take.

By now you are probably deep behind enemy lines, in the thick of a major power struggle over your son’s grades and the amount of time he spends studying. A negotiated truce will rest upon insight into the way your son embroils you in his tug-of-war. I call this entanglement the Paradoxical Response, and you can read about it in chapter 7. This and future chapters will put you on the right side of your son’s passivity and paralysis (his side) and teach you to end power struggles and improve communication. Once the conflict is diminished, we will set to work on the underlying problem—a lack of confidence in his learning abilities and a “fixed mind-set” that allows the teen to believe there’s no hope for change because his abilities are etched in stone. From here out we will focus on the key components of motivation, all tailored to the unique demands of adolescence: control, competence, and compassion. You will learn how to talk to your son in a way that puts the responsibility for change in his hands, thus respecting his autonomy. You will also be provided with the tools to help your son gain self-awareness and manage the anxiety that underlies his lack of motivation.

He’s Not Lazy will help you understand that your son is not lazy—he is struggling. And this is important, because acceptance is ultimately the best help a parent can offer. You will begin to understand why your son feels he can’t do the work on his own (perhaps partly because you are too willing to do it for him). You will see how much of his behavior grows out of a fear of seeming stupid or untalented. You will discover patience and the understanding that perhaps the problem lies not with your son, but rather with the world, for asking so much of a boy who will eventually get there, but needs more time. Ultimately, you will learn to trust him enough to grant him more freedom—the freedom to fail, to learn about himself, and to find his own motivation and drive. For once he does—even if it takes him longer than some of his friends—this motivation will be truly his, and no one will be able to take it away.

But first, let me reintroduce you to your son.

PART

I

He’s Not Lazy

The first part of the book corrects a common but destructive assumption that parents make about their son: He is lazy. This dangerous misconception causes parents to miss the root of their son’s problems and, because he feels blamed by them, further alienates him. Chapter 1 encourages parents to see their son in a different frame (paradigm shift). The remaining chapters take a fresh look at the cognitive and emotional transformation that defines adolescence, while detailing the implications these changes have for the teenage boy who is opting out. This section will provide parents with an understanding of their son’s psychology and reframe his problem. Understanding how teens view the world and how their minds work is crucial to developing effective strategies to help motivate them.