"The loss of meaningful relationships with adults has been the most devastating to developing adolescents. Because mid-adolescents have not had enough life experience to understand fully the accompanying sense of loneliness and isolation they feel, few could articulate their experience specifically as 'loss' in my study. But the reality of the experience oozed out of nearly every student. And in discussion with mid-adolescents across the country, not one disagreed with this bleak assessment. When feeling safe enough to admit, every student I talked to acknowledged that loneliness is a central experience. In decrying the panic in the lives of young girls in the midst of contemporary culture, Mary Pipher provides a wake-up call with her poignant summation of how parents are viewed by adolescents: 'To paraphrase a Stevie Smith poem about swimming in the sea, "they are not waving, they are drowning.'" And just when they most need help, they are unable to take their parent's hands.' They feel this way about all adults who are not there for them."
1 comment:
Well articulated, thank you for sharing. The reality of that breaks me in half when I think about it.
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