Parent-child relationships in the age of social media (Part 2)

In this video a father takes to social media, not to share his experience with the father of a bully, but to address his daughter. He is outraged by her rant on Facebook against her parents. Watch it below:

What is your reaction to this video? What is your take on the daughter's rant? And that she took it to Facebook? How about the father? What do you think about his words to his daughter? How about his physical demonstration of asserting demandingness? And what do you think of HIS taking this all to social media?

If you were the daughter (or son) and angry with your parent, would you take your anger and disagreement to Facebook? Why or why not? How would you feel if your parent responded to you using social media?

Parent-child relationships in the age of social media

About a two years ago a father from Prior Lake, Minnesota posted a video on YouTube that went viral. The video is below (The original video link may have been removed. This one shows the entire piece, though).

Watch the video and consider the following:

How was social media used by teenagers (in this case Brad's daughter and her friends and other kids), and to what effect? What is your reaction to the incident as Brad describes it? From our reading, and from your experience, does that surprise you?

What prompted Brad (the dad) to use social media to air his opinion?
What are the benefits to his using this forum? Are there any consequences? Consider others connected to the situation.

Do you agree or disagree with this dad's using YouTube in this way?

Parent-Teen Relationships... With the Taylors

In addition to film representations of parents and teens, TV shows entertain us with family comedies and dramas that include children during adolescence. Few demonstrate such strong and significant adult-teen relationships than in the series, Friday Night Lights. In the series, a medium size town in Texas is the context for Coach and Tami and Julie Taylor. Coach (Eric) is the football coach at the high school - a sport in a town that is THE important activity. Tami is a school counselor and Julie is their teenage daughter. Early in the series, Julie is about 14 or 15. The series also features other teens - especially the young men on the football team and some young women in the school and town. They range in personality, age, race and experience, offering quite a number of events to view teens own challenges with development, and how adults help or challenge that growth.

The link below features about 8 minutes of a compilation with the Taylor family. The video is a nice view of the parents and the teen dealing with some pretty typical teen issues. Julie is in a word, a 'good' kid. As we see here, even with model children families experience conflict.

http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/embed/12535

Please watch the clip, and then weigh in on what you observe in the parent-child relationships. Consider some of the following questions:

• What is Julie feeling, what are her parents feeling, when they have conflict and when they interact. 
• What do you see as ways that Eric and Tami work to maintain the relationship with Julie, and ways that they assert their responsibilities as parents and set boundaries and limits while also showing her warmth and understanding? 
• Do they do this equally or in the same way?
•  What challenges might they face in trying to do this? 

Favorite Teen Movie (with parents?)

A couple weeks ago we weighed in on our favorite scary movies in honor of Halloween. As we move to the next and last section of the course and move developmentally up the age ladder to adolescence, let's share our favorite teen movie. And there are a LOT of them. Hollywood makes billions on pumping out films and television series every year featuring teens as central characters.

Films feature groups of teens - like Breakfast Club, that represent a range of teen 'types,' in other cases a teen is the focus for a coming of age film, like "The Way Way Back," or "The Spectacular Now," or "Boyz in the Hood." These films feature developmental challenges and norms for teens - exposure to sex, drugs, playing with new identities, new conflicts at school, work and home. Some offer the societal context as challenge when violence, poverty, domestic abuse, broken homes, rural life or a changing political landscape introduce conflict and negotiation to the developing young adult.

And maybe if we are lucky, the film features teens in the family context. Hopefully a healthy family - like that briefly shown in a film like "Easy A" who support Emma Stone with her misadventures with her peers. Yet all too often parents are represented in films about teens as a joke (Exhibit A: Amy Poehler as Regina George's mother in "Mean Girls" That said, there are other positive adults in the film - Tina Fey's math teacher for one).

What is your favorite film about teens? Why? (No judgment). Was it helpful to you when you were a teen? Does it evoke painful/'glad its over' memories, or does it just make you laugh - or fall in love all over again? And what, if anything, would someone watching the film learn about parent-teen relationships?