To one of the many individual sessions that I had when I was in Australia in 2006, a woman came together with her sixteen-year-old daughter. She wanted counselling for her daughter, not for herself. The daughter however saw things a bit differently. This is how the whole story evolved:
They came in, actually looking more like sisters than mother and daughter. Both wore make-up but with opposite effects: while the teenager of sixteen years looked more like nineteen or twenty, her mother, who must have been in her late forties, looked like she had just turned 35. Their clothing had a similar effect: fashionable and accentuating their figure. Their facial expressions and gestures however left no doubt about their relation to each other: the mother was eager to get her reluctant daughter to this talk.
They entered the room and I already knew that I would first let the mother talk and then ask the daughter whether she would like to talk to me alone – an overpowering mother in a counselling session does not really help a person to open up, especially a teenager!
The girl’s mother described the problem: her daughter went out to parties far too often. On those parties she drank too much alcohol and she then came home late in the night or in the early morning hours! She didn’t always come home alone though: she also brought boys back home who then stayed overnight! According to her mother, this was no behavior fitting to a sixteen-year-old! She had had serious talks with her, shouted at her, tried to forbid her but the daughter basically just did what she wanted to do and didn’t listen to any of her mother’s words.
I had seen such problems with teenagers especially in the west, had seen their lifestyle and the difficulties that parents faced with that. Just as I had planned, I asked the mother to leave her daughter and me alone for a while. She did and I could finally hear her daughter’s version of the story.
It was very simple: “My mum does all these things herself, too! When she does it, it is fine, so when I do the same, what’s wrong with me?”
Well, yes, I saw her point and that’s when I decided that this young lady was not the one in the need of counselling but her mother.
I will tell you next week what I told her mother.
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