Project PATCH Youth Ranch will be celebrating its 25th year of operation this year.  As a counselor at PATCH for the past nine years, I feel myself blessed each day I get to work with the troubled teens whom we serve.  When I say the words "troubled teens," I cringe inside; in my day-to-day interactions with these kids, I do not see troubled teens. These are kids who were or are responding to their environments and histories in troubling ways, that's all. What I see on a daily basis are normal, polite young men and women who get confused, angry, and depressed. But when someone is there to help them work through the process, there is rarely trouble, just a brief issue and they all move on with good attitudes, wanting to do their best.

What I have been most hit by in both my work at PATCH and my prior counseling experiences is the knowledge that our kids see everything that we do.  There are parents who hope that their own lifestyles will not be repeated by their children, so they try to hide their habits, their anger, and their addictions.  I can promise you that secret-keeping to this extent does not work.  If you want to hide your drinking with friends after work, eventually your kids will find out.  If you hope that your kids never discover the friction between you and your spouse, they will see and hear things eventually.

I have heard so many terrible stories of kids who were holding in their parents' secrets and being torn apart by it all-kids who knew about Dad having a girlfriend, Mom using pot occasionally, or Dad being prone to rages should he be "set off."  These are, hopefully, extreme examples, but even the smaller family secrets set up a child for confusion, loyalty issues, and stress.

My only intention in addressing this topic is to encourage parents to be honest with their kids through the way they live and not being hypocritical. I recently met with a teen and his parents who were stressing their strong disapproval for his music, which communicated violence, apathy, and immorality. The parents went on to report that the lyrics did nothing for his motivation or depression.  The tables were then turned on the parents, as their son questioned them about their own Osborne CDs, which regularly blared messages of hopelessness on the family stereo.  I am pleased to report that the parents immediately went home and destroyed those CDs, seeing that their son had a good point.  At the same time, the son's dark choice of music was not allowed in the house either.

It's not what we tell our kids, but what we live, that they absorb.  If you consistently demonstrate integrity, hard work, and even good eating habits, your kids are likely to do the same.  We give our PATCH kids an assignment that asks them to write about a time that someone they knew demonstrated integrity.  I enjoy reading their responses and find it particularly wonderful when these examples are from the lives of their own parents. 

Our kids see what we do. We have a responsibility to model a positive life that is worth replicating.

Colleen Donald, MA, is a Treatment Coordinator at Project PATCH Youth Ranch in Garden Valley, ID