Heather struggled with being an introvert in her teen years and has been coming to terms with it more as a young adult. She’s not alone. Being a teen can be stressful and even more so for introverts, who have to withstand all social pressures of a typical high school day which are exhausting to introverts and of no intrinsic value.

For some of us, high school was a long time ago! We can understand needs of introverted teens better and support them in growth on their own terms by going back for a moment to look at high school years and demands that are made on teens beyond academic.

Most high schools are set up to please extroverts, who are majority of population 3:1. Introverts may find a typical day overcrowded, over stimulating, noisy, oppressive and stressful. The lunch room seems to be a particularly awful experience. Introverted teens suffer from an almost total lack of privacy as well.

We decided to get asked a group of introverts how they felt about high school. Here are some replies.

1.“High school was better than grade school because there was more individualness to curriculum. I remember wanting to be alone at lunch time, even though I had friends to sit with, but there was no excuse to get away from people. Sometimes I'd go to library to pretend to work on projects in quiet, or I'd walk in halls (I went to a huge school) and pretend I was walking somewhere, just for a moment alone.”

2.“Hated it. It was noisy and there always seemed to be an element of danger in air. The teenage stage of human development is probably most dangerous. If teens had access to nukes, we'd all be doomed! LOL.”

3.“Loved high school. Gave me a greater opportunity to be a nerd. Loved carting all those books around. Instead of getting my books from my locker as I needed them, I got all books I'd need first thing in morning and get rid of them as I no longer needed them. If there was homework assigned for a class, I carried that book all day, and usually got through all homework before I actually had to take it home.”

4.“I liked studying and reading but I did not interact with my peers because by that age, everyone seemed to have made up their mind that I was much too different and weird so I remained alone.”

5.“I can't say that I did like it - it was really just a job to me. I needed to get great grades because there was no money for college. So I tracked myself into academic side and wound up in Honors and AP classes. I became Editor of newspaper which was a big deal since paper had a tradition of winning a lot of regional and national journalism awards. I edited literary magazine, helped with yearbook, and did a lot of debate. Basically, if I thought it would look good for college I did it if it wasn't completely horrible like Prom Committee. Teachers liked me. Other students just ignored me. I had some friends and I dated guys who went to other schools. Really any social life I had involved kids who were high academic achievers both in my own school and at other high schools. We all knew each other from debate, chess club, academic competitions or whatever. Frankly, probably more than half of these kids were introverts so there wasn't a lot of pressure to conform to a "peer group". A lot of normal stuff of high school just flew under my radar. I couldn't get involved in status dressing thing - no money. I couldn't get involved in drink or drug until you puke thing - no money, looked stupid. I couldn't get involved in high end sex thing - pregnancy would have absolutely ended my college ambitions. So I stayed out of trouble and had a fairly okay time.”

6.“High school was fine. I had a small group of friends, but preferred to be alone on weekends. I was always “the quiet one” in group.”

7.“I hated high school with a passion. I should have been home schooled. I was too sensitive and introverted to be thrown into lions den. My elementary school never really prepared me for studies like geometry and I had parents that were busy and too permissive. So not having help I needed to get over my math learning disability (discaculia) I rebelled with drugs to escape pain of having to socialize and study.”

8.“I hated immaturity of other students. They made other student's business their business and I thought that was not only immature but antisocial and destructive. I hated high school because it didn't address complete person. I wanted to know map of human psyche. I wanted to learn about human behavior and take it apart under a microscope.”

Title: Are You Addicted to Your Children? Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 690 Category: Parenting

ARE YOU ADDICTED TO YOUR CHILDREN? Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Is it possible to be using our children addictively?

Anything that we use to get love, avoid pain, and fill up inner emptiness can become an addiction – even our children! If your children are your whole life – if you don’t have a strong spiritual connection with a personal source of love and guidance, as well as other relationships and interests that you are passionate about, you might be using your children to fill an empty place within you.

If you don’t have a partner or your relationship with your partner is not fulfilling to you, and you don’t have deeply connected and meaningful friendships, then you might be using your kids as your major emotional connection. If you don’t have hobbies or work that are compelling and fulfilling to you, you might be using your children to give meaning to your life. If you don’t have a daily spiritual practice that brings love and comfort to your soul, you might be using your children to fill this need.

If this is what you are doing, it is not good for your children. It is a huge burden on children to be responsible for their parent’s loneliness and sense of purpose. Children who feel this responsibility often become caretakers, giving themselves up to take care of a parent. On other hand, a child burdened with this responsibility may rebel and distance from parent, spending less and less time at home to avoid burden of parent’s emptiness.