Reply to Teen friend self-mutilating - books to help my teen understand and support

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]So you are putting inappropriate expectations and demands on your child. [/quote]

You missed the part where the OP’s son wants to be [i]compassionate[/i] and understanding of what his friend is going through.. Nothing inappropriate about that.

[quote] He wants to understand and be supportive. She is a dear friend and such a sweetheart.[/quote]

[/quote]

Being compassionate and understanding what his friend is going through should not require a book. That’s basic friendship: friend is clearly suffering, being non-judgmental and listening is all OPs son needs to do. He should do what kind teens do when faced with struggling friends: make them laugh, send them funny memes, check in, go out to coffee together, etc.

But OP wants more. She wants her son to learn more about cutting, to apparently read a book about cutting (which are geared to parents, teachers, and other [i]adults[/i], not to peers) and to educate with material that is not intended for peers. That’s moving dangerously close to putting her son in a highly inappropriate role. She is encouraging him to take on a burden that is not his, rather than encouraging him to focus on what teens do best.

It is unrealistic and frankly possibly harmful to her son to expect him to educate himself on things like the highly complex and often unknown clinical reasons that kids self-harm. This is not something he actually can understand — it has stumped many parents and clinicians alike. There is no book or YouTube that is going to grant him understanding that changes the actionable support that he can give his friend. And there is a real risk that her son puts himself in an inappropriate position of either “therapy-izing” a close friendship or struggling significantly himself when he is unable to stop or help the friend.

OP should be gently steering her son away from “educating” himself with clinical material that he can’t truly absorb anyhow and instead work with him to be a teenager with a suffering friend. [/quote]

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