This tip is primarily for parents of a teenager—however, parents are
encouraged to share it with their teen(s).
If, as the parent of a teen, you believe that there is such a thing as
an accidental pregnancy then you are ripe for your teen "surprising" you
one day with an "accidental" pregnancy. In other words, given your
present belief system it won't be a surprise because your teen already intuits that you'll accept
"accidental" because you haven't delivered the following ultimatum:
Parent to teen: No babies until you are living on your
own and can afford all the costs. A pregnancy would be your way of
saying you don't value our support and that you'll be moving out
immediately. We refuse to pay for your pregnancy because we know it will
be premeditated, not an accident. I mean what I'm saying. There will be
no second chances about this matter. Do you understand? Be certain to
tell each date about this consequence before you con them into
impregnating you.
Typically a teen's "accidental" pregnancy explanation will contain a
lie, such as:
"I don't know how it happened" (a covert victim-blame statement) as
opposed to, "I conned him into wanting sex and impregnating me."
or,
"I arrogantly ignored everyone's advice and impregnated her knowing
full well it would upset her parents."
Few teen parents will acknowledge to his/her parents, "I knew with absolute
certainty that you didn't want an accidental pregnancy problem. I knew
it would not feel good to you and that it would be abusive of me to dump
such a problem in your space, but, obviously I didn't respect you enough
to honor your wishes."
Let's put it another way. Any teen who creates an accidental pregnancy
is communicating to everyone (non-verbally) that he/she is not
in-communication with his/her parents (there are no exceptions to this
phenomenon). The implication being, "I wasn't experiencing love and
affection at home so I deceitfully went behind your backs and found
someone to 'love' me." [Yes, teens mistake physical intimacy for love].
If a teen isn't observing affection between his/her parents, if he/she isn't continually receiving hugs from both parents, the teen
automatically assumes that he/she is the cause for the lack of affection
that once was and that they don't inspire love and harmony, therefore,
that they are not lovable [no matter how many words a parent uses to
assure them that they are not the problem]. And so the teen searches
outside the family for the illusion of love, of communication. I say
"illusion" because what teens "in love" experience is not communication;
the foundation of their relationship is based upon deception, both
hiding from their parents the fact that they are having sex. Guess who
taught them to be deceitful, who didn't create a safe space for the
truth to be told? Guess whose parents are so unconscious that they
couldn't tell when their child is withholding thoughts from them?
"In-communication" meaning, the teen has not been taught how to
communicate openly, honestly, and spontaneously with his/her parents;
instead, most parents train their child to deceive them, to withhold
specific thoughts, especially, "I've been thinking of having sex with _
_ _ _." Such a parent-child relationship is fraught with
breakdowns in
communication.
Teens need to know that they have a positive effect on their
parents:
When a school child first hears about
saturated and trans
fats or the deleterious effects of drinking and smoking they run
home and try to inspire his/her parents to opt for healthy choices. Many
children try to bring the family together (perhaps the way it used to be) and
they fail, they experience invalidation; the thought being, "If I can't affect
happiness between my own parents then there must be something wrong with
me." And so they begin living from the point of view that something is
wrong with them and that they don't deserve happiness. The hypocrisy
between what teachers say and what their own parents do wreaks havoc on
a child's mind.
All teen pregnancies have one thing in common. Neither parent of either
teen sat their teen down to have the "birds and bees talk." (read
Birds 'n Bees 2.0). Such talks
always include:
Who pays for what—with the parents and teens sitting down together,
itemizing in writing, all the estimated monthly expenses, including the
hospital birth costs.
Getting support/permission from his/her date's parents to have sex?
And, where to have it the first time; fumbling
around in the back seat of a car with a condom increases the
odds of accidents.
A discussion about the fact that sperm can swim through underwear
and the fact that condoms break when it's important that they don't break, especially when
there is a deceit being perpetrated.
And, the all-important fact that there are no accidents when it comes to
pregnancies.
* All pregnancies are a manifestation of either a conscious or an
unconscious intention:
The "talk" must include discussions about the
unconscious motivations that produce a supposedly unwanted pregnancy.
Just because one isn't aware of how or why they produced a result
doesn't mean that they didn't intend it.
Few parents of a pregnant teen acknowledge that the teen simply
manifested their (the parent's) unconscious intention. Yes, both the
mother and father unconsciously intended the pregnancy; we know this to
be true based upon the results their leadership-communication skills
produced. What's worse is parents usually lie about it, they make the
teen wrong and blame him/her, honestly believing that it has absolutely
nothing to do with how they (the parent) communicated (verbally,
non-verbally, and psychically) with their teen. Parents who are
absolutely clear that they have no intention for their teen to produce a
pregnancy problem do not create such a problem.
* All teen mothers, when in-communication with a communication-skills
coach, will acknowledged that they can now see that it was their
intention to get pregnant, partly because they didn't want to confront
the alternatives (learning how to communicate with her parents or
studying for a profession). Most girls are able to see that they conned
a boy into impregnating her which selfishly thwarted the possibility of
him furthering his education due to bills. Thwarting is something those
in the process of crashing and burning do; they take as many down with
them as possible (everyone's parents, relatives and friends). Most are
able to see that a pregnancy was a covert way of making his/her parents wrong
because they did a lousy parenting job.
Most all teen mothers have to acknowledge the possibility that their
pregnancy might be the consequence of a perpetration, a deception, of
deceiving her parents and of supporting her boyfriend in deceiving his
parents. All teen fathers eventually have to acknowledge an "accidental"
pregnancy as being a consequence of conning his girlfriend into
deceiving her parents so as to have sex. Both teen parents live with the
thought that though they might profess love for each other, neither
truly have each others best interests at heart in terms of continuing
education. Worse, both arrogantly expect others (parents and welfare) to
pay the costs of their perpetration.
Most parents of a pregnant teen hid from their teen that they, the
parent(s), when they were a teen, deceived their own parents by conning
their date into having sex behind the backs of their date's parents.
Parents who hypocritically "teach" truth-telling while hiding
their own teen-perpetrations from their teen, train their teen to be
deceptive.
Such teens grow up believing they (the teen) cannot be as disciplined
and honest as they believe their abstinence-spouting parents must have
been. Dishonest, misleading, deceptive parenting breeds dishonesty.
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