Public speaker helps adults understand teens

Story by Theresa Walker
Freedom News Service

Susie Vanderlip doesn’t condemn kids who come to visit with her after they see her ‘‘Legacy of Hope’’ presentation. Neither does she condone the harmful things they may be doing.

It’s a fine line, but she’s learned to walk it well over the 14 years she has traveled around the country listening and talking to thousands of teens.

Kids open up to Vanderlip because they can relate to the characters she portrays — a theatrical parade of eight personas based on people she has met over the years. Among them: Julio, who joined a gang at 14 and didn’t expect to live past 18; Jenn, a 14-year-old party girl who mixes alcohol, drugs and sex; and Christalisa, a 16-year-old soccer player who cuts herself to deal with her parents’ divorce and her father’s departure.

A petite woman with thick, shoulder-length brown hair, Vanderlip brings each character to life in short segments during her presentation, quickly changing her outer clothing, mannerisms and speech from one to the other.

The emotions she expresses through these characters allow her to connect with kids in ways their parents and other adults in their lives often can’t.

‘‘Teens are really into feelings,’’ Vanderlip said. ‘‘The most important thing I give to kids is I respect their feelings.’’

Vanderlip has written a book to share with adults what she’s learned about communicating with teens, ‘‘52 Ways to Protect Your Teen: Guiding Teens to Good Choices and Success.’’
Unconditional support is the key, she said.

That means you don’t nag, scold, complain or lose your temper.
Instead, she encourages parents to listen to their kids, and to honestly express their fears about the choices their children may be making. Use stories to illustrate the consequences of bad choices, she says. Ask their opinions.

She tries to give insight into teens’ emotions and how they might affect behavior. She likes short chapters and different approaches for broaching touchy subjects.

One chapter deals with that most annoying of teen responses, ‘‘Whatever.’’

‘‘I’m not talking as a psychologist,’’ she admitted. ‘‘I’m not talking from an academic point of view. I’m talking as a teen through an adult’s mind. I’m saying what teenagers have taught me.’’

Megan McIntosh saw Vanderlip’s ‘‘Legacy of Hope’’ program five years ago when she was 14 and attending an alternative high school in her hometown of Fort Myers, Fla.

McIntosh was suicidal and preparing to enter a hospital for observation on the day Vanderlip came to her school. Her guidance counselor thought it might help McIntosh to see the ‘‘Legacy of Hope’’ presentation before being escorted to the hospital.

Her counselor was right. McIntosh was as enthralled as the other teens who crowded around Vanderlip after her presentation to speak to her.
‘‘What she said was so true. Even after she came out of character, you didn’t think of her as an adult. You kind of think of her as an equal.’’
McIntosh grabbed a pamphlet. As soon as she was released from the hospital, she e-mailed Vanderlip, sharing how she injured herself by cutting, and describing her family problems.

McIntosh describes herself as the kid who felt out of place and always sat in the back of the class, never speaking.

Vanderlip told her she wasn’t crazy, and that she wasn’t the only teen dealing with these issues.

‘‘She was the first person, and just about the only person, that listened to what I had to say and did not criticize or judge me,’’ McIntosh said.

She continued to correspond with Vanderlip over the years, sharing her fears and seeking advice.

‘‘Susie would always ask, ‘What can you do differently next time?’ ’’
Now 20 years old and living on her own, McIntosh credits Vanderlip for helping her take the big step to go to college, which she started last fall. She had been too scared to take the entrance exam, as afraid of succeeding as she was of failing.

‘‘Susie told me, ‘Do the scary things every day. Just get up and do it. Let go of how it might turn out.’ I turned my mind off and just did it. The next day I went and took the entrance exam.’’

Vanderlip, 55, whose training is in dance, is a deeply spiritual woman who doesn’t hesitate to share that in her presentations and in her book. She believes that fear is at the heart of many of the things teens do to harm themselves. Fear, she said, is why they don’t open up to their parents: They are afraid of how they will react.

She lives in Orange, Calif., with her second husband, a clinical psychologist.

Her one-hour program grew out of the work she did as a dancer and choreographer with a semi-professional group Kaleidoscope of Orange County, and as a dance teacher at Coastline Community College in Costa Mesa, Calif. When she first started ‘‘Legacy of Hope’’ in 1991, it was more dance than acting, she said. She took acting classes, and now it is more acting than dance.

She’s presented ‘‘Legacy of Hope’’ to parents and at a variety of conferences for professionals who work with children. Last fall, she performed the program during a luncheon for the California Association of Orthodontists in San Diego.

Why orthodontists?
Orthodontists deal with a lot of teenagers, and getting their cooperation is key to successfully treating them, said Dr. Ken Fisher, president of the association, who hoped his fellow dentists would come away with more empathy for their youthful patients.

‘‘We have to understand as best we can what that kid is going through and why they may not be doing what they’re supposed to be doing,’’ Fisher said. ‘‘Sometimes, we know it’s better just to talk with the kids. Sometimes, we have to go to the parents.’’

As always, Vanderlip began her presentation in character, sauntering through the audience as a defiant ‘‘Julio’’ while they finished dessert. With a wool cap pulled down to her ears to hide her hair, she looked like an adolescent boy in her sunglasses, checkered shirt, baggy jeans and tennis shoes.

‘‘Hey, you think I’m crazy, man?’’ she challenged the audience, taking on the bittersweet bravado of a boy she met at an assembly in Fresno. ‘‘You ain’t seen crazy til you seen my old man when he’s drinking.’’
The orthodontists initially reacted the same way McIntosh said her schoolmates in Florida did: They weren’t sure what to make of Vanderlip, looking around at each other, restless in their chairs. But as each of her characters unfolded, the room grew attentive. By the end, the dentists understood her and her message.

‘‘It’s a rah-rah that I can do better,’’ Dr. Bill Barton of San Diego said. ‘‘I can do better for somebody else.’’