McHugh’s philosophy is to teach teenagers to take responsibility for their actions. “I can’t be with them 24 hours a day, but I can help them to protect themselves,” she says.
A Dublin mother of two, McHugh, 41, is a counsellor and psychotherapist who specialises in helping traumatised teenagers. The author of the newly published Celtic Cubs: Inside the Mind of the Irish Teenager feels she has a unique insight into the youf of today and, guess what, they really are misunderstood. The door slamming and moodiness is a cry for help, but the symptoms are dismissed as a coming-of-age reaction to life, and teenage woes usually go untreated.
To McHugh, the Irish teenager of today is nothing like Harry Enfield’s Kevin. She is struck by their confidence, freedom of expression and need to be seen and heard. “Never before in this country has a generation of teenagers stood at the threshold of such opportunity,” she writes. “Walking down Grafton Street on a Saturday afternoon, I am often in awe of these bright, happy children who appear so at one with themselves, their friends and life in general.
“Their inherent trust in the fact that life will provide well for them has imbued a freedom of self-expression that will in most cases ensure that this comes to pass.”
But there are also pressures: from peers, parental expectations and a society so engrossed with wealth and achievement that to strive for anything less than success is regarded as a personal failing. Binge drinking, eating disorders and cannabis smoking are some of the ways teenagers escape from troubled environments.
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From her perch in psychotherapy, McHugh has seen a more sinister side of teenage angst. Upper-middle-class Ireland, with its posh schools and sporting ethos, adds an extra layer of competition. Some fee-paying schools hold academia and athletics in the same high regard and encourage their students to take performance-enhancing drugs to boost their success in rugby. Or at best the schools and coaches are turning a blind eye to the growing number of teens taking creatine and No-Xplode, over-the-counter supplements that improve performance in high-intensity sports such as weightlifting and sprinting. Carl, McHugh’s son, is a keen rugby player and has admitted to trying a supplement to help with gym workouts.
“I found them in my home,” says his mother. “Rugby has become such a huge thing for many young boys. They all want to be like Brian O’Driscoll and they believe they can do that by making themselves as big as possible. They all want the biceps, it’s part of the look. Carl said he tried it a few times and it made him feel sick.”
One of her clients, a 16-year-old boy, says he was dropped from a school team and ostracised for not taking performance-enhancing substances. He spoke of the masonic-type secrecy the team was forced to observe on the issue.
“Schools promoting these products and promoting aggression and blatant violence on pitches are a cause for concern. They are upping the ante on competition.”
The overspill is disturbing cases of violence and brawls among teenage boys, even from well-to-do areas. It was the case of Brian Murphy, beaten to death outside Club Anabel at the Burlington hotel in 2000, that prompted McHugh to write her book. She felt those charged with violence that night were “scapegoated” by society. “I asked myself if my 16-year-old son was faced with the same situation and the myriad elements of that tragic evening, could I guarantee he would not have behaved in the same way. In all honesty, I could not.”
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Her relationship with her children is guided by the philosophy that “prohibition never works”. So she allows Carl to drink as long as he controls it, and Chloe, 13, to wear make-up and use Bebo to contact her friends.
“I talk openly with them about sex, drinking and drugs. I allow my son to drink, but I talk to him about not drinking too much. If they are not allowed to talk about what’s going on, then there is room for them to get into difficulty.
“In return they openly communicate to me what is going on with them.
“Some people might say I’m too liberal, but I need to teach them to be responsible. People go on about kids being addicted to Bebo, but if it wasn’t that they would be on the phone for hours. It’s just a different form of communication.”
Her liberal approach is a product of her upbringing. Born in 1965 in Jerusalem, growing up for her was anything but ordinary. Her father worked with the United Nations and she spent many years travelling around the Middle East with her four siblings.
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McHugh recalls with delight the quirks of living abroad, from climbing mountains and spending days on beaches to being evacuated from areas where violence erupted, or being holed up in a school for the night because of roadblocks. She was 10 when the family moved back to Ireland, and her world fell apart.
“We had great freedom abroad and suddenly I was incarcerated in a boarding school. So I took to misbehaving. I was a bad teenager and not very popular with headmistresses.”
In 1995 her marriage to Mark, the father of her two children, broke down. He lives in England, but there is no bitterness. Rather, his absence has reinforced for McHugh the importance of children having the right to both parents in the event of a break-up. This might explain her choice of John Waters, a champion of fathers’ rights, to write the book’s introduction.
“Co-parenting is where we need to go,” she says. “I focus a lot on fatherhood in the book because my father has been a huge influence. I can’t imagine what it would be like without him. I think it’s difficult for boys not to have their father on an ongoing basis and that is one thing my son has to deal with. But there is no reason for parents separating to be an either/or situation.”
McHugh insists her book is not to tell parents what they have been doing wrong. “The focus is for parents to move forward in their thinking and be more aware of what is going on with their teenagers. I stand as an advocate for teens because they are under immense pressure and are often misunderstood. To increase our understanding of this world is a necessity.”