Author: MJT
Negotiating The Rapids:
Parenting An Adolescent
If you’re looking for a thankless job, try parenting an
adolescent. They may thank you
eventually, but it probably won’t be for a decade or two. Parenting an adolescent is heart-wrenching,
stressful and wonderful. You have all
the responsibility for them, and your authority over them is slipping through
your fingers.
Parenting an adolescent is the process of getting them
through the transition from childhood to adulthood, and preparing them for
adult life. You have to help them
negotiate the emotional, physical and social transitions as they get ready to
fly free from the family nest.
The changes a child goes through on his way to adulthood
interact with each other, so it’s artificial to separate them out, but it does
help you to develop strategies for parenting an adolescent.
Emotional changes
Often, the first indicator a parent has that his child is
entering adolescence is that they become very emotional. It happens a couple of years earlier in girls
than boys, and the emotions are different.
Boys tend to become aggressive, and girls cry. Their emotions are labile and out of
control. Hormonal changes, new social
pressures, and changes in cognition all combine to create emotional soup. It confuses the child, and she doesn’t know
what to do.
You can help your child through this transition by being
patient with him. Give her extra grace
and empathy, and you can also teach him how to manage strong emotions. For instance, you might teach your
fourteen-year-old boy to go for a run when he’s angry, or you might teach your
12-year-old daughter to monitor her cycles and decrease stress on the days
before her period.
Physical changes
The physical changes of adolescence can be summed up in one
word: sex. They go from being children to fully sexually
functioning adults. It’s normal, but
when you’re parenting an adolescent, this is probably the biggest transition to
get them through.
Adolescents are usually physically mature enough for sex a
few years before they are emotionally mature enough for it, and that creates
problems. They have all these raging
hormones driving them toward sexuality in a highly sexualized culture…and they
don’t know what to do with any of it.
The best things you can do to help your adolescent through
the physical changes are to talk openly and frankly about sex, including the
urges they feel, and to keep the communication lines open. That means you have to be able to hear things
you don’t want to hear, and to listen with respect and without judgment. It also means you must listen to a whole lot
of drivel before you hear anything important.
They will test your willingness to listen before they confide in you.
Social changes
During adolescence, the child’s social focus moves from the
family to her peers. This is
particularly frightening for parents because those peers have poor
judgment. And so does your kid. The judgment centers of the brain don’t fully
mature until the late teens or early twenties.
Peer pressure can lead your adolescent to make unwise choices and engage
in dangerous activities. And to be
perfectly honest, you may not be able to do anything about it.
When you are parenting an adolescent, your role changes, and
you have to learn new parenting skills.
You’re beyond time outs and discipline issues. Your role now is to guide
this fledgling adult through the teen years, and then to let them go.
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