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- Knowledgebase: Teenager / Adolescent Articles
- Articles of interest to teenage patients
- 4. Teens Behaving Badly - Top
- Teens Behaving Badly.
Author/s: Paula Gray Hunker
Issue: July 17, 2000, Insight on the News
Parents find it increasingly difficult to understand their teen-age children, who have found new ways to express their rebellious spirits. Insight talks with experts who offer timely advice.
Katherine McMillan knew she was in for a wild ride when her oldest son, Ben, came home one day with a Mohawk haircut. Then nearly 13 years old, Ben already had been struggling with his parents about curfews, house rules and boundaries. When his father took a distant job that kept him away from home and the family during the workweek, everything escalated.
"I was absolutely unprepared for parenting a teenager," says McMillan, a mother of four. "Within two weeks of my husband's new job, Ben got that haircut as a declaration of independence and a visible rejection of everything I thought our family was about. I felt like he fell into an alien culture."
Parents often are unprepared when adolescence transforms their once-familiar children into rebellious and moody strangers. Experts, while agreeing that middle-school years can be tumultuous, remind parents that these are just the growing pains that signal a healthy move toward adulthood. "That's the primary developmental task of adolescence," says Ava Siegler, director of the Institute for Child, Adolescent and Family Studies in New York City and a practicing psychologist. "It's the time when children learn how to separate from their parents. Since they are so attached to their parents, they mobilize hostility and anger to create a separation."
Parents often feel hurt and betrayed when their child pushes away from them, but Thomas Phelan, a clinical family psychologist near Chicago who specializes in discipline issues, urges parents not to take it personally. "I ask parents, `Do you want them to live with you forever?' Whether it's green hair or their terrible rudeness, realize that this is a phase and relax and enjoy it."
Engaging in angry dinner-table arguments or enduring endless sulky moods can be far from enjoyable, and most parents feel helpless when the parenting techniques that served them well during their child's earlier years no longer are effective. Phelan says parents can minimize their discomfort by distinguishing between harmless annoyances and issues that are worth fighting over.
"Teens come equipped with an MBA," says Phelan, referring to "minor but annoying" behavior. "Expect drawn-out, totally annoying discussions. Expect that they will hone their negotiating skills on you. You don't always have to argue back. Let the minor ones go." After arguing for 10 years over your 17-year-old's messy room, "it's time to wave the white flag. Admit it, you lost that one. Stop fighting."
Parents should save their energy for the major confrontations -- those issues that involve a child's health or safety, such as drugs, alcohol, driving rules and sex. Once those issues are defined, parents should determine a level of involvement. Some issues require parents to participate as silent observers as teens learn important lessons through trial and error. Others demand that parents play the adviser or negotiator. At the highest level, a parent will have to intervene to solve a serious problem. "Many parents don't realize that it's not just the child that changes, but parents must change as well," Siegler say. "The rules and regulations from childhood are just no longer appropriate."
That's a difficult change, says Susan Panzarine, a health professional from Basking Ridge, N.J., who specializes in adolescents and has two teens of her own. "Parents of teens are dealing with a loss. They don't know who they will greet when their child comes down the stairs each morning, and they wonder what ever happened to their sweet little girl or boy," she says. "They have to give up their old comfortable, warm and snugly relationship and come to terms with getting to know their child all over again."
Parents need to work hard to find ways to stay involved in their children's' lives -- that's quite a challenge when teens are seeking the opposite, a disconnection from parental ties. McMillan learned this lesson the hard way. Worried about the influence of her son's friends and scared she was losing him, she told Ben that she was sending him to stay with his grandparents. He ran away instead. Fortunately, he returned after 10 days.
"I'm not proud of what I did," says Ben, now a self-assured 17-year-old, "but running away released a big demon that was sitting on my chest. I felt so pressured by my parents to be someone that wasn't me -- the football player that dates the cheerleader. When I came home, I was much more clear about who I was, and it helped me sit down and have a civil conversation with my parents."
The entire family went to therapy, and everyone -- including Ben's three younger sisters -- benefited from the experience, McMillan says. She also admires Ben's courage in finding and following his own path. "That's my advice for other parents. Respect your children for the people that they are and the adults that they will be, not who you think they are or who you think they should become."
Of course, that's often easier said than done, notes Elaine Rubenstein, a clinical social worker from Annapolis, Md., who specializes in family and adolescent issues. "For most parents, the adolescent years are really uncharted territory," says Rubenstein. "It's even more difficult because every child is so emotionally different, and `normal' has such a wide range."
Parents should expect to see mood swings, irritability, anger or rebellious attitudes. But when the bad moods settle in for more than a month and the child's personality goes through a long-term change, it may be time to seek help. "Do they isolate themselves from the family by hiding out in their room?" asks Rubenstein. "Do you see a drop in their grades, a change of friends, loss of interest in the previously favorite activities? If so, then it's time to get help and get help quickly."
A consistent and persistent inability to function should be the measuring stick of when a problem has passed from an adolescent's normal moodiness into a problem that warrants parental intervention, notes Siegler. "Mood swings should not be dismissed. They can be a sign of a serious problem." Parents should get help immediately if their child discusses thoughts of death or suicide or exhibits signs of an eating disorder.
Whether adolescents are going through a good mood or bad, it's important for parents to develop a new system of communication. "Your child is going through so many changes," says Kate Kelly, a Larchmont, N.Y., mother of three and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Parenting a Teenager. "They are immature and insecure and worried about who they are and where they fit in. Just know that some moodiness, irritability and surliness is part of the territory."
Parents can be understanding of adolescent angst while still maintaining some ground rules. Kelly has two firm rules for her three daughters, who range in age from 11 to 19. The first is that nonstop complaining is not permitted. "I'll let them get it off their chests and listen to a string of 10 complaints -- but that's it. I'll then tell them to look at that list and come up with something positive."
The second rule is to instill a reality check. "Teens can get into a deep funk over the smallest things," Kelly says. "`Fine,' I'll say. `You can't have those sneakers -- but you're alive, you're healthy, you're clothed. Let's move on.'"
More Information
TEEN BOOKS
* How to Live With Your Parents Without Losing Your Mind, by Ken Davis (Zondervan Publishing House, 1988, 160 pp). This Bible-based book offers warm, funny advice to help teens learn a key lesson: that the best way to change their parents is to change themselves.
* Happiness Is a Choice for Teens, by Paul D. Meier and Jan Meier (Thomas Nelson Press, 1997, 228 pp). A husband-and-wife team lend kids practical advice on surviving -- even enjoying -- teen years.
* My Feelings Are Like Wild Animals: How Do I Tame Them? A Practical Guide to Help Teens (and Former Teens) Feel and Deal With Painful Emotions, by Gary Egebert (Paulist Press, 1998, 96 pp). The book offers practical tips on how to cope with emotions such as anger, jealousy and guilt.
Life Happens: A Teenager's Guide to Friends, Failure, Sexuality, Love, Rejection, Addiction, Peer Pressure, Families, Loss, Depression, Change and Other Challenges of Living, by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman (Perigee Press, 1996). The authors provide a checklist of practical suggestions.
PARENTING BOOKS
* A Parent's Guide to the Teen Years: Raising Your 11- to-14-Year-Old in the Age of Chat Rooms and Navel Rings, by Susan Panzarine (Checkmark Books, 2000, 190 pp). The author, a medical professional who specializes in adolescents, offers practical advice to parents, from helping their teens deal with body changes to helping them cope with emotional mood swings.
* The Complete Idiot's Guide to Parenting a Teenager, by Kate Kelly, (Alpha Books, 1996, 294 pp). Kelly offers "idiotproof" guidelines to help parents communicate with and cope with their teens.
* Surviving Your Adolescents: How to Manage and Let Go of Your 13-18 Year Olds, by Thomas Phelan (Child Management Inc., 1998, 152 pp). Phelan helps parents distinguish between true problems and annoying behavior.
- Updated: May 18, 2001
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- Knowledgebase: Teenager / Adolescent Articles
James L Horwitz, MD
David C. Thomas, MD
Barbara Lindberg, PNP