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- Knowledgebase: Behavioral, Developmental, and Emotional Problems
- Questions about behavioral and emotional problems, Autism, developmental delays.
- 25. What's It To You: Teen Behavior - Top
- What’s It To You? Teen Behavior Experts Help Parents Get A Grip On The Lip.
(Asheville Citizen-Times, by Nanci Hellmich, USA Today, February 9, 1001)
When family the therapist Carleton Kendrick speaks at parenting seminars, he often uses this anecdote to describe teen-agers’ attitudes:
An adolescent girl, who had been moody and glum with her parents for several months, was heading out to the movies with her friends. Her mom said, “Have a good time.” The daughter turned around and snapped, “How dare you tell me what to do.”
This real-life example may seem a bit over the top, but it illustrates a point: Teen lip, attitude or surliness can be very painful- and inexplicable- to parents.
To help parents cope, experts are tackling the topic on Web sites, in books and at parenting seminars. Parents also are griping about it to each other.
And even adolescents will admit it exists. When teens were asked how adults would describe them, 29 percent said the adults would say they have a “bad attitude,” and 23 percent said adults would describe them as “disrespectful,” according to a Gallup Youth Survey of 500 teens, ages 13 to 17 released in 1998. Parents of adolescents have heard plenty of teen lip. Those phrases “Whatever”, “Well, hell-o”, “What’s it to you?” and there’s “the look,” a scowl that can be more condemning than words. There’s the defiantly silent body language, and the I’d- rather- be- anywhere- but- here- attitude.
Many parents today react to teen attitude in the wrong way. Some get angry their once-darling child now has a typical teen-age attitude. Others try to control their teen. Still others withdraw and abandon their parenting responsibilities rather than deal with the surly child.
It’s the parents’ role to define acceptable behavior, but teen lip would be easier for parents to handle if they understood where it was coming from, parenting experts say. Adolescents often are on an emotional roller coaster. Their bodies are being flooded with hormones, and they get angry and upset easily. They are trying to separate from their parents and become more autonomous, but they desperately need their parents, experts say.
“There is a reason kids are surly,” says Mary Lamia, a clinical psychologist who works with teens and their families in Kentfield, Calif. “Adolescents are people under intense personal and social stress, and they lack the adult tools to deal with it.”
Teens live in a pressure cooker. They constantly feel as if there’s a spotlight on them, and that they’re being evaluated by peers, teachers, coaches and parents. “Would you like being evaluated even moment of your day?” says Lamia, who is with the Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, a non-profit training and professional organization.
Parents misinterpret surliness as aloofness when actually it’s vulnerability she says. “Surliness is like a fence that teens put up to protect themselves. It protects their vulnerability and autonomy. If parents see this as a protective fence, maybe they wouldn’t try to break at down, but instead would try to find a gate to walk through.”
Kendrick agrees. All teens are surly and mouthy at some point. It’s just the way teenagers react to all the turmoil that’s going on inside them, he says. “They are going to be withdrawn. They are going to be flip. They are going to test you to see if you will hang in there with them while they are floundering, while they are trying to navigate their way through their burgeoning sexuality,” says Kendrick, a Boston-based family therapist who works for www.familyeducation.com.
Barbara Cooke in Deerfield Ill, a mother of three, ages 14, 19 and 21, has experienced plenty of teen attitude and lived to tell about it. She and her oldest son always had a close relationship, but his teen years were turbulent.
He was very verbal. He was mouthy. It was like something came over him and he would say something hurtful One time, he slammed his door and yelled, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ “ she says.
“When your child swears at you or is very sullen, you Can’t believe it. You feel shocked. You don’t know what to do. I felt like I was walking on eggshells. It was hard to know how to approach him ,“ she says. On several occasions, Cooke got so upset that she yelled back, but she quickly realized that didn’t work. One time, she stopped her son with a reflective comment. “I looked at him, and said, ‘How would you feel if I talked to you like that? How do you think that makes me feel?” His reply: “I guess I didn’t really think about it. I was just saying whatever came out of my ‘mouth.”
She also learned to give him a cooling-off period and then approach him with something like, “Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” Cooke realized that parents had an incredible need for guidance on these matters, so she wrote a newsletter for several years and now has a Web site, www.parentteen.com. She and her son are very close now, and her son gets upset when he hears kids being disrespectful to their parents.
Marissa Robillard, of Green Bay’ Wis., says she occasionally mouths off to her parents. “It may be to argue my curfew or simply misplacing frustration resulting from a bad day. “Some teens simply want boundaries when they become verbally out of line with their parents. Subconsciously, they look for security in knowing how far they can push their parents,” says Robillard, a member of USA TODAY’s Teen Panel.
Katy Montague, i6, of St. Louis, says many conflicts between teens and their parents are tied into the teen’s search for independence. “We are getting our wings. We are little baby birds, and we don’t want our mom and dad around all the time.” Explosions happen, but they can be cleaned up. She has said harsh things to her parents in the heat of the moment that she later regretted, and vice versa. All parties apologized, she says.
Reminding Teens Who They Are:
Parents are walking a tightrope — giving their kids the space they need to become their own person and yet not letting their children drive them away, family therapists and psychologists say
When teens sass their parents, they feel powerful and in control, even if it’s only for a few minutes, Kendrick says. They have disarmed their parents, he says.
The best way for parents to react to a sassy statement is not to get angry but to remind their teens who they are, Kendrick says. Parents might say something like, “You are really trying to hurt my feelings here. I don’t understand it. You are a better person than that.” Or they may need to say, “I’m not going to take that fresh mouth personally. But I will not allow you to talk that way to me or your sister.” Kendrick says the teen sometimes is testing the parents, waiting for them to say “that’s enough.” A parent may even raise his or her own editorial eyebrow when a teen starts to spout a sassy remark That is a way of teaching children they are not allowed to talk rudely to people in the house.
But when parents do make a mistake, they have to be grownup enough to say “I’m sorry” If parents lash out at their teens or are grumpy, Lamia suggests saying, “Gee, I’m sorry I was grumpy. I had a hard day, but that was unfair to you.” If parents showed their teens more kindness, respect and thoughtfulness, their teens would be a lot less surly, Lamia says. “The teens wouldn’t feel they had to put up their fence so often.”
- Updated: March 22, 2001
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- Knowledgebase: Behavioral, Developmental, and Emotional Problems
James L Horwitz, MD
David C. Thomas, MD
Barbara Lindberg, PNP