Text 3 teenagers in turmoil

The early adolescent years, from about 12 to 14, are a period of great change. Physical growth is more rapid than at any other time, and sexuality enters the frame. Parents often complain of feeling that their child may feel quite a stranger to himself. Hormones are raging, he may feel tearful, elated, excited. There is an enormous preoccupation with the body and its sensations, and with appearances.

Adolescents are often tearful and, if they are close enough to their parents to speak to them, will communicate their bewilderment: “I’m sad”; “I feel lonely”; “Nobody likes me at school”; followed by “but I don’t know why.” Even if all the evidence is to the contrary – friends telephoning, the child being admired and his company sought – these feelings of insecurity and isolation are real.

Another puzzle is how different the teenager can feel from one day to the next. Moods and self-image sway like branches in the wind. What is more, the adolescent fluctuates between being quite mature and being infantile, and for this reason parents get wrong-footed. If you talk to the young child in him, the adolescent may criticize you for being patronizing, for not trusting him. If you treat him as an adult, he may feel pushed and uncared for. Whichever aspect of him you talk to, it seems that you fail to take the other into account. This unpredictability makes everyone in the family feel that they are walking on eggshells. So when it comes to the issues of saying “no” and setting limits become delicate, many parents feel that they are failing.

During this time of change and insecurity, our growing child may feel out of control. It is particularly important that we should not be invaded and taken over by the same feelings as him. When he cried as a baby, you could just hold and soothe him. The teenager will show he is upset quite differently, at times becoming angry, provocative, fearful, sad, confused.

Sometimes we can help by talking to him. But, more subtly, it is the home setting – the environment that we provide for him – that will make him feel safe. Our ability to make rules, to stick to them, to have a sense of what is appropriate, will contribute to how much he feels that he can venture forth from a secure base.

The key is to be strong and flexible. This helps to give teenagers confidence. Parents have to accommodate new aspects of their child, to adjust their picture of who he is.

It can be a great course of stability for the adolescent to know that his parents feel confident in him throughout these changes. We can help by welcoming our children’s search for identity and the many guises that they may take before they find what suits them, secure in the knowledge that what is at the core of their personality is good.

It is hard to believe this when your teenager seems rebellious, dirty or antisocial. However, if this positive vision of himself is what he sees reflected in your eyes, it will boost his self-esteem and help him to make wise choices. This does not mean that you should be blind to problems and difficulties, or adopt a blackmailing stance which affirms that if you trust him, he cannot let you down. I am only stressing a basic faith in your child which comes from the confidence that you have done your best for him, and that now he must start venturing out on his own.

We know that structure, rules and boundaries make children feel safe. During adolescence, rules are often fought against and limits considered frustrating or even crippling. Does this mean that we should give them up? The adolescent needs to fly, to break the rules. Again we are faced with a balancing act.

The need is twofold.

First, the adolescent needs parents to struggle against, to have rows with. Just as the baby may need to kick against your hand to get a measure of how far he can stretch, so the adolescent needs a degree of resistance to explore his reach. It is important to allow that and not to try too hard to be the “good” parent when what he wants is to fight a “bad” parent. He may argue with you as a way of finding out what he really thinks; he may reject your point of view in order to look for his own. So, insisting that your children should agree with you, or recognize that you are on their side, does not help them venture out into the world. On the contrary, having a conflict and resolving it will build up their strength.

Secondly, there are times when you must say “no” firmly. Sometimes the child really wants you to restrict him, he is frightened or worried about something but does not want to lose face in front of others, or to be disappointed in his image of himself as the adventurous one.

When adolescents speak with passion and conviction, we imagine them to be strong and determined, forgetting how vulnerable they are. It is the fluctuating state of their feelings that frequently bewilders us – and them. There is a constant oscillation from closeness to distance within the family.

Many teenagers need space to be on their own, to find their place in the peer group by themselves. For some it is easier to do this by cutting themselves off from the family for a while. The child who used to come home from school and want to be around you, now goes straight to his room and disappears until he is called. The telephone rings continually, or he wants to be out with his friends. Many parents feel terribly excluded, but bearing this phase is crucial to the child’s development.

It may be difficult to decide what is ordinary rebellion and what is pathology. Generally, however, the adolescent who needs extra help will alarm you deeply. The daughter who comes home with blue hair and a pierced nose but is her usual cheery (or grumpy) self will be less worrying than the one who looks the same but has no sense of humour.

Most teenagers indulge in a certain amount of delinquency. It could be smoking marijuana, being slightly promiscuous (in terms of numbers rather than full sexual encounters), swearing or lying to their parents, defying the rules. These are just the ordinary provocations of adolescence. But you need to worry when activities pursued for a brief thrill take on a grim face, when the teenager seems to want to obliterate feeling and withdraws into his shell. Then the pursuit of delinquency takes on an addictive quality. If you sense that your child faces catastrophic anxieties, or you fear for his health or even his life, as in the cases of drug addiction or anorexia, you must seek help. There is no shame in it – indeed, it should be a mark of courage.

In adolescence, just as in childhood, there will be painful aspects to the parent-child relationship. If you avoid them, cover them up or repress them, you are storing up trouble. For instance, a person who never experimented in adolescence may become envious of his or her own teenager, or identify with him and long to have a wild time. Or one may have developed a rather secretive rebelliousness when young, not openly challenging his or her parents, and then persisted with it for years. So, it is easier to deal with the difficulty at the time.

Adolescence is a time of transformation, and for parents this sometimes feels like a terrible loss – of their role and identity as well as of their little child. The distance between parent and child can feel like a huge gulf. But it is this struggle to be different, to be separate, which eventually gives the teenager the confidence and self-esteem to be strong and creative in the world and to make positive relationships with others. It is also your blessing and encouragement of their freedom to grow up which makes them wish to be close to you.

(by A. Phillips, www.timesonline.co.uk)