Travelling ‘With’ Our Teen Children

Moody, evasive, resistant. Hard to please. These are but three attributes and one statement of growing teenagers, and there are stacks more. Parenting becomes quite a task as children leave childhood and travel through adolescence. Most parents of pre-adolescent children may not yet be able to understand this as they view life through the challenging kaleidoscope of the ‘educating’ phase of raising their kids. Yet, from the perspective of parents in the post-teen bracket, the worst is yet to come.

s
But, there must be a way to negotiate these turbulent years. Almost universally, everything I’ve read and seen indicates there is a way that works. It’s called being “adult.”

s
Adult behaviour is consistently realistic, responsible, rational, reliable, and logical. It’s a rock in the sea of change and emotion. It’s the role of parent to provide this. If we waver in our adult-effectiveness -- and our teen children will reveal this lack in us most of all -- how can our children rely on us to provide the developmental basis they require to function as well-adjusted adults at the end of the process?

s
If adult behaviour is consistently realistic, responsible, rational, reliable, and logical, the opposite of this very constructive and proactive behaviour is that of the ‘wounded child’ within each one of us. Destructive to a word. Ironically, the wounded child within brings out the ‘negative parent.’ This is typical parenting we see 90 percent of the time and it plain does not work! It’s critical, judgmental, and argumentative. It’s the use of lots of ‘you’ statements and happens worst when we, the parent, are emotional. Parents who can’t check and restrain their emotions are highly damaging. We need to be role models in managing emotions. This way we’re teaching our teen children how to relate with people in the world; to deal effectively with emotions before responding to others.

s
When we arrive at this stage in life (probably 40+), parenting our teens is probably our number one task in life; it deserves lots of investment in our own development and emotions; and preparation is the key. Having passed through the ambitious stage of life (said to be late 20’s and 30’s) we’re probably now at a stage that we can invest more time and energy in our teen children. If we can be adult-like in our behaviour, we encourage and empower our teens to reciprocate. The need for defensiveness is nullified. Adult behaviour as mentioned above is the answer. We can ask the question, “How well trained am I to respond to my teenaged child unemotionally, having appropriately dealt with the emotion of the issue at hand?” Preparation and training are keys.

s
We need to be prepared for the little hurts along the journey -- and they’re little hurts in the overall context of time and the relationship. We need to be able to hold on to the adult world especially when they can’t. There will be times when we’ll inevitably want to give up or respond inappropriately. We simply need to not break faith. Instead we should:

s
~~ Withhold a reaction by remaining silent so as to ponder the appropriate action required.

s
~~ Contemplation should always follow emotionally-charged interaction and cognition. Delay the response until it can be delivered in emotion-checked, adult-like manner.

s
Finally, it’s when we take care of ourselves and our emotions so as to protect the younger life that relies on us, we show unconditional love. Conditional love, love with strings attached, is actually no love at all. It’s certainly not much good and tends to damage more than nurture. And, it bears considering that we stand to have a deep, engaging relationship with our adult children if we get our ‘adult-like’ behaviour right. The teen years are temporary; familial rapport is much more permanent.

s
Copyright © 2008, S.J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.