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by Warren P. Silberstein, M.D.
08/18/97
There are many tasks that adolescents must accomplish in order to become adults. Some are related to the stage of adolescence. Young teens have to deal with puberty and become comfortable with their bodies. By mid adolescence teens have to move away from their dependence on their parents. The final steps in the late teen years involve planning for future adult roles with regard to career and perhaps family. In essence, during the teen years, our children must discover who they are and become autonomous, i.e. separate from their parents, independent in thought and action. That means that if they do end up sharing their parents goals and values, it isn't because their parents said so, but because they came to the conclusion independently that it was right for them. In order to get to that point, with no disrespect intended, they must question their parents' ideas and values.
Considering the higher stakes involved in teenage actions compared to childhood, there couldn't be a more frightening time for children to question their parents' values and try to act independently. Their greater mobility, larger size, sexual maturity, and some degree of financial independence if they have jobs puts them at risk for pregnancy, drugs, violence, and auto accidents including DWI. Adolescence is a time of relatively good physical health. The major causes of death and disability in adolescence are accidents and violence. As frightening as that thought is, we must remember that the vast majority of teens will never experience such a horrifying end. If we don't let our teens out into the real world to experience it, they will never be prepared to cope with it. Our job as parents is to make sure that our kids know how to make sound decisions on their own by the time they are ready to face the world. To accomplish that, we need to encourage independent thinking even before the teen years. By the time children reach adolescence they should have already learned our values. Even if they seem to question everything we stand for, we must trust that we have taught them the concepts of right and wrong. We can influence our teens both positively and negatively. And we should provide guidance. But we should no longer expect to protect them or influence them by controlling their actions, because even if we could control our teens' every action, that wouldn't prepare them for adulthood.
Even though the parents are no longer in complete control during adolescence, neither are the teens. As frightening as that thought is to parents, it is frightening to teens. In their relentless pursuit of independence they face a world that offers no guarantees. When parents fall off their pedestals because their kids discover their parents aren't infallible, they lose not only the power of absolute control, but also absolute protection. It is as great a loss for the teen as it is for his parents. But in spite of the fact that teens realize their parents aren't gods, they still need their parents love, approval, and guidance.
Even though parents will find themselves relinquishing more and more control over the course of adolescence, the two main guiding principle I have discussed regarding bringing up children still apply in their own unique way to adolescents. They are consistency, and realistic expectations.
In an attempt to find out who they are teens must experiment. Sometimes that can lead into dangerous territory, but for the most part, it usually leads to things that seem unfamiliar and strange to parents. To deal with the experimentation associated with growing up, parents must set limits. The limits must, of course be consistent with the parents beliefs and values, but to be realistic, parents must be willing to become familiar with their teen's world in order to understand what behaviors actually pose a risk (some, like drugs and guns, are obvious) and which make a teen an acceptable member of his peer group without posing any risk of leading a teen toward trouble. Setting realistic limits dramatically increases the likelihood of your teen accepting his limits and being able to succeed at pleasing you. Setting realistic limits also significantly decreases the likelihood of conflict over things which are only symbolic of a teen's desire to be different than his parents such as his appearance and his music. Decreased conflict and the ability to please one's parents serves as a positive motivating force for teens to keep trying to work within the limits set for them. For the limits to be taken seriously, parents must be consistent in how they enforce the limits. Dr. Ernest Fruge's analogy about parents who are inconsistent about disciplining their children being like slot machines is as true for teens as it is for children. If parents are inconsistent about enforcing limits their teens will keep gambling that ignoring the limits will result in a payoff. When parents set limits for their teens or demand certain behaviors from them and then don't follow through with the expected consequences for noncompliance, they can expect to teach their teens to ignore them.
Keeping in mind the concept of being realistic, appropriate consequences should include loss of privileges, loss of allowance, and in the extreme, being grounded (no phone, no friends, no activities outside the house). If possible, consequences should teach a lesson related to an offense, for example, if you catch your teen driving drunk, take away his keys and license. Bring him to some AA meetings or a class for DWI offenders. If your teen makes selfish demands and is inconsiderate in his actions teach him about humility by having him volunteer to work with those less fortunate such as in a soup kitchen. Teach him by example and work there with him. Consequences should not be handed out in anger because they should not be extreme (Even a teen who broke a rule should not have to miss the most important event of his life.) and parents who regret their actions usually undo them resulting in inconsistency. As important as consistency is, parents must be flexible to be realistic. If your child is 10 minutes late for curfew, rather than reading him the riot act, talk to him about planning in advance for things that could interfere with his meeting his obligations such as leaving earlier to make curfew in case of a traffic jam. Also keep in mind that for limits to be realistic, they must be adjusted periodically to take into account your teen's age, maturity, social needs, and the manner in which he has conducted himself and fulfilled his responsibilities. In order to keep progressing in his path toward adulthood, your teen must keep renegotiating his limits. The key to success in dealing with teens is honest two way communication.
The cornerstones of honest communication are mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual consideration, and listening. I've repeated the word "mutual" so many times in order to emphasize that communication is a two way street. If parents want respect, they must respect their children's honest feelings and opinions even if they don't agree with them. To accept a teen's point of view is not to agree with it or even condone it. However, any teen who demands the right to be heard must be willing to hear his parents' point of view as well with an aim to understand it and respect it even if he doesn't agree with it. The power of real communication is so enormous that it can be a real selling point to get teens' cooperation, but adolescents will not talk about what they really feel unless they believe that their parents are really interested and willing to listen. The teen's must feel free to express any idea fully without interruption, and then they must return the favor to their parents. A free discussion of ideas must convey values without being judgmental toward the participants. This will only happen in an environment of mutual trust.
The standard teen battle cry in the arena for negotiating limits is, "You have to trust me!" And the standard parents' answer is, "Trust has to be earned." Parents must ask themselves, "How will your teen earn your trust if you don't permit him to prove himself in a situation where you must trust him?" One crucial aspect of trust that teens must learn to understand is that trust is not always about them. Most teens never think much about being in a circumstance where things happen that they can't control. The mutual aspect of trust is that teens must trust their parents enough to be honest with them about what's going on in their lives. When parents know what their teens are up to, they worry less, and so trust more. Those teens who try to get around the limits by being dishonest with their parents rather than negotiating honestly for new privileges need to be made aware what a valuable commodity they lose when they lose their parents' trust. It also stands to reason that parents must earn their children's trust. If your response to most problems is predictably awful, don't expect your kids to come to you with their life stories.
One of the biggest pieces of the communication gap between parents and teens is that parents fail to convey their humanity to their children. In their efforts to control their teens, they never admit that they are frightened, or don't have all the answers, and yet a discussion of what a parent is truly concerned about will provide so much more of an opportunity for an adolescent to answer his parents concerns and avoid unnecessary restrictions. "You can't go to the dance because you're too young" doesn't foster communication about a parent's real concerns about sexuality and drugs. Such a discussion might provide the parents with real reassurances about chaperones and security. In the absence of such reassuring information it might be sufficient for the parents to know what their teen's attitude is toward their concerns. Finally, if a parent is anxious about certain situations, he might educate his child and get the reassurances he needs by trying a little role playing for certain situations. For example, asking your child what he would do if someone approached him with drugs might not only provide you with some reassurance, but if you then play the role of someone trying to convince your child to take the drugs, playing through the scenario might help your child figure out how to handle such a situation and give him the confidence necessary to do what's right.
Another aspect of humanity is consideration. Teens tend to think that all the rules are about them simply because the parents never say, "I need you to do this." If you set a teen's curfew for midnight because you can't sleep until you know your child is safely home and you have to be up at 6 AM let him know how his curfew is helping you out. Teens often resent having to call home for permission to do things or to check in because they see it as the parents exercising too much control. Most of them have never given any consideration to how they would feel if they needed their parents and couldn't get in touch with them. I'm 49 years old, and if I visit my parents, I still call them when I get home because I know they'll worry if they don't know I made it home safely. They worry because they know accidents happen, not because they doubt my driving skills. And I call them because I care about them, not because I have to. Feel free to use this example when you explain to your teen that he is helping you and being considerate of you when he follows certain rules. Don't take your teen's consideration for granted. Be sure to thank him when he treats you like a fellow human being instead of a parent. If you have trouble getting the concept of your humanity across to your teen, ask him how he would treat a friend of his in a similar circumstance.
Let me end with the following thoughts:
In spite of the horrible stories involving teens that make the headlines, the vast majority of teens are fine human beings. If we give them reasonable goals to strive for and believe in them, they won't disappoint us. If we fear them and distrust them, they will respond in kind to us. They think we don't understand them, and sometimes they are right, because we grew up in a different world than the one they're growing up in. And yet, we should understand them, because we have already been through what they are going through. We must not fail to recognize the importance of some teen problems just because we have resolved those problems during our teen years. Our wisdom should help them rather than trivialize their problems. We should not burden our teens with our unresolved conflicts. They are not doomed to repeat our mistakes so our rules shouldn't reflect the belief that they will. If we provide them with a rewarding and fulfilling life within the framework of our values, they are likely to espouse our basic values into their way of thinking. The teen years can be among the best years of our children's lives. We have the power to make a difference to them.
For more information please read the following articles:
Adolescence and Peer PressureNormal Adolescent Development from: American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology
Plain Talk About...Adolescence
Parenting: Preparing for Adolescence
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