Written by Taylor Ferguson, Registered Marriage & Family Therapist Intern, specializing in counseling adolescents and parents.
Are you and your pre-teen or teen constantly butting heads? Does your teen tend to say or do the opposite of whatever you say or do? Is your teen’s attitude frustrating, hurtful, or just downright annoying? Well you are not alone!
The teen years are challenging for many reasons. Chief among them is the adolescent’s development into an independent adult. Normal and healthy adolescent development includes expression of unique and differing opinions. Often, this manifests in the household as an argument with parents due to the teen’s need to challenge a parent’s opinion, rule, or decision. The transformation from child to young adult often also includes a disrespectful and know-it-all attitude. When you couple that with challenging the parent’s authority and disagreeing with parental opinions, thoughts, ideas, decisions, actions, etc., the result is a pretty exhausted and frustrated parent.
So What’s the Plan?
How does a parent cope with the frustration of raising an adolescent, maintain authority as the parent, and preserve the parent-adolescent relationship? First, it is important that parents understand and accept that this is a normal developmental process from child to adult, as discussed above. Next, parents must learn to develop a healthy approach when communicating with and responding to the teen. With an understanding that the teen’s challenging behavior is normal and healthy, the parent is able to respond calmly and rationally rather than react with anger and frustration.
How does a parent respond calmly and rationally when an adolescent is challenging family rules or rebelling?
Step 1- involves effective communication between parent and adolescent. It is common for parents and teens to misinterpret one another, make faulty assumptions, and perceive things quite differently. Clear communication is vital, especially when an issue arises. Parents should take the time to fully understand what the adolescent is communicating, being careful not to make assumptions before hearing exactly what the teen is trying to communicate. Ideally, both the teen and parent will take the time to communicate clearly, and fully understand one another without making assumptions, which will prevent misinterpretations and misperceptions.
Step 2- involves clarity and consistency with rules and consequences. It is important that parents are very clear about the house rules and the consequences for breaking those rules. Again, effective communication is vital here as well. Step 3 is allowing for parental flexibility and willingness to compromise when appropriate. Sometimes an adolescent will present a valid request for a rule change or alternative to a parental decision. If the parent deems this alternative appropriate, making a change or agreeing to a compromise is often an effective approach. This does not diminish parental authority, but promotes healthy adolescent development by encouraging the teen’s independence, responsibility, and good decision-making.
Putting It All Together
Let’s use a common example to demonstrate two very different approaches to parent-adolescent interaction. A 16-year-old female believes her curfew should be changed from 10 o’clock to 11 o’clock. She presents this to her mother, along with some attitudinal comments about mom treating her like a child and never trusting her even though she never does anything wrong.
Mom #1 reacts rather than calmly responds. She chooses to attack back because she is frustrated that her teen would challenge her rule, and hurt that she would accuse her of treating her like a child. She takes things personally, misperceiving the situation, rather than seeing this as a normal part of becoming independent. Mom also assumes that her daughter wants a later curfew because she intends to get into trouble. This leads to a big argument.
Mom #2 recognizes that her daughter is challenging a rule because she is becoming an independent individual, however she is still a child who should respect her mother’s authority. She also recognizes that her daughter does not understand that mom’s intention is to treat her like an adolescent rather than a child, and that she can better trust her daughter when rules are respected. Mom #2 communicates these things to her daughter and then asks for clarification as to why she wants a later curfew. Her daughter explains that when getting together with friends she is always the first one to have to leave to be home by 10 o’clock. Mom #2 then proposes a compromise on the curfew rule. She agrees to change curfew to 10:30, but breaking curfew once will reinstate the 10 o’clock rule, and breaking again will result in grounding. Both agree to the new terms, having fully understood each other’s intentions and the new plan.
Healthy parent-adolescent interactions can have a huge effect on many different situations. If you are facing a particularly challenging situation with your teen or pre-teen, family or individual counseling can provide guidance for implementing healthy communication, interaction, and problem-solving for you and your adolescent.