Teen
Adolescence is a Time of
Incongruity
“I think we should use recycled paper from now on.”
“Why do I have to clean up? Amy never does her chores.”
“Can I go to Boston with my friends?”
“Mom, do you have a few minutes. I’m having a problem with my boyfriend.”
“Why do you have to ask so many questions? I have no privacy around here!”
“I lost my new jacket.”
“My teacher really loved my paper on the Middle East crisis.”
“The counselor wants to meet with you. I got caught smoking pot in the john.”
Fairly typical adolescent comments. Except they were all were made by the same teenager in a period of about two weeks! Adolescence is such a strange stage of life. It seems to be a series of endless contradictions: The grown-up vs. the child; the self-centered vs. the socially conscious; the cautious vs. the risk taker.
If you think it is difficult to parent a teenager, try to imagine what it is like to be one. Oh, yes, we were all there at one time, but oh how we forget. Plus it seems as if it has become a much more challenging time. With teens now having access to the Internet, their world has simultaneously expanded, shrunk, and become riskier. As a teenager everything in your life seems to be moving at warp speed with a constant sense of either being asked to do too much or not being allowed to do enough. It never seems fair. No one seems to understand. It’s a time of transition that seems to have no clearly defined purpose. There’s childhood and adulthood but no “adolescenthood”!
This is important in understanding why your teenager acts like an adult one moment and a child the next. Those are the two anchor points. Everything in between seems vague and always in flux. The rules seem to get re-invented each generation. There is a simultaneous drive to be more grown up and a sense of sadness about losing one’s childhood, although the latter cannot be acknowledged to others.
There is the increased egocentric attitude – “I want…”, “I need…” juxtaposed with a sudden compassion for those less fortunate or an obsession with current social action issues. When I was a teen in the 1950’s (painful admission), virtually no one thought about walks for hunger, for cancer, for AIDS. Despite all the criticism about our education system and the lack of knowledge of important historical facts, today’s teens are much more generally aware of being part of a larger world than those of a few decades ago.
Identity conflict remains a central struggle. Trying to juggle the desire to be seen as unique and special while simultaneously focused on the need to belong to a group and adopt their values is often a painful struggle. Many feel they fail at both objectives – others are torn by the conflicting needs. This eternal juggling act of trying to stay connected to family, trying to have a solid peer group, and trying to be “me” is at the heart of much of the depression reported by teenagers. It is so hard to be successful at all these developmental tasks while under the constant pressure of messages about preparing to go off to college or work.
Parents, as adults, thrive on consistency. Their lives are usually very hectic and filled with many serious concerns. They would like something resembling a predictable routine at home. After negotiating an agreement with the mature part of their teenager, they become infuriated when the irresponsible child takes over and sabotages the process. Unfortunately most parents seem convinced that life is linear, somehow forgetting the roundabout path their lives have taken. This results in their felt sense of having to make sure their adolescents acquire and demonstrate as much adult behavior as possible. But if this were actually possible, or even desirable, there would be no adolescence!
Even as late as the teenage years, the brain is still actively growing and changing in structure and function. Once adolescents go off on their own, tremendous changes in perception and understanding of life will take place. Rehearsal time doesn’t count for much. It’s going to be an incredibly novel experience as each teenager moves into early adult years. Parents need to back off from believing that their primary task is to push their teenager into acting as much like an adult as possible before leaving home. So much change is still in store. In actuality, you never know where the next important influence is going to appear in the life of your child as he/she moves from adolescence through the young adult years. In many ways, I’ve always believed that this is the period of greatest change in life.
So let’s return home. Your daughter’s grades have dropped and it seems to coincide with the marked increase in time spent online with her friends. You respond by limiting her time online. Seems reasonable. But she’s furious because right now her friendships are more important than her grades. Your anxiety is driven by a vision that she will screw up her academic career and she’ll never amount to anything. Rather than perceiving this change as a bump in the road, it is perceived as a permanent detour. A power struggler ensues and everyone feels worse.
Try instead to find out how she feels about her grades and use that as a starting point. Recognize that she may not be able to agree on a plan that primarily reflects your goals for her. Be more concerned about the process than the actual plan. Your real goal should be to help her find her own solutions to life’s challenges rather than to learn to rely on your management of them. This should be true even if it appears that she may experience some negative consequences if left to her own plan.
Actually your real goal is to try to maintain your connection to your
teenager, to provide a sense of an anchor in the midst of her chaos, and
acceptance in the midst of her self-criticism. Just keep reminding yourself
that this is the time in her life marked by change rather than consistency,
by contradiction rather than by confluence. If you can tolerate the uncertainty,
it gradually goes on by and a young adult emerges with whom you can relate
much more easily.
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