Help for Teens is a Listening Ear Away

How can a parent provide help for teens even during the adolescent development years? At risk teens and struggling teens need a compassionate sense of listening and direction from caring parents. Read more about the process from this experienced guest author.

Parenting A Teenager - What Is So Different?

by Janet Hart

If you are parenting your very first teenager, you may still be trying to figure out why there is so much fuss. Why should your parenthood change just because your child has entered another decade of her life?

If you stop to consider it, there are some fundamental differences in your teenage child when you compare them to a five year old, or a ten year old.

Lets consider just a few of the differences:

Outside Influences As your child gets older, she is exposed to more things and more people. Her life includes teachers, coaches, supervisors in her new part time working world, and the influence of culture and the media. She is avidly interested in life around her and in what SHE wants out of her life as she gets older and she is ready to test her wings.

To gain peer approval, she will try things she might not otherwise attempt. To get the attention of someone she wants to date, she may even engage in sexual activity she wouldn't otherwise consider.

She watches music idols and actresses on TV and in the movies to figure out how to act, how to dress and how to speak.

At no other time in her life will she be as vulnerable to suggestion or pressure as during these critical teenage years when she is developing her own opinions, ideas and sense of the world.

Hormones

During your childs teen years, there are some obvious physical changes and some not-so-obvious physical changes. His body will grow by leaps and bounds and he will begin to develop muscle, grow hair on his face and start to look more like a man than a boy. But, make no mistake, emotionally, he is still a boy.

Rather like a five year old trying to drive his fathers riding mower, your son is trying to steer his new body with little knowledge of experience as to how to control it. Not only are his hormones causing new and unfamiliar sexual feelings, they are also causing emotional reactions for which he may be unprepared.

Spurts of anger and emotional outbursts may become common.

He may find it hard to express his feelings and he may be in awe of, or even a bit afraid of, the physical attraction and sexual tension he feels for everyone from classmates to teachers and others on whom he may have a crush. He may find these feelings embarrassing or downright scary.

The Need for, and Emergence of, Independence

Of all the things that make your teenager a different species than the young child you used to know, this is the one that really seals the deal. The natural development of your childs brain, social skills and emotional maturity brings with it the emergence of independent thought and activity.

If your child isnt already old enough to drive and have a part time job, she soon will be. Shell be dating and out in the world, experiencing things without you. She will begin to withhold information, because she isnt sure youll approve of her thoughts or actions and because she CAN now withhold it.

She is no longer a child, and she isnt dependent on you for her physical needs.

Though she is still financially dependent, she doesnt count that for much right now. She is the center of her universe!

Teenagers are well known to be self-centered and that is just part of their development.

It doesnt mean you should tolerate disrespect or that you should stop encouraging them to think of the feelings of others. It simply means that you have to learn not to take every infraction as a personal affront. Your teenager doesnt mean to hurt you. She is simply exercising her newfound freedom and sometimes she will cross the line.

All of that extra time spent away from home will expose her to new people and places and she will build confidence in her own ability to thrive in the world without you by her side every second.

Remember, she NEEDS this confidence to go off into the world by herself to college or to work.

Dont try to shelter her!

Just provide steady guidance and ground rules. But understand that she still loves you. She is just going through the next, natural stage of her development. She working toward becoming an independent adult and while you may try to stifle that independence, you are merely putting off the inevitable.

Children are SUPPOSED to grow up and go off on their own. That is the natural cycle! They are not supposed to remain emotionally or financially dependent on their parents for the rest of their lives! The best thing you can do for your child is to raise her to be confident, independent and at home in the world around her.

Janet Hart is the owner of Free Family Help A free family resource site offering free tips, books, and more. Sign up today for a free newsletter to receive even more parenting tips! Free Family Help Newsletter

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