How to raise teenagers: difficulties, tips, rules

Your child is going through a crisis of adolescence, and you are faced with the question: how to raise modern teenagers? How to make this period go as smoothly as possible?

To do this, we invite you to become a conscious parent by putting into practice 11 principles of interaction with children.

An excellent assistant in the practice of conscious parenting is the book by psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya “Secret Support: Attachment in a Child’s Life.” In my opinion, among many psychologists, Petranovskaya most fully revealed the “teenage” topic. Her book helps to understand the behavior of teenagers and gives answers on how to deal with them.

Therefore, the article reveals the theses of this particular psychologist. Using them will raise your level of awareness.

Time frame of adolescence

Sometimes the first signs of adolescence (some signs of puberty and the desire for autonomy) begin to appear in children as early as 9–10 years old.

The World Health Organization believes that adolescence ends around the age of 23 (since brain maturation continues until this age). Some researchers argue that the brain matures before age 26.

Compared to previous generations, the period of adolescence has lengthened. Teenagers have become an essential part of society.

What are modern teenagers like?

To better understand your child and interact with him consciously, it is sometimes useful to find out more information about the characteristic manifestations of a certain age.

What is characteristic of modern teenagers? What are they?

Like all people, teenagers are very different.

There are many generalized observations and various studies about modern young people. Here are some traits that teenagers have:

• Teenagers have a lot of fears and uncertainty because they do not really understand what their future life will be like, how they will earn money, what professions and skills will be in demand, etc.

Modern children are growing up in a world where they do not really understand how their parents make a living. If the parent is a doctor, teacher, turner, electrician, then everything is more or less clear. But for most urban children it is absolutely unclear what their parents do at work and what they are paid for.

Accordingly, it is very difficult for children to “try on” the work of their parents. It’s hard to imagine: what will I do when I grow up? The expectations of parents and schools are also pressing (for example, many children are required to choose a profession at the age of 17). All this puts teenagers under a lot of stress.

• Teenagers are very flexible in their reactions. They don’t get stuck in states of “that’s it, I can’t think about anything anymore, I can’t do anything anymore.” They can protest, then go to a cafe, sit with friends, and this switching occurs quite flexibly for them.
• Teenagers are much less susceptible to gender bias. They are much less likely to cling to the images of “real man”, “real woman”; see the world more widely and diversely.

How parents should respond to the first signs of adolescence

What to do if just yesterday the child was calm and balanced, talking about everything, and then something happened and he became rude, uncontrollable, a completely different person? How should a parent react to this?

There are different opinions on this topic in psychological science:

1. There are psychologists who believe that all the difficulties of adolescence are a consequence of the fact that something is wrong in the family. If everything in a relationship is normal, then everything goes smoothly. Therefore, you need to work on your relationship with your teenager.
2. Other psychologists believe that adolescence itself contains the beginning of a crisis, protest behavior, and defending oneself and one’s rights. This is a necessary part of adolescence, so it should be alarmed if there is no expression of autonomy at all.

It is not known which point of view is correct. Both there and there may be too loose a generalization, because all children are very different.

Where one person experiences “swings” with a large amplitude, emotional storms, protest or deviant behavior, another person will experience all this more calmly, positively and with restraint.

Therefore, generalizations are hardly possible, but it is impossible to deny the fact: most children go through adolescence quite difficult.

It can be difficult physiologically and psychologically, and there is also social pressure. Family relationships at this moment are seriously restructured.

Even if we talk only about the adaptation load, about how many changes a teenager needs to adapt to at this time, then this is already enough to understand what a difficult age this is for a teenager.

Therefore, it is important for a parent to:

1. Give the teenager support;
2. Not to fight, but to accept;
3. Monitor and “set boundaries” with respect for the teenager’s personality;
4. Help him find himself.

Difficulties in raising a teenager

How can you maintain a close relationship with your own son or daughter at a normal level? avoid typical mistakes of overly responsible parents when caring for their children - beloved teenagers .

• Stop criticizing based on being older, try to be comrades.
• In disputes and discussions, take the position of a confident adult and do not get annoyed by annoying little things.
• Let's express our grievances, don't accumulate anger towards each other.
• Offer to look for a way out together.

Nurturing a teenager’s personality is a difficult task, but the result in the form of kind and open relationships on both sides is the best reward for it.

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Why you shouldn't fight with a teenager

Unconscious attachment behavior ends in adolescence. It was attachment that made everything the parents said meaningful and true for the child. Attachment forced the child to turn to his parents for comfort and support (even if he believed that the parents were wrong).

A small child (even if he believes that the parent is wrong at some points) needs contact with the parent so much that he is ready to “step on” his understanding of rightness and justice so that the parent will forgive him, take pity on him and quickly restore contact.

The teenager has already grown up, he has the strength to rely on himself and his friends. He already understands that the relationship with his parents is the only reason the world has not come together like a wedge. Therefore, he can afford to defend his opinion, even if his parents protest.

Parents who are not accustomed to such independence of the child are surprised and are very dissatisfied with the child.

Also, parents are sometimes very anxious, because a teenager has a huge number of opportunities that a small child did not have:

• For example, a teenager can independently navigate around the city. He usually already has his own house keys and pocket money. This means that he can go not to the football section, but anywhere.
• The teenager actively communicates on social media. networks. His parents don’t know who he communicates with or what he negotiates.
• A teenager already has enough intelligence and communication skills to lie very cleverly without being caught.
• A teenager may already have his own ideas and plans that he can implement without his parents (if he understands that his parents will be against it).
• At this age there is a lot of criticism about some daily practices that the younger child did not question. For example, this could be the need to go to school or clean your room. The teenager begins to ask questions: why do you need to do this?

All of the above is a consequence of the fact that the child is growing and developing. He wants to take advantage of new opportunities, and not always in the way adults want.

There is no point in war with a teenager. In this war, parents will lose the moment they start it. Is it necessary to stop a child's growth?

Of course, there are parents who abuse their teenagers so harshly that they disrupt their growth and development. In this case, teenagers are intimidated and bullied.

In all other cases, when parents are not ready to treat their children so badly, they have no opportunity for war, because the teenager grows, becomes smarter, more competent, stronger every day.

There is no point in controlling him and hoping that he will always do what his parents want. The teenager will win because time is on his side.

Despite the fact that a teenager is growing up, becoming smarter and more independent every day, he is at this time very vulnerable precisely because of his rapid development (all complex systems are vulnerable during periods of rapid development and restructuring, which is why they are complex). For this reason, mood swings are common during adolescence.

Sometimes psychological or mental disorders start during this period. Some chronic diseases also begin at this age.

The vulnerability of a teenager is another reason why there is no need to fight with him. A teenager needs a lot of strength to survive this period safely and cope with all the challenges. Why involve him in a war on two fronts?

Love for your child will help in any situation! Not the desire to remake the child, not self-affirmation, not an attempt to make the child’s own version of the “ideal person” - only Love! The child will be very grateful if you do not “fight” with him, but understand and accept.

Three rules of education

According to psychologists, parents whose children exhibit high levels of self-control have something in common: they all follow three essential principles of parenting.

1. Show love . The child should be comfortable and calm in this world. And the teenager also needs to feel your support. Be gentle and attentive to him, take an active part in his life, praise, be interested in problems and respond to the child's emotional needs. Don't be afraid to overdo it with affection. Friendly pats, hugs and kisses are completely normal.

Question answer

How to understand that a teenager has entered adolescence?
2. Be strict .
Without external control, the ability for self-regulation will not be formed. First, the child accepts your rules, gets used to being guided by them, and only then learns to control himself. Otherwise, he will not be able to understand what behavior is considered socially acceptable. Parents' demands must be extremely clear and logical. Explain to your children exactly what you expect from them and why. Be consistent: you will only confuse the teenager if you punish him for an offense today, and a week later in a similar situation you remain silent. There is no need to set new rules every day. They can be changed when it is really necessary, for example, if the teenager has matured and your requirements are no longer relevant. In case of disobedience, you must not show aggression and irritability: do not humiliate the child, do not shout or use physical force.

3. Gradually loosen control . For your child to become independent, give him a little more freedom step by step. Let your teen feel that he is able to manage his behavior without your help. If everything works out, praise him for showing responsibility. If it fails, explain how to avoid mistakes next time.

Remember: it is important to follow all three principles. They only work in combination with each other. If you show love but don't set rules, your teen won't understand how to behave. If you control his every step and do not give him freedom at all, he will not learn self-control.

Should a teenager be supervised?

In a teenager, those parts of the brain that are responsible for goal setting, anticipating consequences, and inhibiting unwanted actions have not yet fully matured. Therefore, the teenager still needs to control and prohibit something.

It is precisely the characteristics of the teenage brain that underlie such behavior that appears crazy. Sometimes a teenager drinks, gets behind the wheel of his parents' car and drives somewhere, and then cannot say why he did it, does not understand what came over him. He still has weak self-government and self-control to foresee how certain actions will end. Therefore, you cannot NOT control the teenager and let everything take its course.

Parents must remember that in some important matters the teenager cannot yet foresee the consequences. It is important that he takes on this function gradually.

Therefore, first of all, you can control any issues related to health or safety.

For example, one of the painful issues for teenagers is sleep (especially in combination with gadgets). It seems to them that they can reduce their sleep time, because they don’t want to go to bed and stop communicating. One of the equally painful issues is smoking.

How can you influence this? At a minimum, someone should tell a teenager that he is destroying himself, his brain, with this lifestyle.

This works when parents speak not from a position of control or intimidation, but from a position: you choose, look at these studies on this topic. Now there is a large amount of research, including on brain development. When it is said that, for example, smoking affects the brain, children are very skeptical about anything that threatens their body and health in general. For example, it is useless to tell them about lung cancer.

But, for example, if they talk to children about the fact that smoking is an attack on their brain, on their personality, on the most valuable thing a person has (after all, each of us has nothing more valuable than our mental life: we can remain without arms or legs, but at the same time remain yourself).

If there is an attack on subjectivity, freedom, mental life, this is probably the most dangerous thing, and children understand all this perfectly well if everything is explained to them.

Teenagers hear such arguments (not from the position of “you’re small, stupid, so I’ll control you,” but when it comes to freedom and subjectivity).

All this does not mean that the teenager will say: “Yes, mom, you’re right” and start doing everything the way you want. But you still need to talk and explain.

Interestingly, it is not necessary to set yourself the goal of being friends with a teenager. At this age he should have his own friends (not parents). Children don't want to see their parents as friends.

Teenagers often need parental support.

The same as she was in childhood, because teenagers are sometimes in a very difficult emotional state. They need to be hugged and pitied.

Where is the line (parents do not interfere and give the teenager freedom, but can always help)?

Sometimes you can simply ask a teenager: should he stay with you or leave you alone?

A teenager is a person who is “carried” by a very acute need for autonomy: “Leave me alone. Let me get into trouble, but I’m on my own! It's good if parents have the flexibility to accept both. This does not mean that parents should always leave everything they are doing and catch the teenager’s mood. But if they see that the child is “carried” here and there, then it’s good if the teenager suits them in any way: both regressing into childhood and striving for autonomy.

When it comes to controlling a teenager, the question arises: does a teenager need to set boundaries? If so, how wide should these boundaries be? Is it necessary to prohibit something for a teenager or is it necessary to constantly negotiate?

Each family sets its own rules: what is allowed and what is not allowed, in order to minimize the “dirty game”: deception, blackmail, emotional pressure.

It's good if the family has certain rules. For example, there are families in which at 10 pm everyone’s phones are taken away, including parents, and no one touches them until the morning. Parents have the right to set such rules.

If the rules are set kindly, respectfully, with reasoning (what and why), and are fair for everyone, then this is normal.

If boundaries are set from the position of “you are small and stupid, I know better”, or blackmail is used “you are terrible, bad, you will drive me to the grave”, or some methods of violating confidentiality and privacy are used (spying, tracking) - then this is unacceptable .

For example, you could say, “I don’t like what you’re doing on social media. I’ll turn on control for a while and look at your correspondence. This will be for the next two months, if during this time I see that everything is fine, that you understand what you are doing, I will remove this control.” The child may be indignant and dissatisfied, but it will be honest.

It’s much worse to hack gadgets on the sly.

Teenagers are very sensitive to “dirty play”; they have not yet adapted to it. When loved ones start doing this, they experience it very painfully. They perceive this as a betrayal.

We have the right to limit and control a teenager, but this should be as fair as possible.

All scams come from fear, when a parent is afraid to face a child’s protest. What's so terrible about that? The child has the right to protest and be dissatisfied. Parents have the right to insist on their own. While the child lives in the parental home, the parents are responsible for him according to the law, they support him, etc. Therefore, it is better to let it be a direct confrontation than cheating and “dirty games”.

The desire for independence

Children in adolescence need more freedom to become more independent and self-confident. But teenagers are not adults yet. They are not fully prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Here are some tips for delineating your teen's independence:

• Avoid extremes. Complete freedom, as well as excessive restriction of it, are extremes. Establishing responsibilities in the family will help here, which will teach the child to make independent decisions, to develop an assessment of their consequences and his own point of view on all issues relating to his life.
• Establish rules of behavior. It sounds paradoxical, but boundaries (rules) set by adults give children a sense of security. And the absence of such restrictions means a feeling of loneliness and unloving.
• Recognize the teenager’s right to his own territory, where he can express himself.
• In conflict situations and disagreements that arise with a teenager, it is necessary to look for extraordinary solutions. For example, if a child does not keep order in his room, then, having collected all his scattered things, it is worth putting them in a visible place in his room and stating that he will have clean socks only if the dirty ones are put in the appropriate place .
• Give the child the opportunity to prove his right to a certain degree of freedom. The gradual expansion of freedom will teach the child to be independent. For example, at first you can give the teenager the opportunity to choose the things he needs together with his parents. And then - give out money for independent purchase.
• Prohibitions of certain things (smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc.) should be justified by the harm caused by the lack of control over their use and the consequences.
• In parental control, distinguish between factors that affect the child’s future and those that do not. For example, the style of a shirt or trousers does not affect a child’s future, but missing school can be fatal for him.
• Leave your child the right to make a mistake, then he will learn about all its consequences. Without doing anything on their own, children learn nothing. It is important to help the child correct his mistake.
• If there are problems with academic performance or the school material is poorly understood, it is worth engaging tutors, especially if it is a senior year or distance learning at home.

Read more: What to do with a 12 year old child

What parents should NOT do during their child's adolescence

There is a category of parents who are very vulnerable to the adolescence of their children - these are those parents who are very intolerant and tough.

They believe that they always know the right decisions and should do everything as they are told. In this case, it is useful to remember that if all children always did only what their parents do, then there would be no progress and development of civilization. It is important to remember that children are different. In some ways we don’t agree with them, and that’s okay.

There is another category of parents who have a very hard time enduring their child’s adolescence - these are parents living the life of a child. They dedicated themselves to him.

During childhood, while the child was small, he may have enjoyed all this. When he became a teenager and he wanted autonomy, his mother, who devoted her whole life to him, did not let him go. He turns out to be the meaning of her life, but he didn’t ask for it. He begins to “tear his claws”, to get out of this situation, “destroying” his mother, tearing her heart.

Therefore, it is very important not to create such situations.

If adolescence is on the horizon, and the mother has always lived the life of a child, something urgently needs to be changed.

It’s always good when parents have their own interesting lives: they have wonderful relationships as a couple, have friends; when they live in harmony and a state of Love (including for themselves). Thanks to their favorite work, hobbies, and hobbies, they are in a resourceful state. Such parents will not go around all the time and closely look at what the teenager is doing wrong. In such families, the teenage crisis passes much easier and faster.

Read more about how important it is for upbringing to create your own wealth here.

What to talk about with your child

1. Systematic conversations with a teenager on topics that concern him always bring success. At the same time, it is important to know what and how to talk to your child. First of all, these are problems at school (college). When discussing these issues, the student should be brought to questions of motivation for his work (after all, studying is the main work of a teenager). You should not scold a teenager about failures at school. Perhaps he feels them very acutely, trying not to show it.
2. In a conversation, it is worth bringing him to the idea that his future largely depends on the efficiency of labor now. Of course, you need to ask how he imagines his future, what his plans are. After summarizing your teenager's personal achievements, you should show him your faith in his future achievements to give him the opportunity to meet your expectations. Proper motivation at the beginning of the school year will set the child up for productive work without “swinging.”
3. An important topic for a teenager is relationships with the opposite sex. Adults should not wait for questions about this from children, because often they, embarrassed to talk about it with their parents, find sources of information on the side. Therefore, it is worth presenting your child with the most truthful information, telling, for example, about the dangers of early sexual relations. It is also worth sharing with him your teenage experience of communicating with the opposite sex, about your first love, etc. as honestly as possible, without embellishing details.
4. If you are not a great authority for a teenager in this area, then you can use, for example, facts from the lives of his movie star idols to help. Confidential conversations will help the teenager understand what is moral and decent and what is not.
5. Help in spending free time is very important for teenagers. A good experience in this direction is weekly joint events and entertainment. It's worth discussing them with the whole family. Assign roles for each family member. The timing of such events should be coordinated, taking into account the schedules of all household members, rescheduling them in emergency cases to another time convenient for everyone, and not forgetting about them altogether. This will help combat uncontrolled and, at times, unsafe pastime of teenage children.
6. It is worth talking with your children on various topics, being interested in their hobbies: the books they read, the music they listen to, their favorite computer games, the competitions they participate in while playing sports, and others.

Read more: Child psychology. Childhood milestones

How to help a teenager remain himself?

Often in adolescence, a problem arises when a teenager wants to please his friends and loses himself, adapting to them.

How to explain to a teenager that it is important to remain yourself? Is it possible to somehow influence the choice of friends or company if the parent understands that this is not a very good campaign, but the child is drawn to it?

To answer this question, it is important to ask yourself: how will a child learn that it is important to remain himself if he does not try to abandon himself? After all, some things cannot be known speculatively.

When a person adjusts once, portrays something other than himself, he usually doesn’t feel very good afterwards and an aftertaste remains. A person can draw conclusions for the future that this is not necessary.

As a person gets to know himself (what he is, what is important and valuable to him), he wants less and less to give up himself for the sake of some momentary social success.

It’s interesting that even adults sometimes don’t know themselves very well and are not very at peace with themselves. The child tries something, sometimes gets some unpleasant impressions, experiences, rejection from peers, changes in relationships, and so on, and comprehends all this.

How can parents help? Because sometimes they can talk to the child, help them comprehend the experience gained, and advise them to preserve themselves no matter what.

Perhaps sometimes it’s even better that it’s not the parents, because some things are sometimes difficult to tell parents. Moreover, parents are often emotionally involved, and children protect them. They understand what parents are worried about. “How to tell your mother that you don’t want to live?” It is important that in your environment there are adults to whom the child is attached and with whom he can talk at any time on any topic.