by Joe O'Dowd
Home >> Adolescence – the difficult years … for whom?
Adolescence is often a time when – as we say in English – the shit hits the fan. Suddenly, the child who went along with everything its parents said and did has opinions and wants to be heard. The parents can’t figure it out at all! Adolescence is a very, very difficult time for kids and, unfortunately, parents don’t always help.
Many of us parents put our own suffering at losing the little darling before the pain and suffering that the kid is going through. Many of us don’t want our children to grow up. I’ve been mummy for so long! What am I going to do now? But, aren’t we the ones who are supposed to be in charge? So why do we seem to be at a loss when our children start to become adults.
Brazilian psychotherapist Dr. Augusto Cury says ‘there are no difficult teens, there is just inadequate education’ and most of those we see as ‘difficult teenagers’, you will find, were spoilt children when they were small. They’ve just grown up! However, sixteen-year-old feet stomp much harder than six-year-old ones and a tantrum-throwing toddler can soon become a potentially aggressive teen.
So how should parents approach adolescence? Well firstly, by making sure we don’t abdicate our responsibility during the childhood years. Most teen problems arise because we’ve ignored our children for years and the adolescent that emerges is somebody we don’t really know.
During adolescence, the child is going through a period of metamorphosis, much like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. French doctor and psychoanalyst, Françoise Dolto1* spoke of the protective cocoon and the vulnerability of the adolescent until she has emerged. Fully formed. Adolescence is one of many stages of a child’s development; umbilical separation, separation at weaning, learning to walk etc. Each time, the child has to detach itself from one world in order to become aware of another and emerges grown and more human. The parents’ responsibility is to help the child to successfully overcome all of these stages. Including adolescence.
The adolescent stage brings all sorts of ‘first times’ that can scare and worry parents. First period, first sexual desires, first kiss, first love, first broken heart etc. Some firsts may involve parents; others will most definitely exclude them. Parents need to know when to facilitate, when to give space and when to just stay out of the way. Of course teens won’t involve us in everything and they have their secrets, but we should be there when they need us and listen to what they do want to say not only what we want to hear.
Some parents exclude themselves from their kids’ lives by not empathising, not trying to feel what’s going on in there inside the cocoon. Many parents distance themselves from ‘silly’ or ‘uncomfortable’ adolescent issues, creating a gap that may well affect the parent-child relationship for years to come as the new adult life will of course be conditioned by the ‘rites of passage’ experienced in adolescence.
Teenagers want to be independent, to fall and get up and learn from their own mistakes and we should let them. This doesn’t mean abdicate. It means facilitate. Kids may say that their parents are a pain, but they do love and respect them and they do crave parental recognition and appreciation.
We parents need to be very careful not to burn bridges with our teenagers. Many parents forget very quickly what it was like to be a confused and often frightened adolescent and dedicate so much time and energy to criticising them and berating them for no longer being children yet not being adults yet. We should accept the adolescent discovery of spirit as another normal step on their developmental path. We were all teenagers once and we should accompany them on this trip, not distance ourselves from it.
*1 thanks to Lebaz for research on this
;-)
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2008-11-27 09:00:00 +0100
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The job of any parent is to make themself redundant. Doting mothers and ‘control Freak’ fathers don’t see that. I mentioned in comments to an earlier Weekly Letter that a child has a right to think that the sun always shines and the sky is always blue. Adolescence is, I think, when we gently introduce the kids to the knowledge that sometimes there are storms and that a wise person develops ways to cope with them. It is a time where, instead of hand-feeding them, we let them try (and often fail at) the skills they will need in the big wide world.
Nevertheless, adolescence is also a cocktail of hormones, moods and throw away passions. I think it the parents’ job to show some absolutes amid all the ephemera. They need to know what is acceptable and what is not. Or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as we used to say in the old days.
As I say to an adolescent I mentor, ‘If you think I’m demanding, wait till you meet your first boss.’
Reading through recent articles & comments I’m often finding that there are lines that jump out – highlighting ideas I’ve heard in conversation or read about, and often make me want to investigate a bit more…
Joe talks this week of what’s to be gained if we ” listen to what they do want to say not only what we want to hear.” which, I realised on re-reading it a second time, applies just as much to any human relationship.But maybe especially so during the teenage years which JOe describes as ” a very, very difficult time for kids”. That reflects my own memories of the period, and its unusual – and refreshing – to hear an adult acknowledge that it’s a tough time. Most adults I know just lable teenagers as some kind of monster, best left alone or shouted at for the duration of the period.
Dónal describes the teenage years as “when we gently introduce the kids to the knowledge that sometimes there are storms and that a wise person develops ways to cope with them. ”. Those were the lines there that meant something extra to me.
I’ve recently become a parent and almost 5 years ago at the start of the international adoption process I was introduced to a poem about children, which appears to be relatively unknown, going by the people I’ve spoken to.
Here it is, by Khalil Gibran, On Children (in English).
I like that, Dónal, doting mothers and control-freak fathers. Having read the poem by Kahlil Gibran, I have pulled out the lines, your children are not your children … they are with you yet they belong not to you and so, as Dónal says, our job as parents is to prepare them to leave us, no matter how hard it is for us to see them go. In the week that we are mourning the death of Basque poet and singer-songwriter Mikel Laboa, it is fitting, I suppose, that we remember his words about loving a bird so much that we clip its wings in order to keep it with us, not realising that by clipping its wings it ceases to be the bird we love. Just like we parents who love our children so much that we can’t bear to see them growing up and leaving home.
One piece of advice I received when I got married three years ago was…never desire a “textbook” marriage, where everything is lovely and all parties involved are always fun-loving, understanding, and in a word, perfect. Human beings are far from perfect and adolescents, as Dónal points out, are still learning.
Parents these days seem to have gone from one extreme to another—you have the control freaks and the other side is the “I could care less” attitude that some parents seem to have, primarily caused by the fear that they would be labeled control freaks if they actually exerised some healthy and positive influence in their lives.
Adolescents crave guidance, they are absolutely in deep and utter need of guidance. They are full of hormones as Joe points out, but they need guidance, affection and yes, authority. Give them an inch, and they will take a mile! They are adolescents, but to say that adolescents need to go off and experience things on their own is what shit hitting the fan is all about…don’t let the shit hit the fan! Give them some direction, I say….
All too often we hear the lamenting voice of the parents what happened to my child! But remember, your child learns everything from you… that’s why when they fail at something, their slight and insignificant mistake, becomes your worst nightmare. People hate to see people in front of them immitate their own mistakes… More responsibility parents, let’s get with the program!
Great article Joe!
Cheers Paul, glad you liked the article. I definitely agree with you on a number of things you point out. Kids will copy us and take what we do as ‘normal’ behaviour so if we fight, they’ll probably fight, if we drink, smoke or take drugs, they’ll see it as something they can do etc. I also agree that we parents should use our authority wisely. However, I don’t see the argument as whether to be strict or liberal, but why we do it. There is a difference between being authoritarian in order to make us feel better about our role as parent and being authoritative for the good of the child. This also applies to the more ‘liberal’ end of the spectrum where parents can be so liberal in an attempt to get on well with their kids, that they forget who’s boss. Relaxing one’s authority (in the same way as using it) should be facilitative and, again, for the good of the child. Relaxation of rules to the point of the parents’ abdication of responsibility is just as dangerous as the over-wielding of authority.
Thanks everyone for your comments.
Joe
Hi everybody.
What a great article!
I am completely agree with the writer thogh I would like to add that only making mistakes and learning from them is the only way to learn it properly.Specially for teenagers, that they want to experience so much in a short period of time and at the same time they have to fullfill their own future, studing, travelling etc.
The thing is that parents and people who have already passed that ages have to be pacient and considerers with this, because is the best way to drive them to go trough without troubles in their way.
Greetings
Hi Ivan!
Thanks for your comment. I agree, yes, making mistakes and learning from them is the only way for many teens to learn properly and it is, as you say, a short period of time, when so much has to be done. Being patient and considerate is important, but often easier said than done.
I hope you’re enjoying the course.
Joe