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Agh, your teenager. He holes himself up in his room, spends hours on the Internet and acts as if you were an unintelligent being from outer space. This argumentative, moody 12-year-old used to be an agreeable 10-year-old who was so easy to get along with. What happened?
What happened is early adolescence, which is a time of raging hormones and peer pressure. Teens aren't quite adults and not little children anymore, says Susan Panzarine, a New Jersey mother of two and a nurse who has 20 years' experience in adolescent health and has written extensively on the subject.
This "stage" is enough to make a parent wish that children came with operating manuals. However, there are a slew of how-to guides that offer child-rearing advice from the "terrible twos" through the teenage years. Panzarine wrote "A Parent's Guide to the Teen Years" about raising your teen between the ages of 11 to 14 in the age of chat rooms and navel rings.
Panzarine, who holds a doctoral degree in nursing from the University of Utah School of Nursing, has some down-to-earth guidelines about what parents can do to help their children through early adolescence, including how to talk with this child who has shared the same roof as you since birth.
"Communicating with an 11- to 14-year-old can be tough," Panzarine says. "They're sensitive to anything that even hints of criticism from parents and are quick to take offense at what you might think is an innocuous statement," she says. At the same time, they're highly critical of anything adults say.
Say what, Mom?
So how do you talk to your teen? Here are some of Panzarine's "dos and don'ts":
Dos
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Pay attention. Turn off the TV, put down the paper and give your child undivided attention. Also, let your teen finish talking before you respond.
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Notice how things are being said. In other words, pay attention to nonverbal behavior such as facial expressions, eye contact and tone of voice. "Great!" can mean either something really exciting or the opposite, depending on how it's said.
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Make sure you understand your teen's point of view before you jump in and give reassurance or advice. Don't make assumptions.
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Try something called reflective listening. Figure out what's behind what your child is saying and then say it out loud. Example: Teen: (tearful) "My history teacher is so unfair. She hates me and is always picking on me. I'm going to fail that class." Parent: "You sound like your feelings are hurt. And you seem discouraged, too." Instead of the parent saying: "Your teacher doesn't hate you. All you need to do is study more, and you'll do fine in the class."
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Keep focused on the issue. Young teens are masters at changing the definition. It goes like this: Parent: "Please go upstairs and clean your room." Teen: "Why are you in such a bad mood?"
Don'ts
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Don't patronize or talk down to young teens.
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Don't grill your teen. ("What time did you get over to Anna's? Who was there? What did you do when you got there? Was her brother there? What did you do after that?")
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Don't preach. ("When I was your age....")
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Avoid power struggles. Teens this age often feel like they don't have control over much of anything and so they get into verbal power struggles with parents as a way of trying to grab some control.
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Don't rush in with knee-jerk advice, like "What I would do is..." the second after your child tells you something.
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Don't ridicule, call names or make other derogatory or belittling comments.
Panzarine has plenty of other pointers for parents, including advice to stay involved with your teen.
Staying involved
"Many parents make the mistake of adopting a hands-off policy and watching from the sidelines as their teens enter adolescence," Panzarine contends. In fact, it is a time when parents need to stay involved in all aspects of their children's lives and know their children's friends and their friends' parents, where they are, what they do in school and what they do with their free time.
Parents won't know what their teens think about experimenting with alcohol and premarital sex or how to help prepare them for the physical and emotional changes they'll experience unless parents and teens talk to each other, Panzarine says.
Setting limits
As children enter adolescence, Panzarine says they need to test limits to see how far they can push it before you put your foot down. Panzarine is a believer in natural consequences. That is, if you don't eat, you'll be hungry. This approach, she says, promotes the teen's independence and self-responsibility.
If teens' behaviors can end up getting them hurt (such as taking drugs) or if there aren't any natural consequences to the behavior, parents can impose consequences that are a logical follow-up to the behavior. For example, if your teen interrupts you when you're on the phone, make the phone off limits for the rest of the day. Also, make sure you follow through on the consequence. Don't just threaten it.
Lastly, if you try all this and your teenager is still irritable, don't personalize things, Panzarine says.
"Young teens will argue about almost anything, but it doesn't mean that they hate you or think that you're a bad or inadequate parent. Their irritability is not personal. It just goes with the territory."
If all of these strategies fail, consider family counseling with your teen.
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External Source
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The National PTA
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This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
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