how to face your rebellions and challenges

Question: I have two beautiful teenage children, ages 15 and 17, who are good and healthy kids, but that doesn’t stop the house from having a tumultuous atmosphere with arguments over anything. It wasn’t like that before and I confess that I don’t know how to handle myself. (M. R. Z. Dolores)

Witnessing the transition from childhood to adolescence in children is something gratifying for parents, but also a task that is not easy.

Although young children are very demanding with their demands and needs, satisfying them is usually less conflictive due to obedience to parental figures that minors have. It is more complex with teenagers.

As is known, adolescence is a difficult stage to go through in a person’s life cycle (perhaps the most complex of all) for both the young person and the parents. It is an age of many simultaneous changes on a physical, hormonal, emotional, intellectual and social level.

The adolescent is basically ceasing to be a child, but He usually doesn’t know who he is yet. He aspires not to accept permanence in the security of childhood, but begins to discover the instability that the new stage implies.

Consequently, parenting and development become difficult and often frightening for both parents and son or daughter.

Teenagers want to do things their own way. And that is the essential contradictory nature of adolescence: they act as if they know everything and yet they lack experience; They feel invincible, but are often insecure; They need help, but at the same time they don’t accept it.

An inevitable conflict then arises which is take a defiant attitude with parents -which did not exist when we were children- and which implies the affirmation of a personality that is in full evolution.

This modifies the vision they have of parents, who They go from being protective figures to being figures that question and criticizeestablishing a reciprocal dispute.

The most frequent conflicts that cause The discussions are usually related to everyday issues such as, for example, the clothing they wear, having abandoned some hygiene habits, housework or lack of commitment to studying.

The adolescent usually has other priorities and needs in his head, such as be focused on the changes and aesthetics of your bodythe relationship with their friends that begin to have a very important weight and having discretion over the use of the cell phone or online games.

Topics like sexuality, religion or drugs are often silenced and if they arise, they are likely to lead to more intense discussions.

Parents who were main actors in childhood become secondary actors, and may even become annoying with their presence. They must be available, appear and not fail when they are needed and sought by the children. Which then requires them to have patience and a good ability to tolerate frustration.

Also It is convenient for them to accept that it is not appropriate to convince but to give opinions in a non-imperative manner and only when required for a particular issue.

The same way, They should not repeat and repeat arguments but rather have patience to give their opinion in the right moment. And better if they do it with short and concise comments. Teenagers in general do not tolerate long rants.

“The art of communication is the language of leadership” said an American presidential speechwriter, a statement that is applicable and valid in dealing with adolescents, both for parents and educators.