What your teenager wants you to know:
I have the pleasure of working with teenagers every day in my capacity as a School Counselor, in my role as an Educational Consultant and now I find myself preparing to celebrate the 16th birthday of my oldest daughter, so needless to say, I am surrounded by teenagers. In beginning the celebration, I asked her what she wanted to do for her 16th birthday (be with friends, have a party, etc) and at 16 years old, her answer shocked me.."I just want to spend some time alone with you Mom. " As I drive her nuts in taking her to college fairs, visiting colleges, bugging her about her chores, her homework and cleaning up her room, she still just wants be with me? Between working with my own students at work, and in raising my own entourage of tweens and a soon to be teenager, I have discovered that no matter what the economic background, cultural background, race or creed, there is still one idea that crosses over in teenagers, and that is the desire to make their parents proud and to gain their' parent/guardians' approval and acceptance.
It's a strange world we live in and much has changed: some of us are single parents, some of us are happily married, some of us are grandparents reborn again as parents, and some of us are guardians who were left to fill the parental role. As parents, we do not always know if what we are doing is the right thing, we doubt our methods and abilities, we feel guilt for the emotions that we feel and the difficulty in balancing our priorities with the needs of our children. We often pray or hope that our choices and actions will mold our children in the right way, but we also fear, overthink and doubt our ability to do what is best, however we do it anyway. If you are a parent of a teenager, tween or somewhere in the middle, you probably do not always know what your child is thinking, but maybe this article can shed some light:
5 Things your teenager wants you to know:
5) “You get on our nerves. Your interfering and constant prying is something that makes our lives difficult. “We want to break out of our shells and run away, but you are always there to pull us back and it is annoying."(Sound like anyone you know?) However, here is the thing, it is perfectly normal for this dynamic to exist between parents and children. A very perceptive psychosocial theorist by the name of Erik Erikson stated that the role of "Identity vs.Identity Confusion begins at 13 and lasts until 19. This is the stage where a child's main goal is to figure out who he or she is and move away from the expectation of his/her parents. This is the stage of life where your child demonstrates a sense of rebellion and acts as if they know everything and you know nothing. It can be a very trying and difficult transition for a parent to go through, but it is totally necessary for your child to find a sense of autonomy.
4)A certain level of rebellion is to be expected, but ultimately the upbringing that you gave that child can be a big part of the rebellion that he/she tries. As an educator, I can always tell those students who walk around with their parents' voices in their sub conscience. These are the students that although they may be drawn to pal around with the kids who press their limits, they always come back or they never cross over. It is a hard fact that the best gift we can give our children are roots and wings. In raising them and in being their constant heroes, the giving them roots thing was often our pleasure, our enjoyment and our award (even in- between the temper tantrums and sickness). but giving them wings is a whole other thing...we have to question: how high will they fly? Will they burn or break a wing? Who will fix the wing? And if they fly with the wrong crowd, will they ever come back? In letting our children have wings, it is a scary and difficult test of our wills, but if we have given them strong enough roots, they will find a way to fly and never forget where to can go to land for safety...with us.
3) What you see on the outside, is not what you see on the inside: I have taught in environments from the mainstream to the alternative to the incarcerated, and the one thing I can tell you is that "kids are kids." In getting to a know a student, I approach him/her with the same question in mind: How hard is his/her armor? A child is raised in many different ways and life experience either teaches that child that it is okay to trust his her environment or that the world is a scary place. Every time a child experiences an instance that brings about a reaction of fear or doubt, his/her armor gets thicker. As teenagers, that armor has thickened to the point that their protection is created to keep out any danger or fear, but ultimately, the reasoning comes from the same place fear, doubt, and insecurity.
2 That armor can be chipped away- Okay, so you see your child becoming this big scary teenager...maybe they are hanging around with the wrong crowd, maybe they paint their room black, maybe they listen to angry music or maybe they do not acknowledge your presence, but as I previously stated, no matter what you see...it is not really how they feel about you. It is a teenager's job to create a little box or safety or security to hide inside and invite only the people who they feel would understand them...namely anyone, but you. However, no matter how he/she changes, how deeply he/she hides, it is your job to get inside that box and never let them keep you out.
1)Your child needs you...no matter what the age. Just jump into delivery room of most women giving birth and it is not the husband that she is asking for, but the mother. Although it is a time of experimentation and rebellion, the teenage years build strong adults. Although these years may be testing, it shows a child the importance of a parent or guardian. Each year when I sit in the aisle watching another class graduate or another valedictorian give his/her speech, the most important influence always comes back to the adults in his/her lives. Although not every child is privileged enough to have his or her mother or father standing in the sidelines, that child remembers the adults who were there. My mother always had a magnet on her fridge that stated "having kids is like being pecked to death by a duck;" I never understood what that meant until I had children, and now that I watch myself get pecked by my own little group of ducklings, standing next to me laughing is my own mother, who although I tortured throughout my teenage years, never gave up on me and who is now one of my best friends.
