anxiety<\/a>, and loneliness. You may feel that although you love your teenager, you just don\u2019t like him or her very much right now. It may feel at times that your teenager has his or her finger on every one of your buttons, and is pushing them \u2026 all at once!<\/p>\nWhat can you do when the very child you love and worry over appears to hate and reject you as a parent?<\/p>\n
Teens are known for their emotional volatility. Unfortunately, when parents become as overwhelmed by negative emotions as their teens are, they are no longer in a strong position to be stable, loving, or helpful to the teen. In fact, the parents\u2019 hurt and anger can easily add fuel to the fire and bring about a downward spiral that both parents and teens feel helpless to stop.<\/p>\n
To say teenagers value their friends and social life is an obvious understatement.\u00a0 However, to family members around that teenager, it can seem as if by \u201cchoosing\u201d to value their friends, the teen is showing the family that they no longer matter. Indeed, as illustrated by the quotes above, the average teenager may even say as much in the midst of an angry, hormone-fueled argument.<\/p>\n
The traditional task of adolescence is to move away from exclusive identification with family and to explore the greater world outside of the home. Separation of the child from the parents is absolutely necessary and healthy at this stage. However, that separation must be counterbalanced by the availability of the parent to continue to meet the adolescent\u2019s needs. Therefore, this is an extremely frustrating time for many parents.\u00a0 They feel as if the teen is pushing the parent away, only to pull the parent back whenever he or she \u201cwants something from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order for the adolescent to explore the larger world in a healthy way, the home and family must be a sort of \u201chome base.\u201d This means the teenager needs to experience his or her family as stable, its identity as stable, its love and acceptance as unconditional, and its boundaries as safe and secure.<\/p>\n
Understand that by focusing on his or her peers, your teenager is not rejecting you. Instead, the teenager is simply transitioning through an intense period of changes. The teen needs the family life to remain solid and secure, so that he or she can return to it for comfort and healing when the peer world becomes too intense or overwhelming.<\/p>\n
Teenagers may often resemble adults physically, but socially as well as cognitively, they still resemble children much more than adults. We now know that the human brain does not fully mature until the mid- to late twenties. Executive functions such as prioritizing, consequential thinking, and evaluating options are still coming online. Furthermore, teenagers do not have the life experience, confidence, or savvy to navigate the complicated demands of life as adults do.<\/p>\n
Because of these factors, it can be useful for parents to see past the bravado and the occasional glimpses of maturity that their adolescent displays; to understand that, inside, there still exists the child who has needs he or she does not have words to express, who cannot meet those needs independently of the parent.<\/p>\n
The family itself is also moving through a transition period. They must move into a new life stage, with new roles for each family member. It can be difficult to feel entirely ready for these changes. Many parents of teenagers experience this time as a loss: the loss of the innocent and impressionable child they once knew and enjoyed; the loss of the role of all-knowing nurturer and protector.<\/p>\n
Parents often report that they feel that \u201ctime is running out.\u201d When your 5-year-old threw a temper tantrum, you knew as a parent that you still had \u201cendless\u201d years in which to heal relationships and correct behavior. When your child is 15, you understand that the years are not endless and that damage done to the relationship now may persist into your child\u2019s adulthood.<\/p>\n
Because the family is a \u201csafe launching pad\u201d for their forays into the larger world, teenagers move into and out of their family, and not always on the parents\u2019 timeline. Your teen may refuse to join you for dinner, hiding out in his or her room; he or she may seem to eat, sleep, and shower with iPod headphones on. He or she may argue endlessly over attending important family functions such as weddings or funerals. And, just when you think the teen has disowned the family forever, there he or she is, curling up next to you to watch a movie or opening up from the passenger seat on a long drive.<\/p>\n
Recognize your teenager\u2019s attempts to reach out to you for what they are: The teen is looking for reassurance from you that he or she is still a part of the family; he or she wants to know that no matter what he or she screamed at you last week, you still love him or her. The teen needs to feel certain that if the \u201creal world\u201d becomes too scary, he or she still has a safe place to return. In order to practice being an adult, your teen needs to periodically return to being a child\u2014and this will happen when you least expect.<\/p>\n
Nobody said being the parent of a teenager is always easy, fun, or fair. As the adult in the relationship, it is you who holds the responsibility. It is you whose role, although different, is still most important in these last years of your child\u2019s development. It is you who must keep the gates of the family open for your teen when he or she needs to reenter them.<\/p>\n
Once you can view your teen\u2019s behavior from this developmental context, you can depersonalize it. It is no longer about your teen\u2019s rejection or manipulation; it\u2019s an understandable and necessary stage in his or her journey to reaching his or her own, full potential as a young adult. It becomes easier and more natural to meet the ebbs and flows of your teen\u2019s changing needs. Even when, sometimes, the need is for separation from the parent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyle S. King, LMFT, LCPC – Detached and defiant teens can test the resolve of any parent. Don’t take it personally, and recognize the behavior for what it is: a normal developmental stage in the process of individuation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2608,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[389,31,445,21,393,450,421,51,25],"class_list":["post-16864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-adjusting-to-change","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-caregiver-issues-stress","tag-child-and-adolescent-issues","tag-family-problems","tag-individuation","tag-oppositional-defiant-behavior-in-children-teens","tag-healthy-parenting","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2608"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Father](\"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/dad-yelling-at-teen.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
\u201cI hate you!\u201d<\/p>\n