Developmental changes that accompany the transition from middle childhood to adulthood present numerous challenges to the adolescent. During this time, parents also face challenges — especially those who are anxious to trust that their children’s maturing physical appearance goes hand in hand with mature decision-making.
Add to these challenges the difficulty of maintaining a positive and open parentchild relationship amid sometimes competing life goals, escalating social demands and rapidly shifting family roles, and it should not be surprising that some parents experience their child’s successful transition to adulthood as purely a matter of luck.
Quite the contrary, parents continue to wield a tremendous amount of influence on their teen’s life, and the scientific literature supports that teens benefit when parents remain active guides in teaching an adult way of thinking through tough decisions about things like alcohol use and peer pressure.
Remaining engaged with one’s teen and communicating appropriate concern and guidance requires a recipe of consistency, support, courtesy, respect and humor that often feels hard to come by — especially when the ingredients offered by the teen are poor decisions and rebellious confrontations.
Recognizing the demands faced by adolescents during these critical years can help to clear the way for improved parentchild relationships. Teens are pressured with messages from peers and popular media to take advantage of newfound freedoms and test the limits of their maturity. High risk opportunities are regularly made accessible to teens whose focus is on immediate experiences with clouded perception of actual risk.
Friends are used as a basis for forming opinions, attitudes and determining the “correct” ways to act and think, and, although a good circle of friends can really provide a benefit for successfully avoiding trouble, just the opposite may be true when friends are forceful or controlling.
Keeping the lines of communication open with one’s teen provides the necessary lifeline for kids struggling to figure out both themselves and the world in which they live, and can reduce the negative influence of peers who don’t always share one’s values. It is natural for kids to resist ongoing guidance, but a consistent message of respect and concern, along with keeping anger in check, can lead to more openness to discussion.
Communities That Care and its partners have put together information for parents about understanding the social and emotional world of the adolescent, and an informational pamphlet will soon be available at www.centrecares.org.
Brian Rabian is a psychologist and director of the Penn State Psychological Clinic. This weekly column is a collaboration of Centre County Communities that Care serving Bald Eagle, Bellefonte, Penns Valley, and Philipsburg-Osceola area school districts, and Care Partnership: Centre Region Communities That Care serving the State College Area School District.
