I have teenagers. Pray for me.
-Bumper sticker
A recent news report gave an alarming statistic: there have been 74 shootings in or around schools since the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. Though this number has been contested by other reports, the fact remains that there are many angry teenagers roaming the hallways of our American school.
Teenagers are a mosh pit of hormones and impulsivity: the perfect storm of brains and bodies that haven’t fully developed combined with increasingly complex roles and responsibilities. The bad influences on adolescents appear to be increasing at an unsettling rate, led by cable TV and the internet featuring Facebook, a way for teens to broadcast their pathology to “friends” all over the world, and a hundred different ways to buy drugs online or meet a sexual predator.
With all of these distractions, parenting teenagers is harder than ever. I often think it is a miracle that any teenager grows into a well-adjusted adult. Yet most of them do - thanks mainly, I believe, to their parents. Understanding teenage development is one of the keys to figuring out why adolescents can be so difficult to parent.
Coined by Eric Erikson in 1970, the concept of “identity crisis” still goes a long way in explaining the unpleasant quality of many teenage – parent interchanges. Teenagers are caught in a difficult transition between being children and becoming adults. They are struggling to figure out who they are and where they fit in while their bodies are experiencing the most radical changes of their lives.
During the identity crisis, most teenagers will no longer placidly accept the rules and values of their family; instead, they will start to question them. Many will not only question but openly challenge or even reject the beliefs that their parents hold sacred.
Testing limits and parental authority is a way that teenagers assert their desire to be independent and have a unique identity. Adolescents no longer want to be told what to do; they want to figure it out for themselves. They may also begin to experiment with different identities, sometimes in unhealthy ways, because teenagers lack the emotional maturity to always make good decision. One of the greatest challenges in parenting teenagers is encouraging their exploration and developing independence while monitoring them and keeping them safe.
Melvin Levine, an expert in child development, speaks about these challenges in his book Ready or Not, Here Life Comes. He advises that parents should help their teens develop a sense of mastery by helping them to figure out their strengths, while not expecting mastery at everything. “Success,” Levine writes, “is like a vitamin. No one can grow up well without it.” Still, an “overdose” of adolescent success or overindulgent parenting can also lead to problems. Teenagers learn to handle failure and feelings of inadequacy by not being able do everything well or have everything that they want.
As an extension of this recommendation, I believe that activities such as sports and gainful employment should not be withheld from teenagers as a form of punishment. Although healthy extracurricular activities may take time away from schoolwork, they are teaching teenagers another important skill: the ability to compartmentalize. Keeping one compartment of a teen’s life (extracurricular activities) from bleeding into another compartment (school) is best learned by experience.
I believe that a better punishment for teenagers is to eliminate unhealthy distractions, such as those created by technology. This is why my preferred method of punishment, least preferred by my teens, was to make them Amish: no cell phone, no car (except to drive to work or sports practice), no internet. My temporarily Amish children learned to appreciate simple activities like reading, or to behave better the next time
Because adolescents are unpredictable, because they may be so busy rebelling against their parents that they will not talk to them, and because they may experiment with new identities in unhealthy ways, how do parents know when their own teen is in trouble? If parenting teenagers is like teaching them to swim, how do parents know when their teenager needs to be left alone to learn for him/herself or when he needs to be pulled out of the water because he is drowning?
Levine suggests one sign of trouble in teens: a chronically poor ability to cope and the lack of resilience (the ability to bounce back). One example of poor coping ability is denying that problems exist - such as when a teenager says he is doing fine, but poor grades or other objective signs of dysfunction like social isolation suggest otherwise. Persistent over-reactions to small stresses or disappointments may be another sign of poor coping. These can take the form of repeated explosive anger outbursts or chronic physical complaints such as headaches, stomach distress, and the frequent need to miss school.
Adolescents without resilience can be wiped out by even the smallest setback. They may appear depressed or anxious nearly all the time. Or, they may attempt to “cope” by adopting a pattern of unsafe or illegal activities such as regular drug use, self-harming behaviors, or sexual promiscuity. Illegal or unsafe behaviors, whether or not they are a sign of severe adolescent dysfunction, will always require some sort of parental intervention.
Doug Larson said “Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.” Along the way to this satisfying place, asking for help is a healthy way to cope. Parents can model this healthy behavior for their teenagers by seeking help themselves and working with their teen to resolve the problem issues and bring down barriers.
Dr Bonanno is a board certified psychiatrist with nearly 20 years of patient care experience. She currently serves as a behavioral health medical director for the Anthem central region.