Accompanying my child in adolescence: a guide for parents

Habitually, adolescence is a stage of life in which family relationships falter, undergo changes, and readjust to create a new relational structure and dynamics between parents and children, precisely the latter are developing and validating their internal configuration closest to functioning adult.

And parents in turn are also at a time when it is necessary to check and refocus the parenting style and communication, adapting it to the relational needs of the new stage that the children are going through.

Accompanying the child during adolescence

It is in this movement and readjustment that discomfort, dissatisfaction, difficulty with understanding, feeling of misunderstanding and suffering for one or more of the parties involved in the family development.

These situations can range from increased arguments, disagreements in schedules and numbers of outings, concern about orientation professional, such as the appearance of other more disruptive and significant behaviors by both parties that involve risky behaviors, either

aggressiveness, consumption, or other reflections of discomfort through unhealthy behaviors.

Children often expose the difficulty in being, feeling and expressing themselves in their essence, being able to feel little understood and accompanied at this moment in which internally there are movements about what one was, what he is and what he imagines he wants to be.

The difficulties of adolescence

Adolescence is a vital moment in which new sources of interest and strong connections appear outside the circle. family, and the person who is beginning his adult stage asks questions about himself, others and the functioning of the world.

The answers to be given will not always be consistent or adjusted to the style and expectations of the family, and that will cause that sometimes the difference is difficult to accept, or simply by an instinct of parental protection, in which the main desire is to avoid the bad experiences to the children, can be lived by the children as a non-acceptance of their difference and individuality.

On the other hand, parents speak of difficulties in understanding the changes that are happening and sometimes they feel difficulty in sustaining opposition, free expression, or even dealing with applying limits in one way fair and healthy.

Adjust parenting style

Sometimes it is also difficult for the mother-father figures to readjust the mother-fatherhood to the vital moment that the children are living. These, during adolescence, also need the accompaniment of their paternal and maternal figures, but this accompaniment is important that is adjusted to the age and need of each person. The care and ways of approach will not be the same with a baby or in early childhood children than with an adolescent.

When this is not conscious, the mother and father figures may encounter rejection and incomprehension and the sons and daughters with invasion experiences and of not being treated according to their age and real needs.

Should parents dispense with limits and norms at this stage of their children?

Does everything exposed so far advocate the absence of limits and the acceptance of any behavior within the family dynamics? Not.

The line between allowing and accompanying the other in the expression of himself and at the same time setting limits in a sufficiently consistent and structural way, is sometimes presents diffuse and difficult to keep in balance, being able to give situations in which both parents and children feel confused, misunderstood and demanded by the other part.

Professional experience continually gives us the opportunity to repeatedly observe that under this difficulty of understanding most of the time they are talking about Love and the desire to do the best possible for the well-being of both the other and own self.

Then… Why are there usually so many points of disagreement? It is the moment when it is necessary to ask oneself if what one thinks that the other needs is really what the other needs... and always, the only and also the best way to discover what the other's need or desire is is to ask.

After all, a month-old baby will not be able to answer the question of whether she cries because she is tired or She is hungry, but an adolescent has the ability and ability to identify her needs and express them. After asking, the responsibility appears as reference adults to accompany and limit that need or desire to the reality, that is, to help understand if that given the family reality and a healthy management can be covered or not.

Rights and duties

For example: the adolescent wants to have a weekly allowance, it is healthy to agree on the conditions and at the same time limit the amount to the economic reality of the family and the learning of healthy money management, which implies that there is not an unlimited allocation, whatever the economic condition family.

When, despite asking the disagreements, another way of approach persists, it will happen that the party that wants to address the situation takes time to think and ask questions about what is happening, how you are feeling and what is your way of acting in the conflict, in order to differentiate your own needs from those of the others. Once this is clear, ask the rest of the components to find an optimal moment to communicate and seek the solution in the most favorable way for both parties.

In this meeting, communication will be much more effective if it is aimed at expressing and finding out how each one feels than if it is aimed at highlighting what others do or they do not, the latter usually causes the interlocutor to feel judged and demanded, and at the same time causes the needs and desires of both not to be discussed parts.

If, by putting the above advice into practice, conflicts persist or risk behaviors appear for one or more parts of the family, It may be convenient to consult a professional team to determine where the problem is and to accompany the different members of the family to work out and resolve difficulties.

Text of Virginia Tena.

Adult Psychologist at ARA Psychology. Specialist in Eating Disorders and relational integrative transactional analysis.