Carmel Wynne stresses the need for parents to develop good communication habits with their children so that they are able to maintain a helpful relationship with them during the turbulent teenage years.
Parenting is probably the toughest job in the world. Every parent recognises that there is a need for warm, loving, supportive family relationships, especially in the teenage years. The problem for many well-intentioned mothers and fathers who desire to create a loving home is that when their young people reach adolescence, they look for independence, and this radically changes family relationships. Dissent raises its challenging head, friction creeps in when parents say ‘no’, and for a few years tension alters the easy interaction of earlier years.
Caring environment
One could be forgiven for assuming that most adolescents fail to appreciate or enjoy the caring environment their parents work so hard to create. Young people rarely voice their appreciation for their parents’ efforts. But make no mistake, the gratitude of adolescents who come from a home with two parents who have a warm and loving relationship, may not be expressed verbally but it is there. It takes maturity to recognise that adults like and want affirmation. It’s often only when grandchildren arrive that the efforts granny and granddad made are recognised and valued as they should be.
For about the first decade of their lives, children think their parents are wonderful. But once they hit the teenage years, they change their minds, and question everything they used to believe, especially how their parents treat them. Children mirror the behaviours they see in the home. If mum and dad regularly compliment and affirm each other, children learn to express appreciation. They learn not to take people and things for granted.
In many families, where such sentiments remain unspoken, there is an assumption that everyone understands they are loved and valued. They don’t. People of all ages need to hear the words spoken… A couple of years ago, I remember writing an article after I met a young woman who was terribly distressed. Her father had died suddenly, and she had the most terrible sense of regret because he never told her he loved her, and it was now too late for her to ever hear those three vitally important little words.
Need for communication
Any relationship we have is as good as our communication. We could assume that all children feel loved and know that their parents feel proud of them – but we would be wrong. So many young people say they feel their parents do not care about them. The belief that it is what young people achieve that is important to their family is widespread. A frightening number of teenagers say their mother or father only cares about academic results or winning prizes or being captain of the school team. I have no doubt that parents would deny this. However, it does point to communication problems in the family.
Adolescence is a critical time in the overall process of growing up, and few families openly discuss the sensitive issues involved. It’s common knowledge that almost every young person will be offered drugs by someone they know. Many parents warn of the dangers of illegal substances. But few talk openly and honestly about peer pressure, and ways to cope with peers and the pressure to have sex or drink alcohol. These are the real issues that must be negotiated in the passage to adulthood. Let’s be honest, hardly any parent deals well with them.
Sexual feelings
It is undeniable that young teens find themselves under pressure to become sexually active. Their own hormonal activity creates powerful pressure to experiment. Wrong information about what their peers are up to can influence premature activity. In order to discover who they are, adolescents need to question and challenge the ideas, attitudes and actions of their parents. We all know that in the process of growing to adulthood, they will take risks. So, why are parents failing to ensure that they are fully aware of the risks?
Teens will experience the need to explore their awakening sexuality and to experiment. They will try out adult ways of behaving. The passage from physical childhood to physical adulthood can take approximately eight to 10 years, from about the age of 10 to 18. During these important years adolescents need a great deal of support and encouragement as they face the difficult task of learning to become independent, and to take responsibility for making healthy decisions.
Some parents feel inadequate and totally unprepared to deal with puberty and sexuality. Aware of how pervasive eroticised imagery is, they adopt the head in the sand attitude. Others want to do something to protect the innocence of their children, but short of putting blinkers on them and preventing them having access to television, radio, newspapers and magazines, they say it can’t be done.
Nowadays almost every storyline in television and films has some erotic content, and often explicit love scenes. Advertisements depend on the use of sexual imagery to sell products. A new and worrying trend is how women are currently depicted in television advertisements as the predators. It’s the females who are coming on to the males and who adopt the position of being on top. Teenagers are powerfully influenced by how they see adults behaving and by their peers’ concepts of what is cool. They do what they see adults doing, not what adults tell them they should do. The jury is still out on who is more influential the family or the media.
Parental cop-out
The belief that there is nothing a parent can do to protect young people is a cop out on the part of many families. To listen to parents talk about how difficult it is to communicate with young people, one would believe that it is the teenagers who are embarrassed to talk of ‘sex, drugs and rock n roll’ not the other way round. Research shows that young people’s perception of the problem is very differ ent to that of adults. Almost without exception, when asked what adults they would like to discuss sexuality with, British teens say their parents.
Naturally, many parents are reluctant to admit that they spend sleepless nights worrying about how to keep their teenagers safe. Most parents have concerns about unsuitable friends who may coerce a child to do things they shouldn’t. They have mixed feelings about finding out what teenagers are doing and with whom. I suspect that there is a little bit of denial in all of us that would prefer not to be faced with the reality of what our children get up to.
It’s normal for family communication to be strained in the teenage years. Many parents admit to behaving in a fussy and overprotective fashion. They know they should express their concerns and talk about them but they don’t know how to begin. For example, they know that parental supervision is vitally important in the teenage years but they don’t have the confidence to go against an independent teenager who resists.
Doubts and uncertainties
Not all parents are prepared for the moodiness and depression that are common in early adolescence. Girls and boys are prone to doubts and uncertainties about themselves. Hormonal changes create new feelings and cause youngsters to swing sharply from one mood to another. Many men also find that they are dealing with hormonally challenged females as the menopause for the wife can arrive around the same time as puberty for the daughters.
Independent young people have more personal freedom than any previous generation. How they are parented has huge implications for whether they learn to use their freedom wisely and well. How the adolescents of today are parented will powerfully influence the emotional, physical and spiritual well being of the next generation. That’s the difficult challenge that faces parents today.
This article first appeared in Reality (April, 2002), a publication if the Irish Redemptorists.
