The Mental Health Corner Archive
Living With Teens
April 13, 2010
Living With Teens
Sally and Rich are struggling in their marriage of 17 years, finding it difficult to be romantic with one another and seldom sharing thoughts and feelings. Rich is experiencing some problems with high blood pressure and is overwhelmed by stressors on the job. Sally is dealing with her parents' declining health and frequently provides support to her mother. And now, difficult behavioral issues with their 14 year old sone Joey are increasing and he is associating with peers that are questionable.
Living with a teen can be a time of both excitement and trouble. Teens differ from their parents in some basic ways that are important to consider.
One difference is that teens often focus on unlimited possibilities ahead of them more than realities. At the same time, the possibilities are not yet realities. This often results in a painful sense of inferiority and lack of identity. Parents of teens focus more on realities than possibilities. And, ultimately, teens engage in a lot of fantasy. They are looking to life before them and dream about what it will be like. Their daydreaming of the future helps to offset some of the emotional pain their current life experience may deliver. They have not had much experience at trying out their dreams against reality.
Meanwhile their parents are in midlife and at a point where now there are more realities than dreams. The realities are usually not the stuff their earlier dreams were made of. Even for the successful, the daily repetition of getting out of bed for what often feels like another Ground Hog Day, leaves them with a longing for something new, for change. And, mid-life crisis arrives for some parents. One area of past dreams that is currently taking a beating for many parents in midlife is love and marriage. Midlife also often results in increased health problems, and the decline and death of elderly loved ones. These things and others make reality even more of a struggle for the parents of teens. Stressors in life have become regular and fairly predictable.
When kids become teens, the job of raising them is about sixty percent completed, but many teens try to behave like it is totally over. One of a teen’s primary tasks during the teen years is to establish their independence. It is easy to see then, that one of the main tasks of parents at this time is to “Let Go.” Slowly letting them have more freedom, independence, and more say in their own affairs. This is often difficult to accomplish for a parent concerned about their teen’s safety and wellbeing. Teens are often ready to do many things biologically that adults can do, but in our technological and industrialized society, a fairly long delay is imposed so that they may be educated and trained for life ahead of them. Teens struggle with this, and many feel increasing frustration and some rebel, in an attempt to speed up the process. In the meantime parents struggle with decisions and problems their teens are encountering with key areas such as schooling, dating, sex, drinking and other drugs, driving, and money. Ultimately though, teens have to be different from their parents and gain independence from them. Therefore, they will search for and seek out ways to accomplish this. This may vary from a body piercing to a part-time job.
Parents invest in their teens and desire a caring response from them. Typically this is slow in coming while teens are exceptionally socially sensitive to their peers. Who likes them, whom they hang out with and how well they are accepted is extremely important to their adjustment. The intensity of these social needs helps to press their desire to pull away more from their parents and family and establish their own social network. This often causes parents to feel that their teens are very self-centered. The task of establishing their own social network is impacted by new technology and this compounds the generational gap and makes it more difficult for parents to understand what is going on with teens.
The pulling away of teens is frequently a bumpy and difficult task. Parents are often hurt when teens choose to not go out with them or to be seen with them or the family. Teens are however developmentally supposed to be establishing social relationships and beginning to pull away from home and family. Even though their parents may not always agree with choice of friends, and how they seek their independence, their goal should be to support their teen’s work to gradually master the skills required to live independently and maintain a satisfying social life for themselves. This is ultimately what parents want for them too.
Understanding some of the developmental tasks of teens and their parents is helpful in making sense of and surviving the teen years.
Phil House, Psy.D.
