10 Tests of Raising Teenagers & 10 Ways It Transforms Both Parent and Child
There's no denying the fact that parenting has its fair share of trying moments, especially as children grow into teenagers. Still, this eventually fosters a deep appreciation of one another.
- Sophia Zapanta
- 5 min read
Bringing up teenagers is like being on an emotional rollercoaster with many changes in adulting and taking responsibility. Yet, as this challenge is faced by both parents and teens, the process enables them to know, appreciate, and love each other to the very extremes of time.
1. Treading a Tightrope of Independence
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When teens strive for independence, they sometimes give parents the impression that they are repelling every attachment, emotionally and physically. Parents should show how to give their children the freedom they need as well as help when necessary.
2. Handling Hormonal Changes
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During adolescence, biological transformations bring about changes more intense in nature than any other behavior change that a child has ever experienced. This too is a passing phase and parents can survive this hurdle when properly addressed.
3. Dealing with Peer Pressure
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The need to belong to the social pack reaches its peak during adolescence. Thus, parents usually find it difficult to guide their teens well in making the right choices because of increased in peer influence.
4. Balancing Freedom and Safety
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Teenagers crave more freedom, but parents must manage the fine line between allowing them autonomy and ensuring they remain safe. This happens to be the hard part, more so, in cases where there is no adult supervision or even guidance on how to conduct oneself.
5. Watching Them Go Through the Identity Crisis
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It is common for teenagers to have an identity crisis because they tend to ask themselves who they are and try to push limits by trying on different personas. This is a hard stage to watch as it includes no skillful interventions and parents’ love and care is all that is needed.
6. Managing School and Social Pressures
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Most teenagers experience great difficulties in striking a balance between studies, extracurricular activities, and maintaining one’s social life. This poses a challenge to parents since they also have to be able to foster such balance without infringing on their child’s freedom.
7. Facing Technology and Screen Time Battles
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Most parents find it difficult to cope with the extent of the effect of technology on the lives of their teenage children. This is because in every case limits on the use of screens and social media as well as ensuring safety tend to require a lot of attention and discussions about boundaries on the use of technology.
8. Confronting Risky Behaviors
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The adolescent stage is characterized by a lot of experimentation with risky behaviors such as the use of drugs, reckless driving, and sneaking out, among others. Therefore, the challenge comes when parents are expected to deal with such behavioral manifestations without estranging their children.
9. Enduring the “I Know Everything” Phase
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It is common for adolescents to think they know everything that there is to know; and as such, they tend to ignore or rather reject the guidance or authority of their parents. This is not surprising, but rather a stage of growth and development in any journey to adulthood.
10. Handling Changing Relationships
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During the adolescent stage defined by identity formation, variations in the adolescent-parent relationships may also occur. There may be increased distance and conversely increased arguments which may be difficult, but it is a phase that every child must outgrow.
The most interesting aspect of taking care of teenagers is most of these challenges end up changing both the parent and the child for the better. Let’s explore how this happens.
1. Encourages Engagement
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Parents and teenagers cope with high levels of conflict as well as other struggles that necessitate regular communication between the parent and the child. This leads to further understanding and affinity amongst the disputing parties.
2. Enhances Patience
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Parents develop more patience as they navigate their teen’s emotional ups and downs. In turn, one radical adolescent practicing yoga learned a great deal of patience from their parents.
3. Builds Empathy
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The most useful aspect of raising adolescents is the ability to put oneself in the place of the other. Parents learn to respect a child’s feelings, while the adolescent becomes tolerant of the challenges faced by the parent.
4. Encourages Flexibility
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Developmental issues concerning teenagers require parents to adjust to changing circumstances, hence promoting flexibility. In turn, teenagers accept responsibility, and boundaries change requiring negotiations.
5. Promotes Problem-Solving Skills
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The very essence of being in the process of parenting a teenager compels a parent and a child to be inventive and solution-oriented. It helps cultivate their mindset and makes them able to cope with other difficulties in the future.
6. Strengthens Family Bonds
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Even if the adolescent phase has the potential of separating the family members, it also helps the family to create bonds as a result of interactions from seeking solutions to various problems. Unlike normal households, such challenges around the clock encourage the family to stay together.
7. Emotional Intelligence is Cultivated
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Products of such situations are solutions to emotional tensions and restraints from both sides-teens and parents-teens. This incurs a higher degree of composure in the handling of the conflicts and a wider sense of such ocular responses.
8. Enforces Responsibility
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Interactions between parents and teenage children come with certain challenges that parents and teenage kids have to deal with. Sometimes, parents and teenagers find it hard to appreciate each other’s rights. Parents tend to exercise control and employ certain techniques to modify the behavior of the child to educate the young person on acceptable, socially responsible behavior.
9. Encourages Toughness
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The “divide and conquer" strategy makes both parents and teenagers tougher. Raising a teenager fosters the learnable skill of ‘I will not quit’ and acquiring the ability to recover after every disappointment.
10. Enhances the Quality of Relationships
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Few will deny the fact that parent-adolescent conflicts foster cohesion among family members. In such cases, parent and child can develop a relationship grounded in the mutual height of esteem and affection.