Parents' fears that a teenager will fall into a bad company are sometimes justified, but when a parent puts harsh conditions, he only achieves that they begin to lie to him. Inna Pribora calls on parents not to establish anarchy, but to a slight thaw in relations with teenage children. Psychologist and teacher Irina Belyaeva helps her with counseling.
Critical periods inevitably occur in the relationship between parent and adolescent. For example, ancestors do not like that a child writes poignant songs dedicated to Selena Gomez's clutch, instead of preparing to enter the engineering department. Or the son found his parents at something obscene: they were looking for something in his desk drawer. Or the daughter refuses in the cold from her father's ski hat "Olympic Reserves". Battles are fought over clothing, music, friends, hobbies, or cleaning someone's Augean stable. These are, of course, insignificant trifles that only serve as a reason for a quarrel. The causes of disagreement tend to run deeper.
We often agree on some abstract rights of adolescents: implementation, mistakes, trial, choice … But when it comes to choosing a coat and a fatal problem: whether to put on a boy's hat - there is wind! - parents become intolerable creatures with dictatorial manners. Here is a set of sacred and inalienable rights that every teenager needs.
1. Be the master of your room
Let's say you risked entering the abode of evil and stepped on the scrambled eggs that disappeared somewhere last week.
This is a great occasion to talk about who is the boss in the room. If you're being challenged, talk about who should set the rules, why, and where the rules end. Let's say that you are responsible for the apartment, and when various insects take a fancy to the nursery, chances are high that they will look into the kitchen. Explain why you dislike bonfires and pyramids from old pizza boxes. This is, perhaps, all parenting competence. A parent should not rummage through other people's things and enter a room without permission with a sign: "I hate pale-faced."
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2. The right to one's opinion and the right to be heard
A teenager needs proof that his thoughts and desires are worth something.
At this age, children often feel agonizing loneliness and melancholy. Listen to the child and do not say that drawing graffiti in the form of sulfur from the ears is nonsense. Suddenly it’s important to him. "Dad, I noticed that friends, unlike me, have a color display on their phones and have a Cyrillic alphabet!" - the child is worried. Don't shout that he hasn’t made money on it yet. Be honest: "Yes, you want a new smartphone, I'm sorry, but I can't buy it yet." If you have house rules, clear principles, any personal restrictions, explain and prove, respecting the reaction of your opponent. Argumentation in the form of hitting the table with a fist injures the child and humiliates him. Talk to him sincerely about his motivation, try to negotiate, avoiding the word "Puppy".
3. The right to keep secrets
The secret is that the child is not eager to show you.
Parental attempts to find out with whom she is texting on social networks and whether he smokes, undermine the trust on which the relationship actually stands. The more respect you show by sending a teenager's clothes to the wash ("Please check if there is anything left in your pockets"), the sooner he will want to share his innermost. “Mom, look, I received a note on Valentine's Day:“Hello, bespectacled man!”.
4. Choose your own friends
The child has suspicious friends: one merges with the wallpaper, because all in tattoos, the other uses one word "Yo" in speech. Horror! Competent psychologists will say that if we want to choose friends for a child in adolescence, we are ten years late. And if we start fighting the wrong friends now, we always lose. When a parent imposes harsh conditions on an inappropriate company, all he wants is to be lied to.
If you do not like the children's social circle, there can be only one strategy: to figure out why the teenager communicates with them, what he finds among these guys. Explain your position to the child, talk about your concerns, listen and acknowledge the child's right to an alternative position.
5. Try yourself in different areas
One can understand the fears of the family when a person who studies in physics and mathematics school and plays the violin suddenly says that arm wrestling is his life's work. Teenagers are painfully looking for their real selves, and it is simply stupid to deprive them of this experience.
Let him try the circle of predictors of the apocalypse, the section of riding a unicycle, the school of cat hairdressers. In the end, teenage nonsense themselves somehow fall off and most people later remember them with a smile. Except, of course, the barber wrestlers on the unicycle.
6. Listen to unbearable music and wear … what the … light green shorts with sleeves
Clothes, language, music, and these baubles with naked women and skulls are another way to find yourself, as well as a way to identify yourself with the group.
The Canadian developmental psychologist Newfeld explained in his book Don't Miss Your Children that this is how attachment works. One of her levels is attachment through imitation, when you want to be like people who are important to you. All you can do here is just to be close to the child, although in public places you always want to pretend that you are not together.
7. Choose a university
It's a shame to learn that the graduate changed his mind about entering the oil production department on the day when you already bribed the selection committee. But the choice of a university and a future profession is a personal choice; it would be good to make it not in the direction of the parent's pointing finger.
By the age when a person is going to university, love, understanding, acceptance and trust should have already formed between you. If the parent trusts the teenager, does not condemn him, there is every chance that this parent will come for advice and help in difficult times, and something can be corrected. For example, help a boy transfer from a painting college to a geological dance school.
8. The right to choose whether to wear a hat
No matter how much you lay down with your chest in the hallway and scuffle, it is always worth keeping in mind that in an elevator a teenager will be able to untie the strings under his chin and go into the world without a headdress.
What can you insist on
- On the rules of conduct in the family. Your home is a public area. Here you can and should set the rules for cleaning yourself, the rules of behavior. For example, in the kitchen it is not customary for you to smoke, praise cooked food with obscenities and dance with your shoes on the table. But everyone should tie up with napkins and remove their elbows from the table.
- On the rules of coming into the house and leaving the house. Dad shouldn't be shy about asking what time the Pokémon party will end. Explain to the younger ones that you have a constitutional responsibility to keep your child safe.
Author: Inna Pribora