5 Rules To Surviving Teenagers

By: Ryan Lefler

Teenagers have the age-old stigma of being difficult to work with, to parent, and to cooperate with. But, there is a reason teenagers are full of angst and are always feeling misunderstood and the answer is pretty simple. Because most of the time they are misunderstood. A tough combination of parents truly forgetting what it was like to be a teenager after several decades of responsibility and a feeling of guilt that they are failing their children, often produces the opposite effect driving countless teens and desperate parents into my office.  From ages 13 to 18, there are 5 major developments in a teenager’s mind. Intense social, identity, cognitive, emotional, and moral development is happening all at the same time at a rapid pace. Yet we wonder why teenagers feel so disconnected from reality. My first message to mom and dad is to take a breath. If there was a hashed out method to make raising teenagers a breeze, we would have figured it out long ago. Instead, after countless hours of helping teens through their problems, I discovered that several of the answers are actually between the lines and missed by most. So I have compiled a set of guidelines to help parents get through this blurry stage of development with information gathered from many struggling teenage minds and their perceptions of the world. 

Rule 1: Social Currency Must be a Livable Wage (Social Development)

“Friends, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends again, and absolutely NO parents.” If you are raising or have raised teens, you know the drill. Social currency is gold and diamonds to the teenage mind. While it is frustrating for parents to feel like they are losing a social tug of war match, this is more often than not the first mistake parents make. Social time is a must as they are learning how society works and gaining critical social skills that will serve them their entire life. If you are viewing family time and teenage social time as a tug of war match and not a balancing act, it is very possible you are adding friction to your parent-child relationship without even realizing it. This is not new. Think back really hard to your teenage years. It was the same wasn’t it? Now it's your job to help your teens balance their social life.

Giving them 20% social time and stripping away their communication apps is not the balance I am talking about, even if it makes you as the parent feel better. Social constructs are likely the MOST important thing to your teen. Meeting those needs in a healthy way may require around 50% of their free time, or even more, as long as you’re aware of what's going on in their lives. In my office, 4 out of 5 teens with depression suffer an extremely low or non-existent social life. This can be very exaggerated in the years before they are able to work or drive because all social time and travel will be completely dependent on the parents alone. Pay attention to your child’s social currency, and they will love you for it, not resent you for keeping them from it.

Rule 2: You Must Care About What They Care About (Identity Development)

To piggyback off of the previous rule, this rule is straightforward. You MUST care about what your teens care about. I'm sure you’re noticing that the interests of your child are changing rapidly. Maybe they don’t want to continue a sport they’ve played since they were knee-high or piano lessons now fill them with dread. It’s not your job to dictate what your kids should and shouldn’t like, it's your job to talk to them and understand who they are trying to become. If they want to quit because they are lazy, sure, tough love may be required to help them with perseverance. However, if it has more to do with their developing self-identity, parents becoming an obstacle to them will only cause more dread, resentment, and rebellion. Oftentimes, parents will come in and their teen will be extremely low because they went through their first breakup or heartbreak and the parents will have an indifferent response. This is where we’re going wrong. Sure, to the adult mind a breakup at 15 years old means nothing and we know that it's insignificant to the rest of their lives. But to them, it is the MOST important thing to them right then and there. How would you feel going to someone you care about the most in complete distress, with the most important thing in your life, and they shrug it off like it's no big deal because it doesn’t mean anything to them and their perspective? I would imagine it would elicit some big emotions. Teenagers feel this all the time as the important things to them are constantly brushed aside with no one seeming to care but their own peers the same age. Then, parents come in frustrated wondering why they are losing all of their influence and enter right back into the tug of war match. Whether it's a boyfriend, girlfriend, friends, hobby, drama, or something completely new, if they care about it, it's your job as a parent to care about it too. A teenager feeling understood is the doorway into a strong relationship with them.

Rule 3: It's Their First Time for Most Things (Cognitive and Emotional Development)

Too high of expectations will utterly destroy the teenage psyche. It’s the age-old challenge that we expect teenagers to act like adults but treat them like children. How in the world are they supposed to be an adult with adult levels of understanding when they are not one? Most of it comes from parents feeling anxious that their kid will become a burden to society, so in their own panic they pile unreachable expectations on the shoulders of someone who is just learning to walk in the real world. Female brains do not fully develop until 23-25 years and male brains do not fully develop until 25-27. This means in the teenage years kids are still a decade away from reaching complete cognitive maturity. Yet, often parents choose frustration rather than understanding, that ends up hurting the relationship more than it fixes anything. Society expects teens to act completely mature but they are not at the end of their development. They are just now experiencing most things for the first time EVER. In an instant, balancing work, family, friends, extracurriculars, grades, sleep, finances, drama, and emotions for the first time is utterly overwhelming. Teens need breathing room and encouragement, not persistent lecturing and being told they are failing all of the time. Parental anxiety comes from not seeing instant change, when patience and trust is really what will help the teen’s development and relationship.

Additionally, a phrase I hear often is, “They won't talk to me about what's going on or they're just shutting down.” On the surface this feels like teenage angst or a personal attack on you as a parent, but let me explain to you what is really happening. Your teen is experiencing emotions they have never experienced before. They do not know how to describe it to themselves, let alone you. Imagine one of the hardest classes you’ve ever taken that you barely scraped by in. Could you teach someone else the information you were learning even though you barely understood it yourself? Highly unlikely. When parental frustration is constantly asking questions and the typical response is “I DON’T KNOW” often they are telling the truth, not hiding. They really do not know how to explain what they understand or how they feel. It is your job to help teach your teenagers what they are feeling and how they can process some of their thoughts. Instead of prying, tell them stories from your youth to help them relate and better understand what they are feeling. Don’t forget they are still a decade away from being fully aware of the things their minds are capable of.

Rule 4: Time to Trust Your Parenting (Moral Development)

Unless you have been asleep at the wheel for 13-15 years of your child’s life, it is time to trust yourself and begin to trust your child. We can never teach anyone how to do anything without eventually letting them participate without unnecessary interruptions. It's obvious to me that anytime there is a struggling teen, close behind is a parent who will not relinquish trust. It often reminds me of an artist that just cannot put the brush down and ends up adding too much and ruining their beautiful work of art. The teenage years are not the time to cram infinite parent lectures and strategies in place, they are the time to foster what you have been parenting for the last decade and a half.

A parent's anxiety is a teenager's biggest obstacle. While you fear that they will make the wrong choices, also trust what morals you have instilled in them. When will you allow them to put their morals to the test and understand why certain decisions are better than others? Let me give you a hint. If you wait until they are out of the house it will be too late and vast amounts of parent influence will be gone. Trust is a funny thing, because we often see it as needing to work so hard before we can let go, but the trust part only exists in letting go, not the work.

Rule 5: The Freedom to Make Mistakes (Coaching Mode)

Something that is clear to me is when parents love their children they have a very difficult time watching them make mistakes. The discomfort they feel manifests itself as intervening into the problem either by lecturing, discipline, or solving the problem themselves. What this really does is bail out your child to the more important lesson - seeing how life affects them and the choices they make. In early childhood it is necessary to be black and white. Don’t do X things and don’t suffer X consequences. Or, I am your parent so do exactly what I say no questions asked. While this is necessary in those years, teenage years require a shift in parenting. The move is away from direct intervention and now into the coaching style of parenting. To use baseball as an example, let’s imagine your teen needs to learn how to hit a ball. While you could explain the process of swinging a bat for hours, they will never truly learn to hit a ball unless they take some pitches and make mistakes. Now if your child strikes out should we instantly remove them from the batting order or should we talk them through why things went wrong with a you’ll get them next time type of attitude? I hope the answer is obvious. Your teens are starving for freedom. Most parents see this as the freedom to do whatever they want, when really they want the freedom to make mistakes. Trust me, they want to prove to you they are trying to apply the lessons you are teaching and make decisions that will make you proud. Instead every time they strike out they are accused of the opposite. It makes them feel that they don’t have the freedom to learn or do things wrong. This is why the coaching style of parenting is much more effective. It allows them to try and it allows you to correct them and then send them right back into the game.

If it isn’t clear yet, teens are in the middle of a storm of development. Everything is new to them and adults can't seem to remember what it was like, only causing friction and misunderstanding. Throughout these stages, it is so important as a parent to pay attention way more but do way less. Teens need breathing room to figure out who they are, what they feel, and what good and bad decisions are. If you bail them out of their natural consequences, life will never be able to reinforce the lessons you are teaching them. It's hard to watch your kids stumble, but I promise it is more important to teach someone how to get back up rather than scramble to make sure they never fall. Parents, trust the work you have poured your soul into, and trust that your kid has been paying attention all along.

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