Adolescence is 12-15 (11-17) years old, and children at this time have new features, their own different psychology. You can already talk to teenagers like adults, turning to their minds, but at the same time you have to repeat the same thing several times, as in communicating with children.
Adolescence is a difficult age, where it is easy for parents to lose contact with their children and enter into unproductive conflicts. On the other hand, the lack of parental exactingness — connivance — is fraught with future problems.
You need to talk to teenagers, even when their communication style is unacceptable to parents. We need to have the strength and courage to say “no” to those things that we, as parents, consider unacceptable. Teenagers are prone to impulsive decisions — parents should put a firm barrier on this, at the same time demonstrating balance in their own decisions and a willingness to leisurely discuss their own intentions with teenagers.
Education, like politics, is the art of the possible. In good families, teenage children are spoken to warmly, calmly and in a businesslike way, as with adults. Hardness — is necessary, because a teenager at this time can «carry». No, I won’t let you visit for the night. No, now do not walk, but help around the house. At the same time, it is important to strive to talk, talk, be close to what worries them, help them navigate their problems and support them.
Teenagers are a difficult age, they object to the imposition of something from the outside and are ready to fight for their freedom. Teenagers are desperate to be seen as adults and deeply resent being treated like children. Excessive parental anxiety for a growing child interferes with the development of his independence. A reasonable alternative should be systematic control with the gradual transfer of control functions to the child himself, so that he learns to control himself.
No matter how difficult it is, teenagers need to be taught. This is the time when parents are required to prepare them for adulthood, where responsibility and self-control are needed. If you stop doing this and give up — do not hope, this will only lead to the fact that after some time you will have to solve more serious problems with your teenage children. Teenagers need to be taught. What?
In relation to business, you need to teach organization, the ability to set your own goals and do what you have outlined for yourself. In relation to peers and adults — to teach gentleness, attentiveness and endurance. They really lack softness and endurance, and this is best taught by example. In relation to themselves, teenagers need to be taught positive and constructive. Teenagers are prone to negativism: self-accusations, self-blame, great worries about their own little mistakes and about their appearance (“I’m just a freak, right?”) These are not just age-related features of teenagers, but bad habits. The sooner teenagers learn not to swear at themselves, but to draw conclusions and calmly move forward in life, the easier it will be for them and adults.
If parents, faced with the problematic behavior of a previously obedient child, react either with uncontrolled aggression, or give up and fall into worries themselves, then not only does education end, a negative loop in relationships begins: the problem behavior of a teenager causes problematic behavior of parents, which in turn turn provokes adolescents to even more challenging reactions.
If adolescence is accompanied by frequent conflicts with adults, it is called the crisis of adolescence. At this time, the teenager wants to prove that he can do everything on his own, without parents, it is important for him that no one interferes in his life, the teenager wants independence from parental control. It is important to understand that there is no biological basis for the crisis of adolescence. M. Mead, who studied adolescents on the island of Samoa, proved the inconsistency of the idea of the inevitability of crisis and conflict in adolescence. Mead generally assessed adolescence in girls as the most pleasant and free period in comparison with childhood and adulthood.
How to treat it? As to the fact that at this age you want it. Whether a teenage boy or girl deserves these rights is up to the parents to decide. In good families, parents work to stay ahead of the crisis: they make sure that children by adolescence have matured enough, objectively become sufficiently reasonable and responsible people. They themselves, in advance, without waiting for demands and conflicts, give adolescent children their rights. On the other hand, they may also show the necessary rigidity, they may simply not resolve the crisis, leaving all the requirements for decent behavior that are natural in a good family. The whole question is in the authority of the parents …