“Just wait until you have a teenager!”
Heard that one yet? It’s the classic, lighthearted observation of experienced parents talking to their younger counterparts. Whatever the situation, the message is about the same: You may think you’re getting the hang of this parenting gig now, but the real work hasn’t started yet.
While every stage of parenting has its trials, there is something uniquely challenging about adolescence. Many parents remember their own turbulent teen years. They wonder if they’re truly ready to walk with their kids through all the emotional drama, the conversations about sex and dating, and the challenges of resisting the corrupting influence of a secular culture.
In some ways, we’d love it if time stopped when our kids are at our favorite age/stage and we could stay with them there in all their cuteness. That’s not how it works, of course. Eventually toddler becomes child and child becomes adolescent.
That’s what keeps it lively—things are always changing. It’s easy to see that in our kids but we don’t always remember that WE need to change, too, as their parents. Older children require different guidance.
Three Stages of Adolescence
Adolescents can be broken down into three stages. These are Early Adolescence, Middle Adolescence, and Late Adolescence.
Puberty is also considered Early Adolescence. Each sex has special characteristics during this period of growth and development. Both sexes vacillate between maturity and babyishness. Moodiness, sloppiness, and disorder become the norm. They rebel against home and rules/curfews.
Middle Adolescence is the phase of development when there is a limited concept of cause and effect and the teen feels omnipotent. Often times the adolescent is between 12-16 years of age. During this phase, the greatest experimental risk taking happens. This is evidenced by drinking and driving, drinking while pregnant, and having unprotected sex. Sexually transmitted diseases now start to rise among this population. Thus drinking, drugs, smoking, and sexual experimentation are of primary importance to the Middle Adolescence. This is the time when first intercourse, first drink, or first pregnancy occurs. The major pre-occupation of Middle Adolescent is sex.
During Middle Adolescence parental conflicts occur often on a daily basis as the teenager strives for independence and thinks he/she knows all. This behavior is normal and confrontation and resolution are needed. Adolescent males and females tend to have more disagreements with their mothers than with their fathers. Teenagers now seek more advice from their friends than their parents.
Late Adolescence is a time when there are fewer conflicts and disagreements with parents/guardians. The Adolescent now seeks parental respect for opinions and acceptance of maturity. Now the teenager wants to be accepted by society, at college and in the workplace. Late Adolescence brings on questions related to career choices. Adolescents explore different work areas by volunteering or taking on part time jobs to assist them in making decisions related to their future vocations. Once a decision is reached, the adolescent’s self-concept and sense of self-worth help establish a positive identity.
https://ceufast.com/course/adolescent-holistic-health-issues
FUNNEL CONCEPT…. The idea is to gain freedom with maturity. As they demonstrate responsibility and maturity, they earn more freedoms. That’s why freedoms don’t just magically get granted when a child turns a certain age. Each child is different, so even two in the same household might have vastly different freedoms.
It’s common to do one of two things. (1) We INVERT the funnel. This is typically what we see most of. Tons of freedom when your child toddles around and into their elementary years, and then the record screeches when they hit early middle school and high school and things are a little sideways…parents pull way in and restrict everything in a panic now that their child is making some big, consequential decisions/behaviors. That frustrates the child (& is parenting out of fear, btw) and will end in conflict/rebellion.
(2) Things are working great with a very restricted funnel. Maybe you have peace and calm but as your children age, you’re not allowing them to stretch, flex, and fail.. You forget to OPEN the funnel and give them the opportunity to be responsible and mature. ALSO frustrating and inappropriate.
As your kids earn freedoms, the funnel walls aren’t rigid; they have play and room for trial and error. You’re testing and bringing it back in.
TECHNOLOGY
Much like the printing press, radio and television once did, the mobile phone has completely changed culture. But this transformation is far more pervasive — smartphones have become nearly inseparable from many teens, often consuming their life and draining time and bandwidth from richer relationships and activities.
Mobile devices also create a direct portal for negative influences. Instead of enhancing and educating, personal devices often isolate teens from healthy relationships, subjecting them to cyberbullying, distorted messaging and risky behaviors.
A child’s healthy view of technology use starts at the top. As parents, we can give our preteens healthy boundaries for their devices and model those boundaries with our own devices. We can also lead them in an exploration of technology’s potential for creativity and productivity in their areas of interest.
The drawbacks of smartphones for tweens and teens was highlighted in a 2018 article from the Institute for Family Studies titled, A Smartphone Will Change Your Child in Ways You Might Not Expect or Want
When kids have their own devices, they are tempted to be in touch constantly and maybe even feel obligated to be in touch when they don’t want to. A ten- or eleven-year-old without a phone can simply tell her friends that she couldn’t talk because she has to use a family computer or family phone in order to communicate. She can even say that she cannot be available after a certain time because her mother confiscates the phone. But once you have a phone, it is hard to ignore it. As in the adult world, not answering implies you are ignoring someone or something.
Mark Lerner, a clinical psychologist based in New York, says that he believes that many of the mental health issues young people are facing today can be traced to technology.
So much of our job as parents is helping kids to keep the events of their lives in perspective. Sure, we have big first birthday celebrations and are thrilled when they learn to walk and graduate from diapers. Of course, we want to celebrate their highs and offer sympathy for their lows. But our job is often to say—as my grandmother did—“This too shall pass.” …Because we have lived longer and have some sense of which events are big and which are small, we can pass along this important information to them.
But it is hard to distinguish, as many adults realize, what is important and what is not when the information is coming in through phones. People use text messages instead of email because they pop up on a screen immediately. They have the sense of urgency about them—even when they just say, “Hey, What’s up?”
Giving kids cell phones may give parents peace of mind, but they also make kids more anxious. This has effects that are deeply harmful in some very obvious ways. In his book The Collapse of Parenting, psychiatrist Leonard Sax describes how parents have come to see him complaining that their kids were not able to focus at school. These mothers and fathers had assumed that it was because of ADHD or some other medical disorder and were looking for him to prescribe some medication. With a little probing, Sax found that the kids were texting their friends well into the night without their parents’ knowledge, missing out on valuable hours of sleep. These kids felt compelled to stay connected as long as possible because they didn’t want to be the last one to know what was going on.
Kids want to be in the loop even if what’s going on is totally unimportant. In an essay he wrote for Acculturated, Mark Bauerlein explained how adolescents today can surround themselves entirely with media that feature them. They can go from texting and using social media to watching television programming that revolves around them entirely. Not only does this encourage a level of narcissism unknown to previous generations, but it makes it very hard for them to keep the dramas of their lives in any kind of perspective.
This is one reason that researchers have found higher levels of narcissism among young people today. Research by Jean Twenge found that scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) increased about 30 percent among college students between the 1980s and early 2000s. She found similar results for high school students. It’s not just the helicopter parents praising kids for every small accomplishment or the self-esteem movement taking over schools and promising each child that he or she is special. It’s also technology. Most obviously, it’s the selfie. How can you take dozens of pictures of yourself a day and not become more self-involved?
But technology produces more than just individual narcissism. It creates generational blinders. Anyone who is outside of your immediate age range is no longer in your line of sight. So much time is spent keeping up with the drama of friends and schoolmates, and technology means that it can never be turned off.
In 2015, a team of childhood development experts worked with CNN to survey the social media postings of two hundred thirteen-year-olds from across the country. After combing through more than 150,000 posts (from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), the experts concluded that, as Anderson Cooper put it, being thirteen is like a “real-time 24-7 popularity competition.”
When it comes to technology, parents must examine not only how they want their children to relate to the devices or how much of their time they want kids to spend texting or emailing or gaming or surfing. They need to decide something more fundamental—how their children are going to interact with the rest of the world.
It is not an exaggeration to say that giving your kids a cell phone is giving them the keys to the kingdom. There is a whole world out there that they can now access without your knowledge. That world, which will be constantly beeping at your child, will forever change him or her. It may change how your child views friendships, how he or she interacts with the outdoors, how he or she experiences time alone.
When we hand over phones and tablets to children, we are likely to be changing not only the information they can access but also their habits, their personalities, and their tastes. And while they may see their online life as a privilege—if not a right—we should also be honest enough to understand it as a burden. For the sake of our own convenience and their entertainment, we are giving up their freedom and perhaps even some of their happiness.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/a-smartphone-will-change-your-child-in-ways-you-might-not-expect-or-want
QUESTIONS
As kids age, you want to start offloading YOUR thinking to THEM by asking questions and letting THEM solve things.
This communicates that you think they CAN solve their problems. And secondly, you shouldn’t assume that they’re ASKING you to fix/solve/cheer them up when they come to you with something.
You can ask them: what’s your game plan? Where do you think that situation started to go south? Tell me more. What else? How do you want to solve that?
SHARING
While it was really helpful and cute in playgroups to share your toddler’s mess-ups and struggles, you can do that less and less as your kids get older.
You need to respect their privacy, which means not spilling to your gfs all the details of his heartbreak or her disappointment at not getting invited to the birthday party.
It’s not cute anymore to post about them. You should ask if it’s ok, and if it’s not, don’t. Even family pictures… Kids can photoshop things and create memes of that face you thought was silly and all of a sudden it’s turned into a humiliation.
Be REALLY careful about involving other parents. Unless it’s a real health/safety situation, calling a parent of a kid who may be mean or causing your kid issues can often backfire onto your child. The retaliation and drama fallout can make things worse.
You can tell your child: you can tell the counselor/teacher or I can, or we can…if it’s a serious issue.
RESPONSIBILITY
With age comes responsibility… so yes, they should have things they’re responsible for around the house. Not necessarily for “allowance,” but just because the family team functions together.
You should be teaching them to NOTICE when something needs to be done and take initiative. (this can start as early as 4-5). They should be carrying some of their own monkeys now… remembering homework, being able to get what they need ready to go for the next day.
Instead of nagging and reminding, trust them with the responsibility and tell them you’re trusting them with it. They want to be capable and prove it to you.
Do you have the freedom to do that?
Common refrain: You treat me like a baby/kid. Adults are responsible, trustworthy and have self-control.
Experts are finding that parents today often shield their children from the responsibilities of young adulthood for much longer than previous generations. Consequently, many of today’s young adults are less willing or able to take on responsibilities that are characteristic of their age and necessary for building a family.
Psychologist Jean Twenge was one of the first to document how contemporary teens are much slower to take on these responsibilities in her groundbreaking book iGen. According to Dr. Twenge, when it comes to hitting certain developmental milestones, “18-year-olds now look like 14-year-olds.”
Unfortunately, there is solid data to support her conclusion, at least for a growing share of young people. Last year, the Institute for Family Studies published findings from the highly regarded Monitoring the Future Study that found significant declines in the percentage of two different foundational rites of passage into young adulthood: high-school seniors who work a part-time job during the school year and those who have their driver’s license.
In the article, policy analyst Thomas O’Rourke concluded,
Because today’s teens are not conditioned to take on adulthood, the prospect of confronting the most significant responsibilities of adulthood—such as a lifelong commitment to love another person—may feel particularly weighty and out of reach.
Another study from the Pew Research Center using Census Bureau data confirmed that young adults in the U.S. are now reaching key life milestones later than in the past. This study specifically found that young adults who are 21 are less likely than their predecessors a few decades ago to have reached five frequently cited milestones: having a full-time job, being financially independent, living on their own, getting married, and having a child.
By the time they are 25, today’s young adults are somewhat closer to their predecessors in 1980 on two of these milestones: having a full-time job (73% vs. 66%) and financial independence (63% vs. 60%). However, this age group still lags behind previous generations on milestones that relate more to family than finances: marriage (63% vs. 22%) and parenthood (39% vs. 17%).
https://ifstudies.org/blog/we-need-dads-more-than-ever
HOME VIBE
Home needs to be a safe space where you:
Talk about identity all the time
Affirm/encourage/praise (look for something every day)
Are safe to talk to (b/c issues are getting bigger)
Tell truths
Let emotions be felt. Emotions are ok/some behaviors are not. Hormones-🡪tears-🡪aggression…. You have to model regulation. (See 4 habits podcast series!)
The older your child gets, the more they define/judge themselves from peers and not you. Success has to do with how their friends see them. Girls in particular need something ELSE to define themselves by beside the whims of relationships, especially those of OTHER fickle, fearful girls.
Your child needs to feel safe to not have to be happy all the time, to fail, to say the wrong thing without you coming unglued. (p. 36 of Are My Kids on Track)
DRAMATIZATION
As your child moves into adolescence, you’ll probably see that the EXPRESSION of their emotions intensifies.
Counselors are seeing an increasing dramatization of this. As young as elementary school, girls especially are using words now like depression, panic attack, bipolar
If you’re sad and crying really hard you might have trouble breathing…that’s normal, not a panic attack. For some girls, “normal” is the last thing they want b/c it won’t get them any special attention.
One HS girl said she cut herself b/c no one would believe she was really sad if she didn’t. She used the word trendy to describe self harm.
Lots of girls diagnose themselves with anxiety and depression b/c it means their friends will finally listen. SOME kids DO have actual, diagnosable anxiety & depression and we know the numbers are rising, but others dramatize otherwise normal emotions b/c it’s a way of fitting in.
You don’t want your child to feel like they have to resort to drama to get attention or believe that a struggle of some kind defines them. That should come from GOD and parents who delight in them.
Start using a SCALE 1-10 to help them with perspective. Everything can’t be felt on a 10++++ scale. What’s the scariest thing you can imagine happening in your life. Give that a 10. Then the next time they’re feeling something deeply they have something to compare to.
All people feel bad about themselves from time to time. For teens, those emotions are a normal (and sometimes quite dramatic) response to life challenges. But when teens feel bad in unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations, their emotions can run out of control, hijacking their perspective.
Sometimes these emotions overstay their welcome, causing kids to believe serious lies about themselves. You’re dumb. Ugly. A loser. Kids not only begin to believe these lies, but also start wearing them like labels they can’t remove.
Help your preteens recognize two seemingly contradictory facts about emotions: They’re useful, but they often deceive us.
Emotions are a bit like skin, which alerts us when something we touch is too hot or when there’s a spider crawling on us. When a friend isn’t acting loyal, feelings of insecurity warn your kids that the relationship may not be safe. They may need to distance themselves from that friend and hang out with other friends. Insecurity doesn’t feel good, but as a tool, it can help teens make decisions.
Help your child recognize that when she compares herself to everyone around her, she’s not seeing the truth about herself or the truth about who her peers really are. Emotions are amplifying and reacting to thoughts that aren’t true. Teens can take control over these roller coaster feelings by focusing on larger truths about who they really are.
Scripture memory about identity can also help.
LISTEN
Make time to connect with, see and hear them. These are busy years! Don’t overlook the relationship and rest time.
Walks with mom/dad
Sonic runs
Shoulder to shoulder
RELATIONSHIPS
The importance of friends and social lives is ramping up. Talk about relationships.
What makes a good friend? Talk about good friends YOU’VE had and why those friendships work, what they give you that you need/want.
What do you do if your friends aren’t good for you?
Start weighing character traits for relationships. Talk about red flags.
Help your preteens recognize this age-old struggle: In working hard to fit in with a group of peers, we may be tempted to betray what friendship really is, even betraying who we really are. Teens crave community, to belong to a group. But this natural, healthy desire can be corrupted when, in their efforts to be accepted, they change themselves to become who they think the group wants them to be.
Ask your preteens: “Are you really accepted into a group of friends if you’re only showing a counterfeit version of yourself?” Help them see that their peers can get them into trouble by influencing them to do things they know they shouldn’t do. Good friends, however, point them toward good behavior, wise advice and sound decisions.
Parents can also help their kids see a more genuine view of friendship by intentionally seeking out healthy community that accepts young people for who they are. Nurture a community composed of family, extracurricular clubs and church that gives kids love and belonging and helps them through life’s challenges.
(Example of discipleship house, or my aunt going on walks with her daughter every afternoon after moving to a new town, or multi-generational prayer group etc)
DATING
Talk about why/whether to date and when that might make sense.
What’s the goal of dating? To see if this person of interest might be “the one.” If they are going to know if they truly want to spend the rest of their lives together, they’ll have to be able to make decisions and choices themselves.
Joey and Carla Link have a good little book on dating that I found helpful to go through with my pre-teens and teens. We can link to it in the show notes. They also have a 2-DVD set: Session 1 is Developing Your Dating Philosophy (50 minutes) and Session 2 is How to Make It Work (58 minutes). In it they identify four distinct areas and how they affect a person as they grow in a dating relationship: the mental, physical, spiritual, and social corners of growth would look like in a Friendship Dating scenario.
I really like how they broke this down, including breaking this kind of dating into stages of Potential, Possible, Probable, and Proposal as far as how to come up with concrete and logical mutual expectations at different times during the relationship.
This allows the couple, initially with the help of their parents, to break this down into sensible chunks so the couple can deal with only the stage they are in and not have to worry about something like marriage while they’re just getting to know their new friend that may one day be more. There’s a lot less “future pressure” this way for both parties.
Link to material:
A NOTE ABOUT DADS
From IFS June 2024: Simply put, research shows that most fathers are particularly skilled at fostering independence in their children. And these social trends point to why children need the positive influence of their father in their lives more than ever. Years of lived experience, backed by parenting research, teach us that the effective nurturing of children requires not only the capacity to “hold them close,” but also the ability to “let them go”—something fathers seem particularly apt in preparing children to do.
Research based on observations of mothers’ and fathers’ different psychological dispositions and behaviors in parenting has consistently found that both mothers and fathers influence multiple aspects of child development, but they do so through different processes. These studies show that fathers tend to be particularly attuned to developing children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual independence—in everything from children making their own lunches and tying their own shoes to doing household chores and making decisions for themselves after they have left home. Fathers are also more likely than mothers to encourage children to take risks, while also ensuring safety and security, thus helping children develop confidence, navigate new transitions, and bravely confront unfamiliar situations.
It is exactly this fostering of independence that is needed in greater supply among the rising generation. Paradoxically, our culture today is one where too many young people are unfortunately under-nurtured in fractured families, while others are over-nurtured by helicopter parenting and prolonged sheltering.
For example, in an article in Marriage and Family Review, professor William Jeynes reported a meta-analysis of 34 studies with more than 37,000 participants that found statistically-significant effects highlighting the unique role of fathers in child rearing. Fathering had a statistically significant connection to a number of outcomes, including psychological well-being, emotional resilience, improved social relationships, and higher academic achievement. This was true for both boys and girls of different ages.
“Based on the results, a clear theme emerged,” Jeynes remarked in an IFS blog post about the study, “while mothers often tested as being more nurturing in their relationship with children, fathers tended to be more involved in preparing children to deal with life.” He added:
The results also suggest that there is often a balance established when the unique role of the father is combined with the distinct role of the mother. Granted, there is clearly some overlap in the advantages provided by father and mother monitoring. Nevertheless, mothers consistently demonstrated higher average levels of patience and nurturing than did fathers, but fathers tended to have higher expectations of their children than mothers and tended to emphasize the preparatory aspect of child-rearing more than mothers did.
Fathers also play a unique role in the emotional development of their children. When fathers respond to children’s emotional distress, they are more likely to focus on fixing the problem than they are addressing the hurt feelings. This seeming “indifference to the emotion” may not appear nurturing but becomes very useful as children grow older, as children tend to seek out and share things with their dads precisely because of their measured, problem-solving responses. The “indifference” actually becomes a strategic form of nurturing in emotionally charged situations.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/we-need-dads-more-than-ever
GET THEM TO LOOK AT THEIR LIFE AS A WHOLE
Part of showing maturity/growth is learning balance. Talk with them (maybe once/twice a year) about different aspects of their life & ask questions again. What’s your plan to balance these? What’s your plan to grow in these areas? They should have a say.
Intellectual: What’s next? College? Trade School? Summers→read for fun, explore
Physical: Eating, Exercise, Sleep (teens need LOTS of sleep), Sex
Spiritual: Feed yourself and learn to help others (how to lead a d-group/small group)
Emotional/Social: Personality and strengthsfinder assessments; helping others