Tips on Raising Happy Teenagers
How to Avoid Common Mistakes with Adolescents
The teen years are difficult years for both parents and adolescents. The advice listed in this article, will help parents cope with their teenagers and their behavior.
Raising happy, healthy teenagers is a difficult task. The key is to know how to deal with the many situations that arise effectively and properly. The following list encompasses some of these pitfalls and common problems and will discuss the ways to handle them.
Do not threaten
Threats made to teenagers, and children on the whole, are ineffective. The problem is that these threats are made when the parents are angry. When things calm down they are forgotten and are not followed through. If this happens on numerous occasions the teenagers will not take these threats seriously and will still do the undesirable behavior and ignore the parent. Parents should only make threats if they can follow through with them.
Goals
We all want our teenagers to succeed. The goals that are set, however, need to be realistic. If the goals are too lofty, discouragement and apathy will be the result. Parents need to focus on effort versus achievement. If the effort is made and the adolescent achieves the goal, praise is in order. If the goal isn’t achieved, but the effort was present encouragement should be offered to maintain the effort. If effort is lacking, discussions should surround exerting the effort necessary to achieve success.
Irresponsible behavior
Teenagers need to learn responsible behavior. If they are hurtful, fighting with them isn’t the answer. The point of their lack of disrespect or lack of action can easily be corrected if the parent incorporates strategies designed to drive home the point of their irresponsibility. If they forget to make dinner, the parent should go out to eat, leaving the teenager home to fend for themselves. If their behavior is hurtful, refusing to grant them a favor when they request it is the key to resolution. Fighting and overreaction isn’t appropriate. Subtle techniques in response to minor transgressions is the answer.
Privacy
All parents are concerned about the welfare of their teens. Parents shouldn’t eavesdrop on conversations, read diaries or go through drawers and closets. Parents should instead talk over important issues with their teens and encourage independent thinking. At the heart of the matter is trust and an invasion of privacy will encourage the keeping of secrets. Teenagers should feel that they could be at ease to discuss issues that may arise in their lives that they are unable to resolve themselves.
Allow for failure
Protecting one’s children is important. They shouldn’t, however, be coddled and isolated from failure. Instead of dictating to them how things should be done, parents should allow their teens to choose between different choices. If, for example, they constantly complain about their cleaning chores, give them the choice of doing it themselves or hiring a person to do it for them, with their own money. If they choose the latter, they will soon come to realize that they will not have as much money to spend on other things. They will realize that the choice they made was not the right one and they’ll learn from that failure.
Some other advice to heed would be for parents to allow their teens to talk uninterrupted and to listen attentively to what their children have to say. Parents also need to be honest about their feelings when questions are asked by their teenagers and not be afraid to speak the truth. Of course every situation and every child/parent relationship is unique. Allowing for honesty in one’s feelings, encouraging independent thought, allowing one’s teenager to make choices and to allow them to fail and learn from their failure is paramount to their maturity into adulthood.
