Joy of Parenting Adolescents!

Adolescence: The lush season between the spring and the summer!

Parenting is the most exhilarating, satisfying and challenging job, especially when we have to parent adolescent children.

Adolescence appears at a time when the urge of life reaches its highest peak. An adolescent’s life is, or ought to be, full of opportunities to enter into new life experiences, explore new relationships, and to feel the new resources of inner strength and ability. Adolescence is also a time when youthful dreams of love and power have not yet been disturbed by the realities of life. In many ways adolescents live in a lush season between the spring and the summer of life.

Adolescence is viewed as a period of transition between childhood and adulthood. As parents our challenge is to make sure that our children make this transition with ease. The problem with us parents is that we are all amateur parents. There are no professional parents because parenting is not taught in colleges or universities. We learn parenting by instinct, and develop our individual parenting styles. However, the basic ingredients of good parenting remain universal. These are love, time, and understanding. Give these in ample doses and you can never go wrong.

Adolescents challenge our nascent parenting skills by being rebellious and non- conformists. They display a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. We feel that our ‘sane, well meaning’ advice is falling on deaf ears. They laugh at our concerns and make fun of our ‘old, ancient’ values. To top it all, we need to handle the societal pressure as well. If our adolescent does not do well in board exams or does not clear any competitive exams, or we can’t proudly announce his or her admission in some prestigious professional college, we feel inadequate as parents. We take it as our personal failure, but to our chagrin our adolescents seem least bothered about all this.

Please do not get fooled by their outward behaviour. Inside them, they are as bothered about their future as we are, perhaps more so; after all it is their life. They have their hidden fears and anxieties, which they express in anger or by clamming up. They feel misunderstood by the very people who claim to love them the most: their parents.

The truth remains that adolescents deal with their own demons in their own way. To be accepted by their peers means a lot to them. They need to belong in their peer group. If they harbour a poor body image, or any other perceived inadequacy; it can play havoc with their mental peace. They encounter enough pressure in their own little worlds. All they need from us is complete acceptance. Accept them for what they are.

The Middle Path

There are three basic parenting styles that most of us follow:

Autocratic parents believe that they know what is best for their children. They tend to suppress their adolescents’ feelings and expression. Their children are less likely to be self-reliant.

Permissive parents can never say no to their children. They fail to provide the kind of discipline and support adolescents need. They allow their children to drift without offering them dependable models of responsible adult behaviour.

The third kind of parents follow the ‘middle’ path. They value both autonomy and discipline. They are more likely to foster the development of confidence, responsibility, and independence in their children.

Let us see how we, as parents of adolescent children can help our wards. But before we sit on our high horse, we must always remember that our children do what we do and not what we say:

•    Help them achieve general emotional maturity so that they learn to face and solve conflicts. The destructive expression of emotions must be channelled into constructive expressions.
•    Help them achieve general social maturity so that they develop social tolerance and freedom from slavish imitation of their peers.
•    Grant them freedom from home control so that they learn self-control and rely upon themselves for security. Our attitude towards them should be friendly.
•    Help them develop intellectual maturity so that they don’t accept anything blindly on the basis of authority. They should learn to desire for explanation of facts.
•    Help them develop a hobby so that they become multifaceted and creative.
•    Help them select an occupation after a careful self-assessment of their capabilities, interests, and aptitude. They should follow their heart and do the ‘labour of love’ instead of mindlessly following the herd. Don’t force your will upon them.
•    Help them in identification of self so that they understand their true selves; and their purpose of life.

The most important thing we parents need to understand is that we should be good role models for them; and as we all know too well, it is easier said than done. Confucius spoke for our youngsters when he said, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand.”

I believe that if we love our role as parents and enjoy each stage of our children’s growth and development, these adolescent years will be a pleasure for both us and our wards.

Chitra Jha is a life skills coach and past life regression therapist.