| | | | Coping With the Strong-Willed Adolescent |
By Seth Mullins
When considering the oftentimes-turbulent inner world of the average adolescent, it can be helpful to use the analogy of a storm. Surely we wouldn’t want to banish such a thing from the scheme of nature. Rain brings vital water to living things, lightning gives plants nourishing nitrogen, and winds drive away stagnant air and usher in something fresh and new. Storms are a creative process, then. But it’s seldom a pleasant experience to be caught out in one.
Adolescence is one of the most creative phases in a person’s life, and if we view it as such it can help us to weather its storms with greater awareness and less confusion and pain.
Teenagers open up to a whole new world of feeling. Their awareness also expands outwards from their immediate circle and into the wider environment. What they see often brings them distress, and leads them to question the authority figures – like parents and teachers – in their lives. If the adults have everything under control, then why is the world in such a sorry state and why are there so many problems? This is a recurring question that adolescents are given to asking, in one way or another.
Honesty can be our best defense in that situation. We can admit that we don’t have all the answers. It’s important that adolescents come to understand this, because in this way they begin to learn self-responsibility. When they were little, our authority kept them safe. Now they are entering into a world of choices and consequences, and we as parents have to find a way to protect them while still allowing them the freedom to explore.
They will continue to test the limits of their freedom as well as the limits of their knowledge. As many parents learn from sore experience, one of a teenager’s favorite ways of doing this is by arguing. This is a stage of adolescence that we’d do well not to take personally. In many cases, teenagers aren’t projecting legitimate anger but are actually exercising their critical faculties and their ability to reason. Arguments can be a sparring match whereby they sharpen their wits and test their budding knowledge of how the world works.
There is, at the same time, a lot of underlying emotion. Changes and insights are coming too fast for comfort. Being an adolescent can feel like being in the midst of rapids and not knowing where the river is carrying one. What our kids want most from us, then, (though they may not be aware of it) is stability. It would be a mistake for us to enter into those rapids with them. They’re finding out who they really are, and that’s a journey that they have to make alone.
Our greatest hope lies in being consistent in our boundaries and steadfast with our love. In this way, we make ourselves a calm and stable shore that they can always see – and feel reassured by – when they’re in the midst of those stormy waters.
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