Adolescent relationships are different to when your young one is a child. When your child becomes a teenager, your relationship with them may change. You could find yourself switching from a relatively simple parenting style to focusing on a new parent-adolescent relationship.
Developmentally, teenagers experience changes to their physical, emotional and mental state of being. They may begin the process of separation from their parents.
As adolescents mature, they experience:
- an increased need for autonomy
- a desire for more privacy
- a greater investment in their peers
- a need to try on different identities
- huge physiological changes.
While they experience these factors, parents may experience their own developmental crisis. It’s not uncommon for parents to start asking themselves questions about what happened to the child they once knew. Parents may also try to take control of situations to make their child respond to them in ways they used to.
If this is something that you’re experiencing, it’s best to prepare yourself for a different style of communication with your teenager. Despite their increased need for distance and independence, there are ways that you can encourage quality interactions with them. Here’s some information to help you build a healthy parent-adolescent relationship with your teenager.
Rules of thumb for adolescent relationships
- Focus on the relationship between you and your adolescent, not the problems you might be experiencing
- Learn to respond to situations rather than reacting (especially abruptly)
- Remember that how you respond to mistakes or situations is important for learning.
Reflective responding
This is a way of following, rather than leading. Verbally reflect behaviours, thoughts, needs/wishes and feelings, without asking questions. This will help you understand your teenager and help them to feel understood by you.
| Be with attitude conveys: | I am here, I hear you. I understand. I care. |
| Not: | I always agree. I must make you happy. I will solve your problems. |
Reflective responding in practice
Look into your teenager’s eyes for clues to understand what they might be feeling, and then put the word you believe they’re feeling into a short response (this generally starts with ‘you’). For instance, it could be, “you seem sad,” or “you seem mad with me.” Your facial expression and tone of voice should match the body language of your child. Empathy is generally conveyed best through non-verbal communication cues.
If this communication style is vastly different from your usual way of communicating with your teenager, they might notice it. If they ask you to communicate as you normally would, you could respond by saying something like, “this is my way of letting you know that I’ve heard what you’ve said and to give you a chance to correct me if I’ve heard wrong.”
Often, the anger of an adolescent can seem exaggerated and prolonged. This is usually their way of trying to communicate their feelings. If you respond by acknowledging them and reflecting empathy, they’ll be less likely to feel the need to communicate in this way.
Remember to model adult behaviour when there’s conflict between you and your teenager. Don’t yell, threaten or preach to them if you don’t like the way they’re interacting with you. Doing so is ineffective and will teach them that it’s acceptable to communicate this way.
Setting limits for good adolescent relationships
Even though your parenting style may need to change to focus on your new parent-adolescent relationship, you’ll still need to set limits on behaviours that make you feel uncomfortable. You might use the three-step A.C.T. method of limit setting:
- Acknowledge the adolescent’s feeling or desire (convey empathy and understanding with your voice).
- For instance: “Ben, I know you’re angry with me…”
- He learns that his feelings, desires, and wishes are valid and accepted by his parent. Often just empathically reflecting feelings can defuse intensity.
- Communicate the limit (be specific, clear and brief).
- “…but yelling is not appropriate.”
- While feelings and desires are accepted, not all behaviours are.
- Target acceptable alternatives (provide a few choices).
- “…How about you go play some basketball and burn off your energy. We can talk about it later when we’re both calm.”
- The goal here is to provide him with an acceptable outlet for expressing the feeling or original action, while giving him an opportunity to exercise self-control.
How to set limits
Limits should not be punitive and should be stated firmly (but calmly and matter-of-factly). Don’t try to force them to obey the limit. Remember to provide an acceptable alternative. In this method, it’s up to the adolescent to decide to accept or break the limit; however, it’s your job to consistently enforce the limit.
Providing children and adolescents with consistent limits helps them to feel safe and secure. This method of limiting children’s behaviour teaches them self-control and responsibility for their own behaviour by allowing them to experience the consequences of their choices and decisions.
Consistent limits → Predictable, safe environment → Sense of security
When you don’t follow through, you lose credibility and harm your relationship with your child.
Consequences with adolescent relationships
Some of the negative consequences of enforcing limits can be eliminated by engaging your teenager in the process of limit setting and assigning potential consequences, before the limits are tested.
When parents include their teenagers in limit setting and the establishment of consequences, it reduces arguments and the need to enforce punishments. Teenagers are also less likely to claim that their punishments or expectations are unfair. As parents, you can take on your responsibility of calmly enforcing pre-arranged consequences, instead of scrambling to find appropriate punishments.
Above all, it’s important that your influence depends on your relationship with your child. It shouldn’t have anything to do with power, especially because you can’t ‘make’ your child do anything during this stage of their life. Thus, you shouldn’t make threats, lose your temper or try to punish your teenager. Doing so could lead to greater rebellion on their part as they’ll try to assert their independence.
It’s important for you to let your child know that you love them and trust them to do the right thing, and that they can achieve your respect when they do the right thing.
Still need help?
Anglicare Southern Queensland provides a range of services and support for families and parents of teenagers. If you would like to learn more about what support is available for you and your children, please visit our Family Support webpage.