Tips About Teen Rebellion

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If you're the parent of a teenager, chances are you're dealing with a person you've never met—never mind that they've been living with you all their lives. That's what the teenage years are about in large measure, children dedicated to the tasks of changing, becoming grownups.

And while this developmental stage on the path to adulthood may cause you to think a lot about their welfare, your teens are probably not doing all that much thinking about you. Fact is, they're likely behaving in ways to distance themselves from the family. If this is the current situation at your house, here's some counsel from the experts in the trenches:

Don't take it personally—it's not personal.

While the tone of the teen years may throb with tension (not to mention occasional parental terror), understanding what's going on is part of the solution to working through those years. Positive Discipline for Teenagers—Resolving Conflict with Your Teenage Son or Daughter, written by Jane Nelsen, Ed.D., and Lynn Lott, M.A., M.F.C.C., (Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1994), is one resource many parents of teens might find revealing. Nelsen is the mother of seven; Lott the mother of four.

While eschewing permissive parenting on the grounds that it ill prepares kids for adulthood, the authors offer an approach that sometimes seems permissive. But in a closer look, the approach offers a range of tools and skills to help the kids and parents make the bridge from childhood to young adulthood while respecting the individuality of each. The authors make a distinction between what they call "short-sighted parenting," which seeks to control the current situation, and "long-range parenting," which aims to help teens develop inner strength. The authors recognize how parents' anxiously walk the fence between safeguarding their kids and letting them make the necessary mistakes so that they can learn from them. Nelsen and Lott dramatically draw the difficulty through this scenario:

You may have heard the story about the little boy who was watching a butterfly struggle to break out of a cocoon. Feeling sorry for the butterfly, the boy opened the cocoon and set the butterfly free. But after flying only a few yards, the butterfly fell to the ground and died. The little boy hadn't realized that the butterfly needed the struggle to gain the strength that would allow it to fly and live.

Letting our kids struggle and make mistakes can be frightening, even when we realize that teens need to find out who they are. And in the finding, teen behavior looms as outright rebellion, often in those very areas we hold most dear. While there are different forms and intensities of rebellion, note the authors, there are some common teen behaviors, "such as not wanting to be with their families, not wanting to have clean rooms, and listening to music parents hate."

But parents are people, too! Common sense can prevail: Just as you wouldn't let a toddler dash into traffic, so parents can draw boundaries for teens. Parents can say no, counsel the authors, but it's often best to just say no without an accompanying criticism or lecture. The teen years are a temporary time of momentous physical and emotional growth and development, and although most teens would challenge the assertion, indeed, they are not quite yet grownups. For the parents, who are, it's a time to show how qualities such as patience, tolerance, respect, and acquired wisdom play out in family life.

This column by Karen Lytle Blaha is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.