A child's adolescence is a declaration of diversity within the family. The emerging teenager lets it be known that she or he is no longer content to be defined and treated as a child. There is a determination to become different in at least four ways.

"I AM DIFFERENT FROM HOW I WAS AS A CHILD." Now parents see the child rejecting old interests, activities, and possessions that were once prized in childhood but are now cast off as "kid stuff" in order to act older. For example, the adolescent becomes more unwelcoming of physical affection from parents.

"I WANT TO BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY THAN I WAS AS A CHILD." Now parents encounter the push for older privileges and freedoms than the child was allowed. For example, the adolescent wants permission to see PG and R-rated films.

"I AM DIFFERENT FROM HOW YOU ARE AS MY PARENTS." Now experimenting with new personal tastes, cultural interests, and lifestyle preferences stand in sharp contrast to those of parents with whom the child used to identify. For example, the adolescent decides to become the only vegetarian or the only skate-boarder in the family.

"I AM GOING TO ACT DIFFERENTLY FROM HOW YOU WANT ME TO BEHAVE." Now rules are questioned, cooperation is delayed, and authority is argued with, all in contrast to the child who was more content to comply with parental wishes, with who they found it was easier to get along. For example, the adolescent refuses to do assigned homework for school because, as he defiantly explains, it is a "waste of time."

All of these changes are PROCESS DIFFERENCES, part of normal adolescent development to which parents must adjust and then decide how to respond, perhaps deciding to live with some of them (putting up with less confiding), perhaps deciding to oppose others (placing pick-up demands on the persistently messy room.)

There are another set of adolescent differences, however, which parents must carefully attend to, because if mishandled by criticizing or trying to change them, significant emotional damage can be done.

These are PERMANENT DIFFERENCES that mark characteristics of a more abiding kind that are rooted in basic human nature, differences that can sometimes set an adolescent apart in a family to very unhappy effect. These are differences like personality (outgoing or inward, for example), temperament (competitive or noncompetitive, for example), aptitude (academic or artistic, for example), and motivation (achievement driven or interest directed, for example.)

Consider what can happen when an adolescent finds herself as the different person in the family. Parents and older sibling for example, who by seniority and greater numbers set the family norm, are all socially outgoing, highly competitive, academically able, and driven toward high achievement, while she is more solitary and to herself, has no desire to compete with anyone, mostly likes to create things for her own enjoyment, and pursues interests for their own sake.

Now, in her twenties, the young woman comes into counseling and, in the process of explaining her background, she says something like this.

"I was always the odd one in the family. I never fit in. My older sister was just like my parents so they expected me to be the same. And when, as a teenager, they saw I wasn't turning out like everyone else they got worried that something was the matter with me. I wasn't getting with the family program. They just wanted the best for me, and the best was how everyone else was doing. My emotional makeup, my values, my interests, and my goals were just not theirs. So, out of love, but it felt like criticism, they tried to change me. You can imagine as a teenager how I responded to that! The more they tried to change me, the more stubbornly I clung to how I was. This was when the battles really began. Nobody won, and all of us lost. Over the teenage years there were a lot of hurt and hard feelings on both sides. Now I'm too old to parent, so they've pretty much given up on me, but that doesn't feel great. They love me in a disappointed kind of way, in spite of how I am. Partly they're disappointed in me, but also they're disappointed in themselves for having failed as parents. But I'm not a failure! I'm just a grown kid who never fit in to her family, the one they could never get to shape up. And I love them, but resentfully. It's my sister they're happy about and proud of, not me. She's the kind of daughter they wanted me to be, just like them. If only they could have accepted me as I was and am, and in the lifestyle that I lead. Well, maybe someday. We'll see. But that's not why I wanted counseling. What I really need is some help about not pleasing my critical boyfriend." And we began to talk about that.

It's a hard story to hear, when permanent differences in a teenager are penalized by parents with rejection in the name of reform. The young woman was correct about what she really needed from them: a welcome home.

That's the blessing of acceptance parents need to give to all their children because loving a child, and particularly loving an adolescent, is not about getting the person you want, but about wanting the person you get. Estella in Dicken's "Great Expectations" says it best: "I must be taken as I have been made."

For more about conflicts from not fitting in to family, see the chapter about Resemblance and Conflict in my book, "Stop the Screaming." Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: Adolescence and the Myth of Independence