Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

Welcome to the hard half of parenting

by Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D.

The Adolescent Only Child and Friendship

For some reason, when by choice or circumstance parents have an only child, that child and that child's upbringing can be subject to a lot of negative social stereotypes that a child with siblings is not. One such stereotype is growing up lonely and friendless. I disagree with this notion, and here is why. Read More

Adolescent and Parent Conflicts Over Later and Later

Differences over what happens now and what happens later, about how late to stay up and to stay out and to sleep in, can all cause conflicts between parent and teenager. Then, when no longer living at home, the more independent older adolescent usually encounters these conflicts with him or herself. Read More

Bargaining with Your Adolescent

The capacity to strike working bargains in adult relationships can be taught by parents to children during the adolescent years when differences and disagreements become more common as the teenager's push for individuality and independence becomes more pronounced. The instruction is worth the effort. Read More

When Should Parents Intervene in Adolescent Troubles?

Parents can be criticized for being overprotective and too quick to rescue; but there are times when parental intervention is advised. It can be a tough call. Read More

Attachment and Detachment Parenting of Adolescents

It often feel more natural for parents to hold on to a child than it does to let an adolescent go. Read More

Early Adolescence and Anxiety about Growing Up

For most young people, leaving childhood and entering adolescence is an anxiety producing experience. This is why adolescence is not simply a process of growth, but also an act of courage. Read More

Mood Management and Emotional Resilience for Adolescents

Although the origin of a bad mood can be mysterious, there are strategies an adolescent can use to reduce their likelihood and to recover well-being when they occur. Read More

Positive Adolescent Growth Reversals in Young Adulthood

The end of adolescence is not the end of personal growth. In their teenager's young adulthood parents often get to witness positive growth changes they never expected to see. Read More

How Adolescence Takes Everyone Out of Their Comfort Zone

For both parent and childhood, the adolescent years create more discomfort, and that is to be expected. The growing up and growing apart years of adolescence taxes young person and parent alike. Read More

Adolescence and the Marketplace Influence

When children enter adolescence, the influence of the marketplace becomes more commanding, and then parents can get into more conflcts with their adolescent over what is promoted as fashionable, fun, and essential for the teenager to have or see or try. Read More

Adolescent Adjustment to a Second Child

When a second child is born, the early adolescent (ages 9 - 13) commonly feels dethroned and demoted, no longer center of attention and now just one of the children, no longer one with parents. Parents can help with the adjustment. Read More

Adolescence and the Agony of Decision Making

Decision making can be a very complicated part of human life, for adolescents and adults too. It help for parents to explain this complexity to their teenager. Read More

Parenting Adolescents and the Play of Chance and Risk

Recognizing the rule of luck and the reality of risk doesn't mean parents should not try to prepare and guide their teenager as best they can, only that they must accept how parental choices are often no match for cosmic chance. Read More

Teaching Your Adolescent About Anger

How the adolescents learn, from parental instruction and example and interaction, how to manage anger growing up has a formative affect on how they manage anger in caring relationships when they become adults. Read More

When Parents and Adolescent Are Very Different People

When there are basic differences between parent and adolescent in temperament, functioning, interests, capacity, or personality, it can be tempting to encourage the teenager to change and become more similar to the adult, rather than accepting and nurturing the young person's human nature and inherent strengths. Read More

How Conflict Can Worsen Parent/Adolescent Communication

By example, interaction, and instruction, teaching the conduct of conflict to their adolescent is an essential part of the curriculum of family life that parents have to teach. Read More

Adolescence and Self-Dissatisfaction

Adolescents have multiple causes for self-dissatisfaction, and when statement of this kind are expressed, parents should pay attention. There might be issues at stake that are more serious than just a passing complaint. Read More

Identifying a Psychological Problem in Your Adolescent

Parents are the first line of assessment when it comes to detecting possible psychological problems in their adolescent's life that may warrant the assistance of professional help. The best guidance for parents is: when in doubt get a consultation and check their concerns out. Read More

Finishing High School and "Senioritis" (Academic Letdown)

It's easy for high school seniors, particularly the college bound, to slack off academic effort their final year. But this decision can come back to bite them freshman year in college when weakened study habits make academically catching hold harder to do. Read More

Adolescence and Safe Dating

Adolescent dating is a more grown up thing to do, but not without risks. One job of parents is to help moderate the risks by encouraging healthy treatment and by putting safety factors in place. Read More

Parenting Adolescents and the Psychology of Similarity

The similarity that can bring a parent and child close can weaken with adolescent expressions of diversity, taxing parental acceptance more than before. Read More

Adolescence and Coming Home for Christmas

Christmas can be a healing holiday when old griefs and grievances between parents and adolescent are finally let go. Read More

Adolescence and Being Solitary for Good and Ill

Solitude in adolescence can have a healthy and an unhealthy side. Parents need to stay enough in touch with the teenager to make sure that harmful, hidden growth is not underway. Read More

Supporting Older Adolescents in Hard Economic Times

In part, parental support often lasts longer now because because parents stay actively involved in their children's lives longer than was the case a couple decades ago, and older adolescents expect their parents to continue being of help. Read More

Parental Resentment Toward A Self-Centered Adolescent

When parents resent their teenager for being so selfish to live with, it's time, and past time, to teach the young person to practice the skills of mutuality in their relationship. Read More

Adolescence and Physical Affection with Parents

Physical affection with parents, so important to the child, becomes more complicated with the adolescent who can have a more difficult time both receiving and giving it with parents now the he or she is older and is past puberty.. Read More

When Parents Embarrass their Adolescent

Because the appearance of adequacy is so socially important during adolescence, any display of inadequacy can be extremely embarrassing, at the moment painfully setting the teenager apart from friends. Read More

Teaching About Social Meanness In Middle School

Why are good kids cruel to their peers in middle school? A spike in both frequency and severity of these five behaviors could be the answer. Read More

Parental Friendship with their Adolescent

For parents, best friendship with a child is far easier to maintain than best friendship with an adolescent. It takes skillful parents to mix parenting and friendship roles with their teenager. Read More

When Will Adolescents Finally Grow Up?

The older the adolescent grows, the more intolerant of his or her errors in life parents can become. They tend to expect mature judgement to take over, and this is often their mistake. Read More

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D., is a psychologist in Austin, Texas. His most recent books are: The Connected Father, The Future of Your Only Child, and Stop Screaming.

more...

About Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

Most parents are unprepared for the normal growth changes that typically occur during their child's adolescence. For most moms and dads this is the hard half of parenting. The purpose of this weekly blog is to help parents better understand how adolesence alters the teenager, and their connection to the teenager, as they struggle to keep their relationship together while adolesence is growing them apart.