How to Reengage Your Defiant Teenager

What do you do with a teen who habitually throws tantrums? In some cases, I have heard of parents and guardians unable to decide what the next step is when their teen refuses to follow household rules. In extreme cases, parents are bewildered when the teen refuses to go to school or simply refuses to engage his school work.

One way to gain clarity over the situation is to liken your adolescent’s behavior to that of a young child who decides to throw a tantrum in the grocery store due to his mother’s refusal to purchase him a candy bar of choice. In that situation, the parent is supposed to acknowledge the child’s hurt emotions while verbally engaging with the child. Once the child is in agreement that his upset feelings are being acknowledged, then the parent can transition into reasoning with the child regarding the poor quality of his behavior, emphasizing empathy in regards to how his behavior is an inconvenience to others and focusing on the logical consequences of his behavior.

The same fundamental strategy can be used with teenagers. With adolescents, parents and guardians have to use a little bit of creativity, because while your teen may be emotionally immature, he or she has a brain far more sophisticated in cognition than a child's brain. So in most cases a tantrum is usually going to be about your teen quietly engaged in defiance. Furthermore, your teen might refuse to open up to you when you question him about his behavior.

While the strategy involved here is similar to the approach you would use with a child experiencing an emotional meltdown, the technique is subtler. For example, to acknowledge the emotions your teenager is refusing to acknowledge, it is okay to engage in a little bit of guess work.

“So I just learned that you haven’t done any of your homework assignments since the start of the semester. Are you overwhelmed by the homework? Are you sick and tired of the assignments?”

In most cases, a teen who appears to be shut down to any attempts to engage in a conversation would either nod or shake his head in response to the questioning or give you a verbal response. Regardless, once you get a response, continue with this method until you and the teen are engaged in a full-fledged conversation about his upset feelings.

Once you are satisfied with your and your teenager’s agreement on his upset feelings, the next step is to engage in reasoning the rationale of his behavior with an emphasis on logical consequences. This technique is very effective in that with both the child and the teenager during a tantrum, the brain is engaged in primarily right brain and lower brain processes. Neuroscience has demonstrated that the right brain is primarily used for seeing the world from an emotional perspective, while the amygdala and the brain stem of the lower brain have been shown to be most active in FMRI scan when an individual is experiencing intense emotions. By acknowledging the difficult emotions of the teen from a place of calmness, the parent is mirroring for the teen how to respond to his upset feelings without throwing a tantrum.

The next step of using reasoning to transition from the emotional meltdown involves the left side of the brain and the top of the brain. Neuroscience had shown that the left side of the brain is more associated with analytical thinking. While the cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex located on the top and front of the brain respectfully, appear to be specialized for impulse control, problem solving, hindsight and foresight. These skills come in handy in helping your teen transition from a place of being emotionally stuck with upset feelings to acknowledging his feelings and engaging in reasonable behavior.

If you are having difficulties in implementing any of these behaviors, than it is recommended that you seek the services of a therapist.

Ugo is a psychotherapist and owner of Road 2 Resolutions PLLC.