Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

Welcome to the hard half of parenting

Carl E Pickhardt Ph.D.

Managing Expectations When Parenting an Adolescent

Expectations are mindsets that have unhappy emotional consequences when unrealistically set; so it's important that parents have realistic expectations for adolescent change.

Mid-Adolescence and "Tough Talking" in Middle School

Developmentally insecure young adolescents can resort to verbal toughness with peers for their social protection.

Parenting the More Unavailable Adolescent

Just because the more self and socially preoccupied adolescent tends to grow less available for communication and contact with parents doesn't mean they should live on these terms

Correcting Teenagers by Taking Away Freedom of Action or Use

While taking away a precious freedom or resource can be a powerful consequence for teenage misbehavior, parents should guard against its overuse.

Adolescence and Processing Painful Emotion

Since emotionality is a fundamental part of human nature, and adolescence is a more emotionally intense time, teaching teenagers how to process their feelings is important to do.

Adolescence and Repurposing One's Life

A young person can't grow up and still remain the same. They must become different. Repurposing redefines and re-energizes one's growth.

Adolescence and Lifestyle Lying

Like most any behavior, lying can become habit forming, never more so than when enabling and protecting the self-destructive behavior of addiction

Adolescence and Freedom of Choice

Ending adolescence and now assuming independent self-management responsibility, the young person painfully discovers the costs that come with freedom of choice.

Adolescence and Missing Childhood

Neither child nor parent can have it both ways. You can't remain a child once you enter adolescence. The price of growing up is loss.

Adolescent Substance Use and the Problem of Denial

Like it or not, adolescents today grow up in an increasingly drug-filled world. Parental denial of this reality provides no protection. They must be knowledgable and stay vigilant.

Keeping Emotional Sobriety When Parenting an Adolescent

Parents can sometimes emotionally "lose it" with the surprising adolescent, but they can also take steps to keep their emotions in check and their judgment in charge.

Adolescence and Conflicts between Constancy and Change

The art of parenting an adolescent is knowing the difference between what needs to change and what needs to stay the same.

Adolescence and the Positive Power of Mistakes

Painful though it can feel, mistake making is part of everyone's learning process in life. So the challenge is to make the best educational use of mistakes you can.

Adolescence and the Use of Parental Worry

Not fun to do, and often given a bad name, worry can be constructive for both parent and adolescent to do.

Last Stage Adolescence, 18-23, and What Is Consensual Sex

Keep sex consensual, because when it is not it becomes intimately hurtful and does a lot of lasting harm.

Early Adolescence and the Fear of Change

Although parents sometimes feel critical of adolescent changes, they should also be admiring: Separating from childhood and starting to grow takes a lot of courage.

Falling Out of Love with Your Adolescent

When the magic of parenting a child ends, the different, but equally magical, job of parenting an adolescent begins.

The Story of Adolescence

Sometimes it helps parents to remember that every teenager is acting out the same age-old story, just in her or his individual way.

Motivating Your Adolescent to Exercise

Regular physical exercise is a self-investment that provides many positive personal returns in adolescence.

Young Adulthood and Avoiding Lifestyle Stress

Entry into young adulthood, usually in the early twenties, is a significant life change which can be unduly stressful unless one knows how to self-maintain and moderate demand.

What Is the Point of Adolescence?

It's helpful for parents to know that adolescence is a functional process for their daughter or son, no matter how frustrating it may sometimes feels for the adults.

Telling the Start of Adolescence by How Parents Can Change

When the child starts changing in adolescence, to some degree parents can start changing in response, as the relationship between them alters as well.

Why Adolescents Lead Double Lives

Adolescents have a private life and a public life, an online life and an offline life, a family life and a friends life. No parent is going to be allowed to know it all.

How to Tell When Your Child Has Started Adolescence

Accustomed to parenting a child, it can be hard for parents admit when childhood is over and parenting an adolescent has begun.

Adolescents, Parents, and the Power of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem not only defines a person, but that definition can influence perception and motivation to the good or not so good.

Communicating About Emotion Between Parent and Adolescent

Because adolescence can be a more abrasive and intense time for parent and teenager, it's important to communicate about emotions well.

When Older Adolescents Want to Form Happier Relationships

Older adolescents may wish for happier relationships than they have known, but can get caught in repeating relationships of the unhappy kind.

Adolescence and Braving the Displeasure of Parents

Parents tends to find the adolescent more displeasing than the child because the teenager is now pushing for more room to grow in ways they may disapprove and find disappointing.

Adolescence and the Parental "No"

A parental "no" is a barrier to adolescent freedom. Parents have to decide when to keep the barrier up and when to let it down.

Raising a Self-Confident Adolescent

Parents can be confidence builders or confidence breakers. Better the first than the second.

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