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Key points
- Adolescence is the toughest half of growing up–separating from childhood, detaching for independence, and differentiating for individuality.
- Adolescence requires that parents adjust expectations as the child becomes somewhat less close, less communicative, and less readily compliant.
- Having realistic expectations about common adolescent changes and common changes in their relationship with their teenager can be helpful.
So: why a fascination with adolescence and parenting adolescents?
The answer for me is that the process of growing up from childhood to adulthood is a transforming and universal one. In response, the parenting challenges are problematic and complex. On both counts, I find the coming of passage endlessly compelling to think and write about.
Adolescence
I believe that the hardest half of growing up comes last. Gradually detaching from childhood and parents to earn independence and gradually differentiating from childhood and parents to develop individuality, adolescence accomplishes a life-changing transformation: “Now I can function on my own, and I have become my own person.”
This developmental change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes maybe 10 to 12 years to unfold and fulfill: from separating from childhood around late elementary school to forming a second family of friends around middle school, experimenting with acting older around high school, and finally emancipating from home rule around the college-age years.
For gains in growth, there are costs to be paid at every stage of the way:
- Starting adolescence ends the simple security of childhood.
- Peers create pressures to conform socially and belong.
- Worldly dangers come from trying out acting older.
- Claiming independence creates solitude at last.
Claiming self-reliance and creating self-definition does not come cheap. It takes a lot of courage and effort to grow up.
Changing Reality
A family game changer, adolescence isn’t childhood anymore. For parents, raising a teenager is more complicated than raising a child because as the young person pushes for more freedom to grow, they feel less in control. While the child was content to largely operate within the simple family circle, the adolescent wants to explore the complex larger world.
As the adolescent pulls away and pushes against their influence, more social separation and distance grows between them. Now maintaining adequate communication becomes harder to do. As parents need to be told more, they are often told less, so parenting often becomes more worrisome than it used to be. Youthful curiosity about acting worldly and cultural expressions of growing individuality can be harder for parents to tolerate and understand. And all the while, they struggle to decide when to keep holding on and, while providing preparation, when to dare more letting go. For example: “Now you are ready to drive yourself.”
Adjusting Parental Expectations
Parents must adjust their expectations as adolescents grow to fit and foster growing change. Expectations are the mental sets they depend on to anticipate the changing relationship with their changing teenager as she or he keeps acting more grown up.
There are expectations of three kinds that need to be fulfilled:
- Predictions (what will happen)
- Ambitions (what they want to happen)
- Conditions (what they believe should happen)
These mental sets can have upsetting emotional consequences when violated: anxiety from being surprised (“You did what?”), sadness at being disappointed (“You let us down!”), and anger when feeling betrayed (“You did wrong!”)
Unrealistic expectations can be emotionally expensive.
Thus, having realistic expectations about common adolescent changes and common changes in their relationship with their teenager can be helpful.
- For example, when it comes to predictions, anticipate that the primarily family-focused child will become more preoccupied with friends and less close to and companionable with parents.
- For example, when it comes to ambitions, anticipate that the comfortably confiding child now wants more time alone and to be private, and parents will be less fully informed than they wish.
- For example, when it comes to conditions, anticipate that the more compliant child should act more resistant to demands for independence as easy compliance becomes harder for parents.
Of course, expect doesn’t always mean accept. Parents still insist on adolescents helping at home, obeying social rules, observing basic courtesies of family conduct, keeping them accurately and adequately informed, meeting commitments and promises, and spending some good time with each other.
My Interest
My fondness for the coming of age story started with my parents reading me Treasure Island and Kidnapped (by Stevenson) and David Copperfield (by Dickens) when I was an older child, and later reading other tales of youthful adventures on my own.
Then it was further enriched through counseling with parents of adolescents during my years in private practice, writing many columns, blogs, and books about parenting teenagers during that time.
And finally, it caused me to write three coming-of-age novels: The Helper’s Apprentice – The Jackson Skye Mysteries (about a brother and sister, a series of six novels), The Trout King (about fathers and sons), and The Art Lover (about mothers and daughters).
In non-fiction and fiction, I’ve always loved telling the story of adolescence, of growing up, and I suppose I always will.
