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How can a parent establish, or re-establish, trust with their adolescent?
During adolescence, there’s a natural pushing away from adults, so to the best of your ability, keep the lines of communication open and clear (and bear this in mind each time there’s a period of friction with your child). Changes in your teen’s behavior and decision-making can be hard to handle from the parent’s point of view, but these are fundamental to the remodeling that goes on in the adolescent brain. Being aware of these developmental issues will help you maintain trust and continue an open relationship with your adolescent.
A parent’s natural tendency is to protect her child, but doesn’t a parent also need to let her teen learn some lessons on her own?
Yes—but it’s tough to strike the right balance. You can protect and support your adolescent by being both a safe harbor and a launching pad. Kids need to explore on their own and create their own lives. This takes courage, but it can also involve a few risks. Being there for your kids and listening to them will help them to find their own inner compass that can guide them to be careful and reflect on their own values, rather than simply obeying parents’ rules.
Some parents feel a sense of loss when their teens gain more independence. What advice can you give that may comfort during this time of transition?
First, get to the root of why you may be feeling this way. Sometimes this sense of loss may be about how we’re actually re-parenting ourselves, offering our kids the kind of care that we never had during childhood. Or it could be about feeling important and essential in someone’s life, or about missing that tender and powerful relationship with a young child. Name these feelings so as not to project them onto your child in a way that might inhibit his or her necessary journey toward independence.
What else would you urge folks to keep in mind as they parent their adolescent?
Keep talking! This is a time when adults should be maintaining relationships with their adolescents—don’t let teens exclude you from their lives or push you away. We need to reframe the meaning of adolescence in our culture and the role these kids play in our communities—they’re moving into a time of great creativity and contribution in our world.
Jennifer Kelly Geddes, mom of two girls whose ages fall smack within the scope of this conversation, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Parenting, Scholastic Parent & Child, and EverydayHealth.com. She lives with her family in West Harlem.
