Source: Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D.
Adolescence is meant to be transformative as the detaching (for independence) and the differentiating (for individuality) young person starts
- Separating from childhood around late elementary school,
- Forming a family of friends around middle school,
- Experimenting with acting older around high school,
- Emancipating from parental rule around the college-age years.
As adolescence changes the child, the parent changes in response, and their relationship changes. In consequence, this normal growth will occasionally strain how they get along. For both parent and teenager, adolescence tends to be a more abrasive age.
This growing discontent is to be expected and need not alienate their relationship. Common complaints attest to when these unwelcome times occur. For example:
Teenager: “You’re always on my case!”
Parent: “You argue about everything!”
It’s best to understand the changes that are going on.
Developmental change
Growing change makes adolescence a more temperamental and sensitive time for parent and teenager as it upsets and resets familiar terms of their childhood relationship. Loss of the old, expression of the different, and onset of the new all take some getting used to for everyone.
For parents and teenagers, adolescence, the coming of age passage, is a family game-changer on many levels. Consider a common few:
- Separation can reduce companionship.
- Privacy can create less personal confiding.
- Peers can provide social competition with family.
- Resistance can cause more opposition to authority.
- Growth can create less commonality and compatibility.
- Individuality can increasingly express cultural contrasts.
- Independence can cause more disagreements over freedom.
At times, these changes can place more strain on the parent/teenager relationship for both. So, first consider common parental complaints about their changing adolescent, and then consider common adolescent complaints about their changing parent.
Parental complaints about the adolescent
Since their child’s adolescence begins with loss of childhood, parents can miss how endearing the old relationship with their little girl or boy used to be. Common adjustment complaints can make unfavorable comparisons between the child who was and the teenager who is. Unwelcome changes might sometimes include
- from being positive to being negative,
- from being appreciative to being dissatisfied,
- from being confiding to being private,
- from being family-centered to being friend-centered,
- from being agreeable to being argumentative,
- from being interested to being bored,
- from being focused to being distracted,
- from being orderly to being disorganized,
- from being mindful to being forgetful.
- And the list goes on.
Adolescent complaints about the parents
While parents tend to focus on how adolescence changes their child; they are often unaware of how it can change parents in youthful eyes. By way of contrast, consider how a teenager might sometimes view them differently than in childhood. Unwelcome changes in their parents might sometimes include:
- from being trusting to being suspicious,
- from being encouraging to being controlling,
- from being relaxed to being tense,
- from being friendly to being bossy,
- from being fun-loving to being serious,
- from being positive to being negative,
- from being complimentary to being critical,
- from being trusting to being worried,
- from being patient to being nagging,
- from being fair to being unfair.
- And the list goes on.
Managing complaints
Not only can complaints express unhappiness in the communicator but they can also cause unhappiness in the person told. Complaints can feel accusative: “You did something wrong.” In fact, change is often the culprit.
When either parent or teenager complains about how each other has unhappily changed to live with compared to the more light-hearted childhood years, she or he is not entirely misperceiving. To some degree, the adolescent coming-of-age experience is going to change everyone and sometimes challenge the ease of getting along.
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So, take heart and don’t take automatic offense. It’s partly the process, not just the person. When you feel like making a complaint about the other person, try to make it not a criticism of, but a concern about, because concerns are less likely to cause injury or offense. For example, ask, “Are you feeling OK?” instead of, “What’s the matter with you?” Address the action; don’t attack the actor. Instead of calling the teenager “inconsiderate,” talk about what did or didn’t happen that you would like to talk about: “When you’re going to be late, please give me a call so I don’t worry about whether you’re OK.”
And at times when the other is feeling hard to get along with, just remember how that person goes through times when they find you sometimes more challenging to live with, too. For both parents and teenagers, adolescence can give rise to more abrasion and discontent.
