I have had the pleasure of being asked on several occasions to talk with a teenager who is having a problem in school or at home. Teenagers are at the place in their life where their need for power and freedom is off the charts. Often adults try to overpower their freedom or take it away from them, and this only pushes them further away. The truth of the matter is that they are much better at disconnecting from us than we are at connecting with them. This makes the situation rather difficult because they don’t need us, and want to prove it. As we all know, when we go out of our way to prove we doen’t need something, it is a rebellion. We are too much in need.
The question that I am often asked by professionals after I have seen a teenager who is doing better is, “What threat did I use to get him or her to listen?” They are often shocked when I say I talked with them. I feel this is the point of the matter, we have stopped talking to them because they have stopped talking to us. However, they really don’t need us anymore and we don’t know how to handle that. So I advise to never stop talking to them, ask them what they feel about things. Let them have their own thoughts feelings, and their own sense of what is right and wrong for them. When they make mistakes, be there for them to pick up the pieces without ‘I told you so’, and when they make a good choice remember it is them who made it.
