Parenting expert Dr Laurence Steinberg says that “There is no more important job in society than raising children, and there is no more important influence on how children develop than their parents”.
This is in stark contrast of our modern society that rewards people the least who take on human caring roles. Think for a moment of the salaries of nurses, teachers and in particular special education,aged care and child care workers compared to other professions.
Such a discrepancy often causes many in these human caring professions as well as parents to feel undervalued and to even question the value of their role.
One approach to decide the value of something is to imagine that you didn’t have it. For instance, how valuable is air for a human being? Well, if you didn’t have it, you would be dead within minutes. So we conclude that air is pretty important.
When a child comes into this world and during their formative years until adolesence it is undeniable that a child absolutely needs parents. Children who are left to grow up without parents are seriously disadvantaged emotionally, psychologically, socially, physically and spiritually, which shows up in a whole bunch of different ways.
A trickier question is “how much do teenagers need their parents?” In other words, how important is the parent teenager relationship? On the surface it may appear that teenagers want or need their parents less compared to when they were preadolescent.
Teenagers often talk about making their own choices and being independent causing many parents to ‘back off’, feel unwanted and not needed. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth be told, teenagers need and want their parents involved in their lives. The difference is that compared to before they want their parents to celebrate their uniqueness and their emotional need for independence. The parent teenager relationship is therefore vital for the health and wellbeing of every teenager.
Those parents who can make the shift from parenting a pre-adolescent to parenting an adolescent child do best. Questions arise in the minds of both teenager and parent about the worth and value of their parent teenager relationship when there is no transition in parenting style.
Said another way, when the parent does not change their parenting ways to suit a growing and changing teenager, the teenager easily comes to feel misunderstood, badly treated and disrespected. The parent too comes to feel the same way and hence there is a breakdown in the parent teenager relationship.
The solution is simple but takes a lot of courage, commitment, selflessness and maturity to execute. What it means is that your parent teenager relationship becomes more akin to a parent who plays the role of a coach to their teenager. This becomes incredibly meaningful and empowering as mutual love and respect grows.
Are you presently frustrated and worn out by your relationship with your teen? Are you seeking more helpful and better ways to relate? If so, parent teen coach, Paul Saver has seven free videos that he is giving away that can help you revolutionise your parent teen relationship To get your free videos, just click on the link.
