In This Together – Delights and pitfalls of parenting adolescents

In this week’s In This Together Janet McEwen, one of our School Counsellors, writes about how parents can help their daughter navigate adolescence.

Adolescence is an incredibly important stage in a young person’s life, often filled with many challenges.  It can be an immensely rewarding and exciting time, as a young person starts to build a sense of their identity, and to feel and think more independently.  It’s also a time which can bring many worrying thoughts and feelings for parents, as they strive to provide a safe and nurturing environment for their young person to grow and develop in their journey to adulthood.

By the time their child has reached the final years of primary school, and looking beyond to the high school years, most parents will acknowledge they have experienced many emotional moments, some enormously happy and rewarding times, as well as some struggles.  It’s not always easy as a parent to find the right balance between having fun with your child and making sure they are safe and protected, while at the same time trying to ensure they still like and respect you, as you travel through a whole range of experiences and emotions with them!  So many of life’s very important lessons are learned through playing games with siblings, parents and peers. Others will occur serendipitously by sheer chance or coincidence.

One added challenge of parenting which often happens so unexpectedly is trying to help children to understand and to manage the emotions they feel in the many different situations they encounter.  Teaching young people about their emotions and how to manage their feelings in a social context can sometimes feel overwhelming, and a burden for which we are given no formal training at all! 

Young children rely heavily on their parents when learning how to regulate emotions.  Parents often step in and trouble-shoot when their young child is feeling really sad, worried or upset.  The joyous and happy moments are readily shared and enjoyed.  Young people learn a lot about responding and reacting in different situations by watching their parents’ behaviours and responses.  A lot depends on individual temperaments too.  However, parents are very important role models in their children’s psychological and social development.

Early adolescence is a period of rapid change – physical, emotional and social.  Acceptance by peers and finding a group to belong to become increasingly important.  With the transition to secondary school, a young person often turns more to their peers than parents and other significant adults for emotional support and acknowledgement.  As they start to try to express themselves as individuals, and to explore their own limits and abilities, they also start to explore and test the boundaries set for them by others.  There can be periods of confusion, frustration, insecurity and stress as a young person tries to understand and navigate the emotions they feel as they encounter new experiences, try to form and maintain friendships, do well at school, sport, or music, and work out what is important to them in the world in which they live. Challenging behaviours in young people can frequently be their way of communicating some of the difficult emotions they experience.  It is no wonder that parenting adolescents can at times feel like an emotional roller-coaster ride!

Helping young people to be able to notice and to start to understand their emotional responses is an enormously important skill.  Talking with your children about their thoughts and feelings in all sorts of different situations can help them develop the ability to process their emotions and to be accepting of their own and others’ emotions.  It can be as simple as “How did you feel about that?” or “How did that make you feel?” Providing a space where a young person can feel acceptance and validation of their thoughts and feelings is a powerful step to helping them learn how to regulate their emotions, rather than suppressing or cutting off from emotions.  Bottling up negative emotions can lead to stronger feelings, of anger, frustration and distress.

There is no doubt that parents can sometimes find talking about emotions with their adolescent difficult, even daunting – it may seem like the last thing their young person wants to do, however, it is well worth the effort, and possible awkwardness at times, to try and support them with managing their worries and, importantly, building and maintaining a meaningful connection with them.

Last year the counsellors at SCEGGS ran a six-week program Tuning in to Teens, for parents of students in Years 6 and 7 to help with managing the many emotional challenges of adolescence.  We are hoping to offer the program again in Term 2 this year.

More information will be provided in Behind the Green Gate towards the end of the term.

Janet McEwen
SCEGGS School Counsellor