Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
I’ve posted several times before on the importance of communicating well with your teenager. However, this is one subject of which I think we can never really get enough!
During the teen years, children are making the dramatic transition to young adulthood. There is probably no other stage of childhood at which parents and children have more trouble communicating feelings. The child who once came to you with troubles, who liked getting hugs and kisses is now remote and uncommunicative. At the same time, a parent’s feelings toward a teen are becoming more complicated. You have pride in your child’s accomplishments and his becoming more independent, but at the same time, fear of your changing relationship, sadness at the end of his childhood, and frustration over losing some of your control over him.
Parents have preconceived ideas about what their teenager is or should be. This leads to many problems. A teenager is engaged in the process of becoming separate from mom and dad.
One good example of that struggle is appearance. Clothing, hairstyles, and makeup of which mom and dad don’t approve can be a major source of discord. A good rule of thumb to follow is that, if you can accept what
- you
consider to be less-than-acceptable appearances in informal, everyday situations, it can give you some leverage in getting your teenager to dress more acceptably on more formal occasions.
By harrassing your teen about less important things like length of hair and style of dress, you allow more important issues to get lost in the shuffle. By respecting and accepting your teenager’s individuality in matters such as hair and dress, you help keep tension and strain between you at a lower level, allowing you to communicate more easily about the important things.
In short-don’t sweat the small stuff! Keep communications lines open for discussing really important issues!
For info and tips on communicating with younger children, check out:
Parenting Our Children
Parenting Toddlers
teens, teenagers, teen communication, communicating with teenagers, talking with teens, talking with teenagers, parenting, parenting teens, parenting teenagers
October 5th, 2007 at 9:26 am
[...] no, tell them you will pray for them to have wisdom. For more information on talking to teens, see Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff, and read my article Talking To Your Teen. Did You Enjoy this Post? Subscribe to Parenting and [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Good stuff!