A troubled teen drinking
Whenever we think of parenting, we automatically associate it with something that only parents do to or for a child. In reality, it is something more complicated than that. How parents deal with their kids depends on not just the parents themselves, but also the children and the situation.
The different personalities of the parents and the teens affect the dynamics of the parent-teen relationship. To build productive family ties, both parents and teens must bridge their differences by changing the way they think and behave towards each other.
Parents often look at their teens and still see the toddlers they used to be. Teens look at their parents and see strangers who were there to control their lives. The feeling of being grown-up, and yet unable to express themselves as adults, can be frustrating to some teens.
Although parents can never be on the same level as their teen’s friends, they can become more than parents to them. Parents can become mentors as well as trusted confidantes to their kids. They are not there to judge or dictate, but to listen and understand what their children are going through.
Even when parents can be privy to their teens’ deepest, darkest secrets, they can still discipline their teens when they get out of line without resorting to emotional blackmail.
The fear that holds back a teen from becoming too close to their parents is the possibility that their thoughts, feelings and actions will be used against them and put them in a place where they lose their freedom to speak and to decide their own fate.
Parents also have the same fear, but not in the same manner as teens think. They fear losing hold of the child they had and see a stranger in their midst. This fear of losing their freedom to decide the best for their child and let the unknown forces influence their children keeps the parents from letting go and trusting their children to choose the right path.
In the case of emotionally troubled teens, the cause may not always be the parents and their ways of rearing their children. Perhaps, it is a simple twist of fate, such as a natural predilection towards violent anti-social behavior. Freud may think everything stems from the childhood, but in reality, the child itself decides its own fate and may lose its moral anchor because of social and cultural factors.
