Saniya Karki, 38, an interior designer, raised her daughter single-handedly after her divorce five years back. She always prided herself in doing a good job as a mother because she felt her daughter was growing up to be a very fine young lady. But lately, 15-year-old Alisha’s behavior has stunned Saniya.[break]
“Every time I ask her something, she’ll either not respond or literally spit out words,” says Saniya who is flabbergasted by her daughter’s increasingly restrained act. She adds that this is causing unnecessary strain in the mother-daughter relationship.
“I can’t seem to get through to her and she doesn’t understand or even listen to me anymore,” she says. Saniya is further upset by the fact that her daughter’s chatter about the day has turned into guttural grunts and gestures that she’s had to derive her own meaning out of.
The week
Saniya is not the only one facing such dilemma. It seems that every other couple who has ever made the decision of starting a family reaches a point in life when they wonder what compelled them to even think of having a child in the first place. A couple at this point of time will most definitely be dealing with a defiant teenager.
Inside every sprouting adolescent body, there’s a person trying to grow up and figure things out, and the transition will flummox the parents no end. Successfully raising a teen is no simple task. It requires time, attention and efforts.
Sushma Mukhiya, a psychologist who has been counseling family members on how to handle difficult teens for over a decade, mentions that teen issues are on the rise now more than ever and it’s becoming increasingly tough for parents to deal with their unyielding child.
“When I started out, I used to have very few clients. Ten years ago, I had one or two clients in a week. Now I have two to three families coming to me every single day and I work seven days a week,” says Sushma.
Sushma mentions that the teenage phase is most definitely the toughest phase that parents have to deal with while raising children as the teen years pose some of the most difficult challenges for families.
Rishav Adhikari, 42, a businessman, admits that he is at his wits’ end trying to break the barrier that his daughter has created. Rakshya, 17, seems to have distanced herself from her family by hardly speaking to her parents and younger sister who was her best friend till a few years back.
“It’s been a year that Rakshya has started acting up and behaving differently. She was a very happy child but lately she seems disturbed and gets irritated very easily,” says Rishav.
Rishav’s wife and business partner, Neeta, is equally tensed by their daughter’s changed demeanor. As her mother, Neeta has always tried to be a friend rather than a guardian, but lately she feels as though her daughter doesn’t need her anymore.
“Rakshya doesn’t talk to us anymore. She goes straight to her room after she’s back from college and won’t come out till it’s time for dinner,” says Neeta, adding that there will be times when Rakshya is really animated and apparently back to her normal self but that period hardly lasts a day.
To many parents, their teen is a closed book, with a padlock, and poison spikes, and maybe even a big dog in front of it. At times, it seems impossible to get them to open up and talk about their lives. Many parents resort to scolding their children and punishing them by not letting them meet their friends or go to the movies in an effort to make them realize that misbehavior will have its repercussions. But these gimmicks rarely ever work. The teens, in turn, show signs of passive aggressiveness and shell up even more.
“I’ve tried everything with Alisha. From grounding her to cutting her weekly allowance, but nothing seems to work,” says a visibly upset Saniya. Even Neeta has tried “taming” her daughter by not letting her have sleepovers at her friend’s place as a part of punishing her for her “misbehavior.” But both Saniya and Neeta don’t see any signs of positive change in their daughters.
On one hand, teenagers, dealing with hormonal changes, may feel that no one understands their feelings, especially their parents, while on the other hand, parents are frustrated by the fact that their teen no longer responds to parental authority.
But as parents, one needs to understand and come to terms with the fact that teenagers will mess up. They should mess up. They need to mess up in order to learn, to grow. One’s job as a parent is to provide a safe holding environment for this messing up and learning to take place.
“Parents have to understand that scolding and withdrawing privileges won’t make their teens behave better. Rather, it’ll have the opposite effect,” says Sushma, adding that parents have to learn to communicate with their teens, and here communicating means much more than talking to them.
“Dual communication is needed when you want to get through to your teens. If you want them to listen to you, they need to feel that you’re willing to listen to them, too. Also, punish if you must but make sure you aren’t punishing out of blind rage,” she shares.
As a parent, Sushma argues that one has a responsibility to perform their parental role and help them learn life skills, keep them safe and secure while guiding them to the most successful adulthood they are capable of having.
According to Sushma, teenagers aren’t necessarily looking to be rescued, and parents need to understand that. “You have to respect their need for individuality. Give them that space. Don’t try to micromanage them. But make sure they understand that they are answerable and accountable for their actions,” she says.
If you choose to rescue your teen from every potential pitfall, you unwittingly disrupt their growth by taking away some critical learning opportunities. Change is a process. Growth is a process. Allowing your teenager to mess up and learn is a process as well. Granted, raising kids is a tough job and raising teenagers is even worse. But a few basic tweaks in communication methods and a little understanding can go a long way in effectively tackling the issue.
“Driving yourself crazy by constantly fretting over your teen is a huge waste of time. Strive to achieve a balance between discipline and dictatorship and let your kid figure things out for themselves,” says Sushma, adding that not only will you be doing your kids a huge favor but yourself too.
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