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Help With Teenagers - You're Making a Smart Move
First of all, I always want to encourage moms and dads who are trying to better understand and help their teenager. Learning more about teens, seeing what parenting resources are available, and talking back and forth to other parents can all be enormously helpful.
After all, if you can gain some confidence in your parenting skills in relation to your teen, you will transmit that confidence to your teenager and that alone can often be a soothing factor in your relationship.
Teenagers can be complex creatures. One minute they're up. The next they're down. In listening to other parents muse about getting teenager help, the issue of mood swings is one of the biggest challenges. How do you communicate effectively with someone who is on a daily emotional roller coaster - and most of the time, that's completely normal for their stage of development!
After you read the following parenting information, we'll continue with how to help your teenager.
Please help! How do I raise my teen or pre-teen?
As a parent, do you have more questions than answers?
Back talk, defiance and disrespect do NOT have to be daily visitors in your home. Start by taking control now.
1. Read through the free short report "Raising Teens". Make sure you are covering the fundamentals in parenting your son or daughter.
IMPORTANT: Don't disregard this information if your child is not yet a teen. A huge secret to successful parenting is prevention. By reading this report and using the behavior log (explained in point #2) you'll be getting a jump on handling your growing child's needs today.
Believe me, solving a seven or ten year old's problems is a lot easier than solving a fifteen or seventeen year old's problems.
2. Print out our Behavior Log. Use it to keep track of your child's behavior for a week or two. Then you'll have a better idea of what you're really dealing with.
3. Getting help with teenagers can mean looking at multiple solutions. Is the situation with your teen still more than you know how to handle? Then take a deep breath and another step towards finding the right solution for you and your child. Head over to Empowering Parents where you will find an enormous amount of articles and discussion written by common sense experts and other parents who have been in the trenches, too. I have found this can really help.
Teenager help - Unpacking Growing Up
How to help your teenager? Well, it helps if we can crawl into teenagers' heads a bit. You can do this for yourself by visiting any teen forums and reading for a while. Set aside your years' of experience and judgment and listen carefully.
You're going to hear a lot of
- pain
- confusion
- frustration
- angst
- fear
- anger
How would you like to feel like that a significant portion of the time? Sometimes, when we're looking for ways to help our teenagers (and this applies whether our children are disrespectful teenagers or not), what we really want is for everyone to feel good all the time. Well, teens are in a serious growing mode and sometimes they feel fantastic and sometimes they feel terrible.
(If you feel that a lack of motivation is your teen's problem, then here's an article you'll be interested in. How to Motivate Teenagers, Part 1
Whether it's a self-esteem issue, an I-don-t-care-issue, or procrastination, this article covers a lot of useful ground.)
Here's a key insight for you: over and over again, when listening to teenagers complain about their parents, you'll hear the same thing.
"Dad just doesn't listen to me."
"Mom doesn't even care about what I think."
Mom or Dad, as a parent of four kids myself and a mom who has already worked through the teen years with three of my children, I would like to suggest that one of the fastest and most effective ways to help with teenagers is to get serious about listening to them.
I mean looking them in the eye, putting down the newspaper or cell phone, and giving them your undivided attention - just listening.
And do this everyday. Make it a priority. Seek them out to simply listen to them.
You can't believe how powerful this is when you're trying to figure out how to help your teenager.
Now, I'm not really telling you anything new, am I?
You already know that listening to another person is Relationship 101 advice.
So take a deep breath and think before you answer. Are you really - genuinely - listening on a deep and regular basis to your precious teen?
Don't be embarrassed if your answer is no. I don't know any parent, myself included, who hasn't dropped the ball on this one. We are all super busy and listening often feels like it's a waste of time.
Let me be the one to say nothing could be further from the truth.
Offering teenager help - one conversation at a time.
Here's a simple little checklist you can use to increase the amount of quality listening between you and your teen. Consider using a personal calendar to keep track of any changes you see in your teen - and maybe in you, too.
- Put it on your daily planner or schedule: listen to my teenager for 15 minutes uninterrupted. Don't go to bed until it is done.
- When listening don't be doing anything else. Look into your teen's eyes. Pull up a chair and sit down. Lean forward as if catching every word. You are.
- Reflect back to your teen what you're hearing so he or she can correct you. Do you know what this is really doing? It's building trust between you and your teen.
- Resist the urge to lecture during this listening time. If your teen is frustrated with you anyway, he won't hear a word you say and instead of offering teenager help you will be putting up walls between you and your teen. (Note: I believe strongly you should be speaking words of wisdom into your teen's life, but this is a timing issue. You have to build a relationship first. Be patient and ALWAYS listen twice as long as you speak.)
- Allow your teen to vent, albeit respectfully. Frankly, just speaking their heart is what you hear teens doing the most of in forums and social networks. Even if you are trying to figure out how to stop back talking in your home, when your child is not talking back, one of the most powerful things you can do is listen. Think about it this way; how do you know who you can trust? Be that person for your teen.
- Give it time. Commit to doing this for 40 days and then evaluate. Oh, and always end with a big hug, tell your teenager you love him and express confidence in his abilities. Our teens need to know we believe in them! And your teen needs to be given the opportunity to learn firsthand that you care enough about him to hear him out. Everyday.
Honestly, this is just the beginning of helping your teenager learn how to handle herself. She has good ideas running around in her head and your patient, loving listening will be the beginning of her starting to trust and work with herself.
Seeking help with teenagers in general is a smart move, but learning how to hear your specific teenager and get to know him deeply is priceless, for both of you. Invest yourself in this relationship, Mom or Dad. Don't be put off by the false bravado and fake rejection your teen may be dishing out.
You've asked the question of how to help your teenager, now roll up your sleeves and invest 15 minutes a day to start making a difference in the lives of two very special people.
You and your teen.
If you want to know what parenting program I can recommend that would help with teenagers, that would be The Total Transformation program, hands down.
Does Total Transformation work? In my understanding, it has a good chance of improving many family situations IF a parent works it diligently. Part of why this particular program has a measure of success is because it supports parents extremely well. I simply cannot overestimate how important I have found it is to get trusted support while parenting!
More parenting articles for you.
Angry Children
Defiant Teenager
How to Stop Back Talking
How to Handle Teenager
Colleen Langenfeld is a mother with over 29 years of parenting experience and helps other busy moms around the globe at www.paintedgold.com.
Note from Colleen: Remember, I earn my living making excellent recommendations to you, Mom, so when you choose to click any of the links on this website and make a purchase, I may earn a commission.
Naturally, that means I care about what you think! If you try a product or service I recommend, I'd love to hear from you. How else can I keep my recommendations top notch for all my visitors?
And thank you, for stopping by.
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