Life as an Adolescent
Self expression
Life as an Adolescent
What is your child going through? You may think you remember adolescence, but keep in mind that your memories are colored by your hormones, and that every person's experience is his own.
Who Am I Today?
Your adolescent is in flux. She may try on identities like hats: punk, slacker, social activist, financier. Changing “costumes” (including hair styles and world views) is an important part of your child's self-discovery. Stay back and watch her explore. Making an issue out of hair color or skirt length is often not worth it. You risk alienating your teenager. Remember, choose your battles.
Young adolescents often go through a year or more where they and their friends seem to meld, and become one, giant, hormonal mass of jumbo adolescent. They dress the same, talk the same, tend to wander the world in packs, and also tend to do stupid, risky things to prove how grown-up they are (thereby proving they are not). Whether or not the behavior is stupid, the need to conform is not. It's a developmental stage, and the kid who is pushed to be nonconformist will suffer. In a couple of years, don't worry, most kids both calm down (in terms of risks) and start looking like an individual again. As much as you can, keep them safe, but let them look like (and run with) the pack.
- If your child is looking totally cloned, don't make an issue about it. (It's just hair, clothes, and attitudes.)
- No matter what's up with the identity, stress to your child that the family values statement and family rules still hold, at least in your household.
- Shifting identities is healthy, but watch your child for major shifts in behavior. Adolescents are at high risk for depression, drug abuse, and eating disorders.
Piercings, tattoos, brandings, and other scarifications are a more serious issue because they are irreversible (or only reversible after a tremendous amount of effort and money). Many tattoo and piercing parlors now require parental permission before they will work on minors, but there are always ways around that. Ugly ways. (At least at a tattoo parlor, the work is done by an artist or trained professional who follows health and safety precautions.)
It's a Good Idea!
If he's insistent on permanent body decorations, you can help practice “creative damage minimization” by supporting a few extra ear pierces, or a small tattoo on his shoulder rather than the six eyebrow pierces or the full-body dragon he's hankering for. Take him to a reputable body shop where you know they change the needles (dirty needles can spread hepatitis, AIDS, and other nefarious diseases).
Sometimes kids test their parents by threatening to get tattoos or body pierces. If your kid really wants a tattoo or pierce (and is deigning to talk with you about it), try not to overreact (“You what!”), and treat it as a topic for discussion. Discuss the pros and cons (and your own personal opinions) in as levelheaded a manner as you can, and let her make the decision. Remember that 1) adolescents don't really understand the concept of “irrevocable,” 2) talking about it might be an attempt to get some support for a “no” decision, and 3) no matter what you say or think, she will make the decision for herself. Don't alienate her, and you may get some input.
Tattooing is a centuries-old art form (not one that everybody supports, but an art form nonetheless). Piercing and branding are also done for style reasons by many, many people. They can also be a signal that your child is depressed or having difficulty coping emotionally. If your child comes home “altered,” try to determine if it is for style reasons, or for other, less happy purposes.
Body image
Body Image Problems: What Do I Really Look Like?
It's not just kids with eating disorders who have warped or negative body images and who suffer from lowered self-esteem because of it. We all suffer from the image promoted by the media of what the perfect body looks like (and it's hard even for adults to shake the impression that life would be better if we only had thinner thighs, bigger breasts, a more manly chest, or another two inches of height).
Your adolescent, already hyperself-conscious, may be terribly affected by these messages, so insidious that they seem to float through the air and water into her head (even if you only allow her to watch public television). The girl who believes that she's somehow lacking because she isn't skinny like Kate Moss or busty like Pamela Anderson, the boy who measures his chest development and looks against Brad Pitt's, suffer a distorted self-image and a lowered self-esteem.
While you cannot avoid these media messages, you can help your child build a strong self-image through encouragement, trust, love, limits and consequences. Model good self-imaging. Stop comparing your own thighs to those of Kate Moss (does she even have any?). By concentrating on strength and ability (sports, dance, or other activities that make her feel good about her abilities), you can help transcend (or at least lessen) society's stress on appearances.
Behave Yourself!
Never criticize your child's looks or weight, even when the criticism is couched in suggestions (“Martina, what about that new exercise program Nadia is doing? It's really firmed her up!”). She knows (far more than you do) where her “failings” are. Even constructive criticism usually isn't.
It's the Pals That Matter
What do you remember most about junior high and high school? Besides that evil, ruler-wielding Miss Slicker who taught German, and cranky, slobbery Mr. Glubb, the bane of the math department, it's your friends, right?
Tales from the Parent Zone
Then there's the time when Katherine, age 16, was shopping for a prom dress. She found the perfect one. “I'll take it!” she told the saleswoman. “Wait. Just in case my mom likes it, is it returnable?” Teenagers struggle hard to find their independence. Asserting her own taste (and denying her mother's) was, for Katherine, an essential part of this process.
During adolescence, social relationships are at least as important as family, sometimes more so. As your child goes through the soul-searching journey of who she is and how she's going to spend her life, it's her friends who are her companions. You, her parent, take a lesser role.
Demoted!
It would be great if adolescents were content to simply shift their loyalties to their friends, while still giving you some respect. No dice. Sometimes it seems as though they're on a mission to burn every bridge, to humiliate you into submission. Did you know just how square, boring, dorky, and embarrassing you were? (If you have an adolescent, you do now!)
Being treated like this can be very disconcerting, to say the least (especially if you had any pretenses that you were at all cool, or at least interesting). While you may understand intellectually that this kind of treatment is merely part of your adolescent's job, to separate from you, it still can be very painful and hard to handle.
There are a couple of things you can do:
- Work on gaining some psychological distance from your child. Just as it's her job to separate from you, so, too, you must learn to get along without her (at least for a number of years).
- Take care of yourself through self-nurturing activities. If your adolescent is like most, you can use some support. If your kid is miserable, you are apt to feel miserable yourself.