Blog

Kevin becomes a teenager Enjoy this funny video about raising Teenagers

Difficult Teenagers?

Novelist Julie Myerson recently published a book about her son, Jake and how he became a disruptive, cannabis taking troublemaker whom she and her partner threw out of their home at the age of 17.

The media were in a frenzy since she confessed that she was the anonymous author of the Guardian’s popular ‘Living with Teenagers’ column. Julie Myerson has written in intimate detail about her children and their home life over many years and published a book of the same name.

In rearing our children, it is important to focus on family relationships and feelings in the family, which may have been lacking in the Myerson family. Encourage your child to express how they feel and respond to them, rather than dilute, dismiss and ignore what they are feeling.

Connect with how your teenagers is feeling and allow them to express it

Jake Myerson spoke recently about his parents near break up when he was 12 years old and how it affected him. ‘The crisis affected me very badly; I couldn’t talk to my parents’. Where relationships are good in the family, a child can express his feelings.

Unexpressed feelings get suppressed and drink or drugs are used to block these negative feelings

Jake was 15 when he started using cannabis.

Conflict is a natural part of family life and where relationships are good, it can serve to deepen wellbeing. What a missed opportunity that, his parents failed to see an unconscious cry out from the child’s turmoil to which they could have responded. When we look behind the behaviour we are more likely to get resolution. In Jake’s case, it seems that what lay hidden needed to be revealed. Jake needed his parents to connect with him at an emotional level, without being rejected or ignored.

Teen’s difficult behaviour

Our child’s greatest need is for unconditional love, and if they do not feel loved, they may respond with challenging behaviour.

The major cause of children’s problems is how their parents relate to them.

Punishment may only serve to close off the only way our child has of communicating their difficulty to us. If anger is not dealt with, it escalates into aggression, which happened in the Myerson family. Myerson has just published her latest book ‘A Lost Child: A True Story’ about Jake’s difficulties; despite his protests.

Maybe Jake was not trying to make life difficult for his parents at 15, rather he was trying to show them how difficult life was for him. What happens when you feel you have no one to turn to?

Substance abuse and the Teen

Feelings are bottled up and drugs are used to neutralise these bad feelings temporarily; and yet this resolves nothing. This becomes a vicious cycle as he turns increasingly to drugs which are self destructive.

Anyone can try drugs once, but the person who continues is likely to have low self esteem and to not value themselves. Dealing with problems this way is ultimately self destructive. As a parent we need remember that when a child deserves your love the least, they need it the most.

However, each person’s behaviour is a mirror of their own story. Julie Myerson’s own father had abruptly cut her out of his life when she was 17, the parallel is clear here.

Tips & skills for Parenting Teenagers

• Unconditionally loving my child is my most important task
• My child is not his behaviour!

• If all behaviour makes sense, what is going on for my child?
• Is my child’s behaviour a cry for help?
• Am I able to receive my child’s feelings?
• Anger is a feeling and doesn’t hurt anyone
• A child’s aggression is always masking deep hurt and serving to protect them from a repeat of previous hurt experienced. If it’s your aggression it threatens your child’s wellbeing

This article was written by Sheila O’Malley, Practical Parenting, web: www.practicalparenting.ie

For further information

Practical Parenting offers a full range of support services to Parents including:  One to one Parent Support, One Day Parenting Class and Weekly Courses as well as Parenting Talks in Schools/Companies/Organisations.

You can read feedback from people who have availed of parenting services.

Click here to find and book a class or gain parenting tips by checking out some helpful Parental videos, Parenting articles or our Parents magazine. Please contact Sheila with any query.