Steps teens can take to decrease streets
Having successfully journeyed through the transition of adolescence with two adult sons, my wife and I are not sitting back relaxing. Instead, we are currently crossing through this time of challenge with our 15 year old daughter.
Our professional training in psychology and law certainly helped us with some of the theory and principles of human behavior, communicating rules and boundaries, and establishing healthy communication patterns. In spite of this formal education in dealing with others, we found ourselves encountering some of the same difficulties encountered by our patients and clients in rearing their children.
Someone once described these years between puberty and adulthood as "the disease of adolescence."
I have written many Psychology and You columns on the subject of understanding and parenting adolescents from the perspective of the parents. Today, however, I would like to address the issue from a different perspective, and that is, how teenagers can help during these years of growing and maturing.
Responsibilities and actions teenagers can take to help decrease stress of adolescence and to increase healthy communication with their parents or caregivers may include the following actions:
• I will resist the impulse to tune out and ignore my parents or caregiver because I consider them too old to know anything useful and/or correct.
• Because I want my parents or caregiver to treat me with love, respect and understanding, I'll do the same for them. I will try harder to have an open mind and look at situations from their point of view.
• I will try hard to remember that I am accountable for my behavior, and how I choose to live my life and the decisions I make are a reflection upon my parents or caregiver. For them to have confidence in me, I need to make responsible choices as they trust me and grant me more freedom and responsibility.
• My parents or caregivers were once adolescents themselves. They may have experienced some of the same difficulties and problems that I now encounter. I will try to share my feelings with them and ask for their help with the love and dignity that I can expect from them.
• Expecting the right to criticize others includes assuming the responsibility to consider and seek workable solutions. Wanting to destroy rules and traditions simply for the sake of destruction is not responsible, nor is it striving for maturity.
I doubt that many teenagers regularly read the newspaper, and I base this on the elective reading habits of my own children and the many that I have seen professionally over the years. In view of that, I would suggest that readers ask their children to read this message. Parents may request this as a most special Christmas gift from them. Many teenagers are at a loss as to what parents want for Christmas and this may be a mutual decision among them. Another possibility for getting this message to teenagers is for the youth director at your church, the guidance counselor or health teachers at school to use this material to stimulate discussion and thought with teens.
What great Christmas presents and New Year's resolutions these actions would make coming from a teenager. Try them and see what results you might receive.
Copyright c 1994 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.
