The Disease Of Adolescence
Dear Dr. LeCrone:
After 11 years of parenting a daughter who was a delight to be with, always thoughtful and caring, and never a discipline problem, my husband and I now seem to be rearing a totally different child.
If we like something, she hates it. She often acts like we are morons, prefers her room to our company and doesn’t want to accompany us anywhere. Getting her to keep her room straight or dress nicely is like pulling teeth. Her responses to us are not often very civil, and back talk is the norm.
We are broken-hearted one minute and incensed the next. Does she have a hormone imbalance or a form of mental illness?
-A reader in Ohio
Dear Reader:
Some parents have named what you are going through The Disease of Adolescence. During this time between the onset of puberty and early adulthood, many rapid physical and psychological changes occur in the human being.
Negativism and challenges to authority, especially parents, are quite common as the emerging adult strives to establish her own identity.
The parents who were idealized and adored a few years back suffers a precipitous drop in IQ in the eyes of the child and only regain their elevated status when the child reaches early adulthood.
The adolescent’s peer group is her frame of reference, so parental opinions are often not desired.
As the fledgling learns to spread her wings, limited insight and poor judgment coupled with poor impulse control are also frequently observed by parents and other adults. With eventual access to automobiles, cell phones, the Internet and credit cards, a sensation-seeking, risk-taking teenager can keep parents and other concerned adults filled with anxiety.
Despite protests from the adolescent, parents need to set and follow boundaries and limits. Parents often have problems with implementation for various reasons:
• They become distracted by their own agendas and following up ceases being a priority.
• They attempt to be friends of the child and lose their position of authority.
• They begin to do what makes the child happy rather than what the child needs.
• They yield to the boundaries and limits dictated by families of their children’s peers in order to not seem out of fashion.
It is sometimes difficult to set rules and stick with them but tenacious parents can reap long-term rewards.
Harold H. Lecrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright ©2007
