In Defence of Teens

When I tell people that I love having teenagers, they tend to look at me like I’ve sprouted tentacles from my ears. Parents liking the teenage years seems to be an oxymoron, but it really can be a period of great connection with your almost-adult child.

For the first time in their lives, their interests and yours might start to converge, their characters really emerge, and you get to see the great people you have spent all this time moulding.

Now, that’s not to say it’s all unicorns and stardust in our house. Yes, they do start to flex their muscles a bit. But it’s important to remember what it’s like to be a teenager, and why that flexing of the ‘independence muscle’ is happening.

Most teens attend school. Every minute of their day is scheduled and regulated: where they’re meant to be, what they should be doing, when they eat or go to the toilet, even when they’re allowed to talk. Imagine if you were micromanaged to that degree in your job. It would drive you mad!

My kids are homeschooled, but they still have limitations in terms of where they can go (they don’t have independent transport) and who they can see, because many of their friends are not available during the week.

When teens flex their independence, they’re testing to see how far they can push those parental boundaries. A kind of “I know you said you’d support me no matter what, but does ‘no matter what’ include this?”.

I picture it like testing the safety straps on a parachute. You’re testing that they’ll hold, not that they’ll fail. Our kids do the same with us. They’re testing that we’ll keep being there again and again, not that we’ll abandon them this time.

Every minute of their day is scheduled and regulated: where they’re meant to be, what they should be doing, when they eat or go to the toilet, even when they’re allowed to talk. Imagine if you were micromanaged to that degree in your job. It would drive you mad!

I’m a bit of a Biology geek and I love the way neurobiology can explain our own behaviours to us. For decades, we blamed teenage impulsivity on hormones. We thought the teenage brain was basically an adult brain that was just awash with hormones that were making it unstable and bad at making decisions.

Then along came MRI’s that showed us that teens have an under-developed prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that makes logical decisions – and an overdeveloped limbic system leading to risky behaviour and impulsive decisions. But, they only take more risks in situations where the outcome was unknown. Impulsive behaviour causes Dopamine levels to rise leading to more sensation seeking behaviour but also increased cognitive control.

Experiments show that teens take fewer risks, show less impulsiveness,  than children in the same situations where bad outcomes were known, and only slightly more than adults. This is known as the ‘wisdom paradox’: they may be better able to control their behaviour but they don’t have the store of accumulated knowledge or wisdom that adults have to rely on to come to conclusions. In other words: they want to make better choices but they just don’t know what those choices are. 

This teaches us that there is actually a point to these ‘rebellious’ and ‘risky’ teenage years. The brain is increasing its store of sensation wisdom so that as an adult, it can make better decisions.

So where does this leave you and your teenager?

Just like younger kids, teens reflect what they see. They still mimic the behaviour of their parents. You can’t expect respect from a person, no matter what their age, if you don’t act respectfully towards them. I try, as far as possible, to always speak to my children the way I would want them to speak to me, and in the same way I would if a stranger were listening. It’s a good benchmark of the kind of ‘voice’ they’ll use back at you.

Be available to them. Teenagers are not always good communicators. And if you haven’t been in the habit of communicating with them in the past, this one can be a challenge for parents. Start with meeting them where they are. This means listening to their music, their stories about their video games, their friends, zombies… whatever it is they want to talk about.

If they can’t talk about the small stuff with you, they aren’t going to come to you with the big stuff. If you have younger kids, start now with them. Minecraft is mind-numbingly boring, but listen! One day, it’ll be about their relationship problems, and you’ll be glad you put in the time when you did.

Sometimes, oblique forms of communication help. The direct eye-contact stuff can be too full-on for some teens (and parents too). For those, I find that talking in the car is good. There’s the body language barrier of facing the same direction rather than facing each other, but you’re still in an enclosed space that’s pretty private. There’s also the distraction of the scenery and the road and music etc, so if things get a bit too heavy, one of you can mentally take a break. And when the conversation is over, it’s easy enough for the kid to turn the music up and call an end to the chat. It’s non-confrontational.

I also find it very helpful to send links via email or WhatsApp to my teens about topics that I think are important to address but they might find uncomfortable to discuss. These are usually issues about safer sex, consent, sexuality etc. Our deal is that I ask them to read the article or watch the video and then they can ask me questions via email or in person if they want to. If it’s something that’s really important that I think they might not have had enough exposure to (like consent) then I find a video that’s not too uncomfortable to watch with your mom, and we all watch it together.

Part of being available to your teen is recognising that when they do come to you to talk, they probably agonised over it for a while. So drop everything, and BE THERE FOR THEM. They are dropping all their defences and coming to you, heart exposed. Guard that fragile heart.

Recognise that they see right through you. Tell them the truth. Above all else, tell them the truth. They are forming so many opinions about themselves and you and the world around them at this age. You don’t want their opinion of you to be a negative one. I want my children to think of me with  integrity and trust. So as much as possible, I tell them the truth, and with the teenage years, this is more important than at any other time.

Lastly, cut them some slack! I remember being 16. Although I was an A student, I think I was a pretty horrid child to my poor mother. I was lucky I lived in safer times, but I lived for my friends, for going out dancing, for writing awful poetry and getting lost in tragic books… I was going to save the world and no one was going to stand in my way…in other words, I was a pretty normal teenager, and I lived to tell the tale… vive l’adolescent!

“When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska