Adolescents Need Your Understanding and Support

Adolescents- overconfident and simultaneously riddled with fear, undergoing oscillating progressions, regressions, standstills, and experiencing social pressure- seem difficult to understand. Adults see their behavior as impulsive, impetuous, moody, disagreeable, overdemanding, and underappreciative. The first step in the process of trying to understand adolescence is to recognize that they don’t understand themselves most of the time.

It is in adolescence that an individual establishes patterns of behavior and makes lifestyle choices that affect both his/her current and future health. Hence, at no other stage of life does your adolescent child need the reassurance of your basic commitment to them, that in spite of their growing maturity, their moods, their misbehavior, or your anger at something they have done, they are still loved, wanted and appreciated.

Adolescence is the time when lot's of firsts happen: first kiss, first crush, first date, first love, first dance, and first job. Peeling off the the covers of an over-protected childhood, adolescence is the time to face the real world, a crucial time of a new awakening with a fresh perspective and enhanced cognitive and emotional awareness

First off, the support system undergoes transformation with the role of parents as confidante being replaced by the “best friend”. An adolescent fails to look at the future broadly, as a time that may be different than the present, a time without the “best friend”, without the feelings they have now, without the circumstances they are in at present. They feel that the trauma of a lost love will last forever, without realizing that both passion and pain may pass with time.

While dealing with the confusion of too many “first times”, adolescents fail to recognize that others are capable of having the same feelings as they do. Their focus is centered on themselves, in comparison and in competition to peers. Adults, on the other hand, have a global or long-range perspective. Hence, the difficulty experienced by them in counseling adolescents.

Adolescents are given to impulsiveness, not caring for the consequences of their actions such as drug abuse, rash driving, and other risk taking behaviors. If peer groups support and validate such actions, the “bonding” happens, and a feeling prevails that someone finally understands them. This is when the adults lose their importance.

The very feeling that they are not understood, or if they experience an inordinate sense of loss owing to earlier deprivation, adolescents reach out for love and acceptance. To capture their love, they rely on physical intimacy as they are yet to acquire the skills of establishing an emotional relationship. Lack of awareness often leads to unwanted pregnancy. Suicidal ideation, attempts, and actual suicide are common as well.

The tapestry of human development is complex, and cannot be generalized. All children have different biological clocks and their physical and emotional growth occurs in erratic fits and starts. No final statement or theory can be presented to explain or understand the adolescent process of transformation. Our approach has to be flexible.

To understand adolescents, we need to identify a few important points, such as, adolescents are overly sensitive to their peers; it is a period of lots of “firsts” for them, for which they are perhaps not prepared; they invest a great deal of emotional energy in things that adults can be more objective about, like cars, dating, job, etc. Comprehending this transitional phase is no easy task, and calls for a great deal of patience. Respect is the key! More than love, Adolescents need to feel respected and valued both in their peer groups, and at home. A good relationship with children maintained throughout childhood helps in an easy and successful transition to adolescence.