It is very easy to picture a perfect family. All we need is a father that will always be there to protect us, a loving mother that will light every one of us to the decisions and plans that we make and children that will serve as the joy and life inside the four corners of our home.
However, forming a great relationship between parents and children is a little bit of a challenge, and we all know that. It turns to be more complicated when the kids are growing up to a certain stage called adolescence. And as parents, we need a lot of preparation as soon as our son(s) and/or daughter(s) become teenagers. Here are some points to remember that will make us understand easier the feelings and thinking of our teenage kids.
Point number one: “They want to be heard”. At the stage of adolescence, they start to discover the real them which is actually a very common phenomena. It is the time for exposing themselves to different kinds of things together with their peers. Since it is a transition period, they have to be guided by someone that is already done with it, and the nearest person to run to is us, moms and dads. Because we are the closest individuals to them, they expect that we will keep our ears on them, as they tell us the things they are going through like their first crush in school, the course they want for college, talents and skills they want to explore within themselves, stuffs they want to have as well as sharing their own opinion about the issues and/or problems inside the house, with their friends and even deep within their own personality, like sexual orientation perhaps.
Point number two: “They want a little space”. As they grow old, they find places and groups that they want to get belong to. These are the people that they share same interests, points of views, beliefs and principles in life.
And for them to be able to entertain new friends, they need a little space and time for those ones. In this manner, they need to sacrifice some quality time with the family. However, in exchange with their freedom to search for a company, given by us parents, advising them to set a self responsibility, own limitations and time management is a must.
Point number three: “They want enough attention”. In most situations, we spend a lot of our time everyday working with our career, in order to support the needs of the family. However, it is not actually an excuse to make them feel that in spite of our busy schedule, we can still secure some time with them. Attention is every teenager really needs and they expect a lot of it to be initialized by us. It’s like asking them at every end of the day, the things that happened to them while we’re still at work. It’s actually maintaining the closeness of the family by a warm and consistent communication between us and our children.
While it’s still early, we have to begin constructing a strong connection to our youngsters. Make them feel very comfortable with us and always show that we’re always there to support and help them in order to become a better person in the future as they reach adulthood. Understanding is the key and if we believe on it, we know nothing is impossible, like having a well established family relationship.