The Time To Start Parenting A Teen Is 10 Years Before They Become One
Burton White, author of “The First Three Years of Life,” compared early teen years to toddlerhood, terming the latter “the first adolescence.” Indeed, the parallels are many. Both stages are typified by loud emotional outbursts, a certain amount of self-centeredness, and stubborn, unreasoning opposition to authority.
The most significant point of comparison, however, is not that the “terrible 2s” seem to presage the “terrible tweens,” but that the most precedent-setting transitions in the parent-child relationship occur during these two stages.
During the first of these potentially perilous passages, the parents’ task is to take the child out of the center of their attention and establish themselves at the center of the child’s.
The toddler, feeling himself to be losing control of his parents (and therefore his world) - screams in protest, defies them at seemingly every turn and employs desperate means to re-establish his primacy in the family.
If, and only if, his parents stay the course through this wailing and gnashing of teeth, will this child be on the road of good citizenship (which, remember, begins at home) by age 3.
For some eight years thereafter, the child puts his parents at the center of his attention, looks to them for definitions of right and wrong and wants to please them.
But as puberty begins its incessant drumbeat, the youngster begins transferring allegiance from parents to peer group. Parents wake up one morning to discover they have been rudely displaced.
Other pre-adolescents have taken their place as the center of attention; the child is looking to peers for definitions of right and wrong; and seems interested only in pleasing those peers. Now the parents feel themselves losing control, something they’ve enjoyed for too long to give up without a fight.
For these reasons, parents of young teens will often be found doing almost exactly what their children did as 2-year-olds - screaming and attempting equally desperate means of asserting their jurisdiction. Most young teens want more freedom than they can responsibly handle. Equally true, however, is that many, if not most, parents of young teens are guilty of not giving their children enough freedom, enough opportunity to learn by trial-and-error how to make good personal and social choices.
It’s also true parents who feel the most secure in their ability to control are those who have the easiest time giving up that control. Thus, the paradox is this:
The more effectively parents establish their “government” during toddlerhood, the more willing and able they will later be to let the child as a young teen begin pulling away and stumbling toward self-government.
In short, the time to begin parenting a teen-ager is 10 years earlier. Get it right the first time, and it’s less likely to go wrong later on.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Rosemond The Charlotte Observer