No Matter What!
If you are a parent, you will know that life is a roller coaster, and if you have more than one young person in your household, even more so. When one is up, the other may be down.
Today the pressure placed on young people academically and socially is far greater than experienced by us parents when we were younger. The pace of life has escalated in every aspect. Social media has an enormous impact, being used not only for socialising, but also for inappropriate interaction. Young people spend a lot more time behind their cell phones, communicating via several different social networks at a time, rather than personally interacting with other people or being outdoors.
We seem to expect their immaturity to having the same coping ability as our many years of maturity with regard to handling pressure, expressing themselves or finding solutions, but many are not coping.
In an article by Erlanger A. Turner, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at the University of Houston, he states the following: “Despite teens reporting that stress has little or no impact on their mental health, the following symptoms were noted: irritability or anger (40 percent), feeling nervous or anxious (36 percent), feeling like crying (32 percent), and being depressed or sad (30 percent). “
As parents we have our own pressures of work, finances and keeping a balanced life. Often we expect our children just to get on with it, without a second thought to the pressures they’re experiencing or whether they’re coping, and cannot understand their moodiness or why they are “being difficult”.
In the last year I have heard increasingly of many scary accounts of “misbehaviour” by our youth, crying out for attention, often from parents who have to pour many hours into work or are simply too involved in their own lives. These include emotional outbursts, cutting, depression, inappropriate sexual behaviour, poor relationships with peers, teachers or parents.
This all being said, what do we do to help our children cope with all the craziness? It’s a tough job, but it has to be done.
Now I am no psychologist, but from first- hand experience, from a parenting perspective and a few kids later, I promise that time, support and love are valuable gifts that you can bestow on your children.
No matter how impossible you consider a situation to be or how frustrated, mad or disappointed you are, one of the most important factors to get a child through a bad situation is for them to know that you love them. Perhaps you won’t feel like it makes any difference at the time or perhaps they’re defiant or telling you that they hate you, but deep down this is not so, and that foundation of love expressed through a kind word or unreciprocated hugs, kisses and I love you’s, will never go to waste.
With older teens or young adults it is sometimes difficult to get them to spend time with us. They don’t always want to be with their parents, especially if they are in a “bad space”. There’s always something else to do, all be it sitting in one’s bedroom glued to your cell phone. Sometimes we have to meet our children where they’re at, so entice them to come out for a milkshake or engage them with something they like to do. Even half an hour now and then is better than not spending time together at all.
Support can wear many masks. It ranges from showing up to watch a sport to hearing them out when life dishes out the unpredictable or the nasty. It means being in tune even when they are not speaking about how life is treating them.
How often don’t we react before we know the whole truth? You’re stressed and tired, and your son or daughter is in trouble yet again! Do we take the time to get the details?
And, even when the young one is guilty of messing up, do we handle it constructively? Even though there should be consequences for misbehaviour, those consequences still need to be dealt out in love and not anger, building the young person’s character and their relationship with you.
It is so hard to be the parent of a teen or young adult as they begin to spread their wings of independence, but simultaneously still need our guidance and support. Our children need us to NEVER GIVE UP, to stand up for them when it counts, and to love them no matter what. And P.S., don’t forget to pray.
