Teenagers have a very necessary need for privacy and separation.
But it’s tough for parents to ‘let go’ and understand that it’s a rite of passage and nothing more, says Abha Adams
If you are the parent of a teenager, chances are that you are suffering a range of emotions that include frustration, despair, anger and hopelessness. The sweet little child you knew and loved has been replaced by a moody, secretive, monosyllabic recluse, who has declared his bedroom to be off limits to you and all non-teenage humanity.
I knew my son was still in the house because I could hear music from behind the door that he almost always kept locked. He would shuffle into the dining room only to eat, grunt and “aw mum” me, but almost immediately return to the privacy of his secret place.
And it is a secret. Ask teens what they are doing in their room and they will tell you that they are doing their homework or some other activity that sounds constructive. When you point out that the amount of homework produced does not tally with the number of hours they have spent locked away, they tell you they were ‘chillin’ — and advise you to ‘chill’ as well! It is a word which can mean anything, everything and nothing. It is a part of the teenage vocabulary that is also designed to exclude you. Each generation develops its own language to assert and distinguish itself from boring old mum and dad.
This process is accentuated and intensified by the media but it is long established. What was swell became spiffing. Then changed to hip, groovy, cool and is now whack. A beautiful woman became ‘bodilicious’ and a shapely one morphed into one who was ‘bootylicious’. But it is not just individual words. Teen slang is a foreign language. “Foe shizzle m’nizzle”, meaning ‘I am in agreement with my friend’, may not be part of your child’s vocabulary but easy access to all teen cultures means that it might be tomorrow, and while some of you may feel ‘dat is crunk’ meaning ‘the situation is OK’, others may not be so happy.
The truth is that teenagers have a very necessary need for privacy and a need for separation. These are the first stages in ‘letting go’ of childhood. Though it may appear they are goofing off they are in fact spending a large part of their time trying to figure out who they are, and who they want to become.
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When they are little children we give them very little privacy. We supervise, structure and control their activities and provide a safe and nurturing environment. But when they become adolescents they begin to create the independence necessary for them to cope as adults. At the same time their bodies are radically altering, hormones are surging, and their brains are restructuring to deal with the transition to adulthood. No wonder they lock themselves away!
Remember the emotional upheaval of your teenage years when high levels of hormones played havoc with emotions and actions? When most of us were at our most aggressive, most besotted, most sexually excited and also most likely to have our hearts broken.
It should be no surprise that our children behave like Quasimodo, to keep from us the turmoil within them as they seek to find ways to deal with it, and emerge more independent. And now they have TV and the Internet which gives them the control over what they see, and learn, and interact with. The raging hormones leading to aggressive cravings can be sated by computer games, the Internet and television realities. Sexual curiosity is satisfied by any number of Internet sites, and all independently of their parents. Today’s teenagers can interact with friends and people with similar interests through Facebook or Twitter. They can join mutual interest groups, confide with friends, book tickets for events and plan their social life in the privacy and safety of their bedrooms.
So while it is tempting to be constantly checking up on your children, you need to understand their need for this separation. I didn’t handle it well at all — I was impatient and felt hurt and rejected. I would have saved myself so much grief had I seen it simply as a rite of passage.
Think of the caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly, and wait for the adult to emerge! And don’t try to speak their language, because they find that so lame.