Posts tagged adolescence
3 Metaphors for Parenting Teens
3 Metaphors for Parenting Teens

Parenting a teen is a new game! The main goal of parenting a teen is to raise an adult. That means your main parenting task between roughly 12 and 18 is to make the shift from being the captain of the ship to being the wise guide. After all, it is simply not possible to drive down the street for you child and to claim that your child is learning to drive. Before he or she can get a license, your child has to get behind the wheel and drive down the street without you in the car. Keep these three metaphors in mind in helping you be the parent of a teen.

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Build Connections, Communication, Confidence, Independence, Letting go, Parenting, TrustElisabeth Stittself advocacy, communication, confidence, teen, teens, teenager, middle school, freedom, independence, balance, hormones, adolescenceComment
Don't take your teen so personally!
Don't take your teen so personally!

Have you heard the cry of, 
OMG, YOU ARE SO EMBARRASSING!

Has your young teen shifted from skipping down the street holding your hand to acting as if you have the plague?  Such behavior is so teen-movie, situational-sitcom cliché we almost don't fully expect it to happen to us.  But if your child is developing normally and as he needs to do, he will have that moment when he acts as if you are an alien creature he has never seen before.  

Your frontal cortex is fully formed:  You have the big picture and long-term perspective.  That makes it your job to keep calm and parent on.  Repeating the mantra, This is a stage, it will pass, and it has nothing to do with me personally, it will help.  

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Build Connections, Communication, Independence, Letting go, ParentingElisabeth Stittteens, adolescence, adolescents, parenting, parenting is hard, rebellion, adolescent developmentComment