As a teenager I liked to spend lots of time in my room reading. The internet did not exist and there was nothing to listen to on the radio. So reading it was, to the annoyance of my mother who occasionally burst in to complain that I was not out helping my father with the farm work.
The technology has changed but the teenage desire to spend more time with oneself and less time with one’s parents has not. Nor has the fact that this is sometimes a source of angst to parents.
It was the same with my long walks in the fields. When my father arrived to count his sheep and cattle I gave him a wide berth because I wanted to continue living in my own head without interruption. My mother eventually told me that he found this hurtful so I changed my ways.
But despite what must have seemed to my parents to be a form of rejection, I always knew they were around and that everything was going along as it always had done and – I may even have believed – as it always would do.
That was reassuring without my having to realise it was reassuring.
Being present is easier said than done
So when parents of today think their once-adorable child no longer wants to spend time with them, it’s worth remembering that their presence alone is valuable to their teenager.
Being present is easier said than done. The working world makes its demands because parents are trying to take care of their careers as well as their children or because they need the work to pay high rents or mortgages.
Everyday technologies provide ways to create a sense of connection with your teenage son or daughter
As education consultant Lisa Damour pointed out in a New York Times article, parents can use technology to create a sort of presence when work takes them away from home. Texting, Whatsapping, Skyping, facetiming, all help the teen to feel the parent is being a parent. And that's reassuring even if they're rolling their eyes at the time.
You wouldn’t want to get crazy with this: if you’re going to be home only an hour late, setting up a Skype call with your teen would definitely be overdoing it. The key point is that everyday technologies provide ways to create a sense of connection with your teenage son or daughter when you have to be away from home.
The same applies when parents are living separately.Tthe teenage years commence the period in which they separate out emotionally from their parents
One of the great advantages in being physically present is that it boosts the chances of your teenager opening up and telling you things. As parents know, direct questions don’t usually get much of a response from teenagers. However, if you are present in the home space and not pushing them for information they will occasionally start the conversation themselves. You need to be interested when this happens but try not to dive in and devour them for information or they may clam up again.
No, it’s not easy being a parent. Not that it’s easy being a teenager either. For boys and girls the teenage years commence the period in which they separate out emotionally from their parents. This kicks off without anybody telling them it’s kicking off and it happens at a time when emotional responses are growing strongly but the brain’s ability to regulate those emotions is still underdeveloped.
It doesn’t help that teenagers’ reading of other people’s emotions still needs fine-tuning, so they often interpret expressions of interest as hidden criticism. This is probably also down to that sudden speeding up of the activity of the emotional brain and, to be fair, mistaking concern for criticism is most definitely not a characteristic of teenagers alone.
With all this going on it’s easy for parents to underestimate the value to their teen of being present as much as they can, and within reason, in their space, even though they may never say so.
So if you’re a parent who is finding it a tough task to communicate with your teen, remember: presence is a kind of communication in itself, and it matters.