November/December 2023

This Snapshot aims to support parents in navigating their adolescents' intense and sometimes tumultuous emotional journey into adulthood. It offers some understanding and empathy for the challenges in parenting adolescents along with some practical strategies on how to understand, support, and guide them through the challenges they face.

When parents are more attuned to their adolescent's needs and support them in understanding and managing their emotions, it can bring child and parent closer together through empathy, communication, and mutual trust.

It's not always easy to get teens to share their feelings. But here are a few strategies that parents may try that can make a difference!

Focus your questions. Instead of asking teens: “How was school or What did you do today?”, try asking more focused questions such as “What was the best or hardest part of your day?” or “How are you liking the book you're reading for class?”.  Teenagers are more likely to open up if we steer clear of broad topics in favour of more specific subjects.

Other teens open up when they know the conversation won't last too long, such as when they'll soon be headed out the door or are on their way to bed.  It's important that we capitalize on these opportunities to connect with our teens and honour their terms of engagement.

Be present without an agenda. Teens really appreciate it when adults provide their “agendaless" presence. When we are around but aren't asking the teenager to do something or asking a lot of questions. Set aside and protect unstructured time to be with your teen. Just being together is an important way that we connect with our teenagers, and it's often in the quiet times that teens feel most inclined to share what's close to their hearts.

They should not feel ashamed or be made to feel ashamed if they experience sadness, anger, frustration or any other feeling that can be sometimes painful. When they have uncomfortable emotions, the healthiest thing they can do is to talk about what they are feeling with the people that they love and trust. Doing so is actually how they protect their mental health.

How teens perceive and approach risk can be influenced by their surroundings. When in the presence of adults or during less emotionally charged situations, teenagers tend to think more carefully about risky behavior. However, when with friends in socially or emotionally charged scenarios, they are less likely to use sound reasoning and more likely to make impulsive choices. 

The types of risks adolescents take are often shaped by norms, the accessibility of risky activities and the level of supervision. To enhance teen safety, it is recommended parents prioritize providing appropriate levels of supervision, as this has been shown to decrease the likelihood of reckless risk-taking in teenagers.

Risk-taking is most concerning when teenagers engage in high-risk behaviors with potential lasting consequences, like experimenting with drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, or reckless actions. Parents concerned about their teenager's risky behavior should openly express their worries to them. They can say, "Your safety is essential. If you can't keep yourself safe, it's my responsibility to ensure your safety, even if it means giving you less freedom."  

Parents can then have a conversation with their teen about their plans for keeping themselves safe, what has stopped them from keeping themselves safe in the past and make an assessment about whether their teen should be kept closer to home for a little while. 

It's time to seek help from a  professional when teenagers routinely engage in worrisome or dangerous behaviours – and the efforts you are making to help them are not working.

For example, an adolescent may hold it together all day at school and then come home and have an emotional outburst. When meltdowns happen here are a few suggestions to support your child.

Listen without interrupting. Older children may have an emotional outburst that involves talking in a very distressed way about whatever is wrong. At these times, the key is to let them just say it all. So often, well-meaning adults jump in or make suggestions, forgetting that expressing emotions is in and of itself a source of relief. 

Validate distress. Validation is very effective, especially for teenagers. Teens sometimes worry that there's something wrong with their feelings because their emotions can be so powerful. While there's the part of the teenager that's very upset, there's often another part of the teenager that is a little freaked out by how powerful teen emotions can be. It’s a huge comfort to teenagers when adults say: “Your feelings make sense and I can understand why you're having that reaction.” 

Offer to help problem-solve. If you have listened and validated and offered comfort and your teen is still upset, the next step can be to say “do you need help trying to solve this problem?” 

Asking for permission to offer support, as opposed to just offering advice, can help keep the conversation going with a teen. Sometimes teenagers will say “No, I just want to vent,” and you can feel confident that listening offers as much support as they need. And if they say yes, they tend to be a lot more receptive to our wisdom. For the things that can be changed, brainstorm possible solutions. Help them focus their attention on finding solutions to the problems where they can make meaningful changes.