TIMESOFINDIA.COM | Last updated on – Mar 15, 2020, 16:00 ISTShare
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01/4Is your child stepping into the teenage years?
Here are three ways in which parenting changes as your children advance into their teen years.
02/4Step down as the primary decision-maker
As parents, you would take responsibility for every aspect of your child’s life when they were kids. Parents take all the major decisions from daily timetables to where they would go to school. However, as teens, they need to start managing their own lives. They need to learn to be responsible for their actions. Parents need to adapt accordingly. If they do not stop micromanaging their child’s life it can breed rebellion. This does not mean parents stop saying no completely. It only means that you include your adolescent children in the process of decision making and coach them into making the right decisions.
03/4Talk to them like adults
When children are younger and impressionable, giving them a piece of information about something, say the advantages of maintaining personal hygiene, can help them understand and abide by your advice. In adolescent children, giving them a piece of information is not enough. At their age, they feel they need to be treated with the same amount of respect as an adult and giving them information, especially when they feel they already know about it, makes them feel like their parents are treating them like kids. Also, the topics that adolescents need coaching and influence on are not as simple as personal hygiene, but, are much more fragile. The best way to get a point across to a teenager is if you treat them as an equal and talk to them with the same respect as you would do with a colleague.
04/4There are a lot of hard conversations
As children grow older, topics they and their parents need to talk about are not as simple as their favourite food or their day at school. Drugs, sex and even a discussion about college applications can get heated very fast. It can be hard for both parties to manage their emotions when such sensitive topics are being discussed. Parents should treat these topics with care and make sure not to hurt their or their child’s emotions they need to listen more intently to their teen. Moreover, you need to stay calm to help your child open up to you and fester a healthy conversation.
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