Teenage Life

Being a teenager is a strange and yet exciting part of life. We are faced with tough and critical decisions each and every day- decisions that will affect our lives. Everyone goes through the teenage years, but as people get older, they seem to lose touch with their teenage experiences and feel as though they can't relate to anything that teenagers go through.

Adolescence, the period between childhood and adulthood, is often a difficult time, both for parents and their children.

This is when young people establish an identity of their own, separate themselves from their parents, and create significant relationships outside their own families.

Many parents experience 'mourning' for this loss of their child as they adjust to the moody, obstinate person who has taken his or her place. Teenagers may also be mourning the loss of their own childhood and family relationships of earlier years.

It is important to keep the situation in perspective. Adolescence is an essential rite of passage which every adult has been through. Think back to your own teenage years: How did you rebel? What were your clothes like? Did your parents complain about the music you listened to? In short, were your experiences, attitudes and relationships really that much different from what's taking place with your own adolescent?

Parents' major task is to let teenagers grow up and become independent, learning to make the decisions that affect their own lives.

Limits need to be set, but within those boundaries there must be room for adolescents to spread their wings and get a sense of who they are and who they want to become. They will reject some excellent advice along the way - but that's part of growing up. Fortunately, many of the values parents instilled prior to adolescence will survive.