Health News resources and information

Parents should try to recollect their own reactions and desires in adolescence. If they remember how they resented the authority of their parents, they will understand why their children object to strict rules. If they recall their fantasies and daydreams and grandiose plans, they will listen with tolerance, rather than derision, when their children plan to remake the world or to become poets, missionaries, or explorers. Parents must realize that their children’s adolescence may be stormy while theirs was quietly miserable, or vice versa.

Psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Weininger points out that adolescents frequently have the correct attitude towards living. They are idealistic, intense about life, and hopeful that they can participate in making life better for everyone. The adolescent may not be very practical in his attempts to reach his ideals, but his idealism is worth our consideration and respect.

Our job is to help the adolescent reach the goal of maturity. We have already talked about how to help the child reach sexual maturity. There are a number of things we can do to help in the attainment of social maturity. Here are some practical measures:

1. Let the teenager feel he has a place in the family. Discuss or at least explain family decisions.
   
2. Give him the details of the family budget. Present a true picture of what things cost in terms of the parents’ outlay of time and energy. Let him see that his share is a reasonable one, and not the result of an arbitrary decision.
   
3. Encourage a sense of responsibility about money. Give the teenager a regular allowance—once a month, for those 16 or over.
   
   1. Do everything you possibly can do to enable an adolescent boy or girl, or one who is approaching adolescence, to have friends.
      
   2. Give the adolescent a chance to leave home. Younger children can first go to camp or to visit relatives. Then let them go to visit friends. Older and more mature adolescents should be permitted to take jobs away from home during summer vacations. These breaks from home life give the adolescent valuable training in self-confidence. They also help reduce the tensions that adolescents generate in their rebellion against home rules and restrictions. The adolescent soon learns that there are rules anywhere he goes.
      
   3. Let the teenager decide on his own career, and try to get expert guidance for him. If your daughter wants to enter a profession rather than marry at the age that her mother did, let her work it out in her own way. Do not add to the social pressure that often makes a girl marry before she is ready for it. Similarly, if your son is willing to give up a lucrative family business for the lesser financial return of some other work, let him follow his own interests.
      
   4. Help your children learn to know you as individuals, not just as parents—as human beings who may make mistakes but want to do the best for their children because they love them. It is better to show your love than it is to talk about it. One way to show your love is by remembering that the growing egos of adolescents need psychological nourishment as much as their growing bodies need food. But be careful not to praise your children for qualities they do not possess. They will either suspect you of being insincere or think you believe that they are, which will make them feel inadequate and insecure. Surely you can find plenty of good things you can truthfully say about your children!
      

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 5:02 am and is filed under General health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.