Understanding Adolescent Behavior

Parental and societal views of adolescents are mostly negative. Parents should understand adolescents are becoming adult, certain behaviour are normal part of their development. And also parents should know what should and should not do for their healthy development.

Research has shown that parenting is associated with a wide array of developmental outcomes in adolescence, including academic achievement, risk behaviors such as substance use and delinquency, and psychological adjustment.

Normal adolescent behaviour

1. Wants to be more independent
2. Rebellious attitude
3. Needing more sleep
4. Mood Swings
5. Aggression
6. Lying Or Hiding Facts
7. Arguing
8. Changing one’s Appearance
9. Worrying about physical appearance
10. Refuses to do chores
11. Decreased Communication
12. Indecisiveness
13. Attract towards opposite sex

Parents should not punish or treat harshly for the above behaviours, these are sign of your child becoming an adult. Understand and accept them.

The most important things that parents can do in this stage are:

1. Learning about typical child development
2. Learning the importance of positive, non-disciplinary interactions with children and behavior
3. Responding sensitively to child’s emotional and psychological needs
4. Giving clear and developmentally appropriate directions, setting limits and rules
5. Promoting a child’s learning and intellectual development through encouragement, cognitive simulation and social opportunities.
6. Provide a sufficiently stable family environment to enable a child to develop and maintain secure attachment to the parents.
7. Monitoring the child’s activities
8. Nurturing the child’s independence

Parents should help them to achieve their Developmental tasks

1. Develop mature relations with age-mates of both sexes.
2. Achieving a masculine or feminine social role.
3. Accepting one’s physique.
4. Becoming independent from the parents.
5. Preparing for career.
6. Preparing for marriage and family
7. Acquiring a set of values and an ethical system as a guideto behavior
8. Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior.

Understand Their Emotional needs: ensuring that a child’s emotional needs are met

• To be loved
• To feel they belong to a family
• To be heard and understood
• To be accepted as they are
• To have choices and independence
• To be allowed to play

Parenting style and its outcome

1. Authoritative parents – are both responsive and demanding. warm, consistent and listen openly to their children.

   
   Adolescents with Authoritative parents score highest on measures of social competence, high on measures of self-confidence, and are least likely to engage in antisocial behaviors such as delinquency and drug use. They also show higher levels of self-reliance and self-esteem and report less depression and anxiety.

2. Permissive parents – are not demanding, inconsistent little control over their children.

Adolescents with Permissive parents tend to score high on measures of self-confidence, and report a high frequency of both drug abuse and misconduct in school.

3. Neglectful parents – are neither responding and demanding, little control over their children. They let their children do whatever they choose.

Adolescents of Neglectful parents have the least positive developmental outcomes. Ignored or rejected by parents, these children have higher aggression levels in early childhood, and their behavioral problems continue to worsen in adolescence, when they often display hostility, selfishness, and rebellious attitudes. They tend to lack long-range goals and are more likely to engage in antisocial and delinquent behaviors
such as alcohol and drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and truancy. Adolescents with disengaged parents tend to have low academic grades and test scores.

Establish Effective rule for them

while setting rule have this points in your mind

Having too many rules prevent children from learning
should be reasonable
clear
consistent
stated positively
get opinion from children

Parents should monitor behaviour such as

1. Sex, Alcohol, smoking, And Drugs
2. Increased Use Of Communication Devices And Social Media
3. Violence
4. May engage in risky behaviors
5. Physical or mental illness
6. self-harm / suicide

Get professional help as early as possible.

Critical Practices of parents, should avoid

1. Inappropriate expectations.
2. Parental lack of empathy in meeting the needs of their children.
3. Strong belief in the use of corporal punishment.
4. Oppressing children’s power and independence.

Most parents reach their middle age just when adolescents reach their puberty. This particular combination of developmental stage bring tensions for parents with their children. If the parents are prepared with relevant knowledge and skills most of the problems of adolescents are prevented and solved, even facilitate healthy development of their children.