Imaginif...the spirit of Christmas lasted.

Everyone knows that parenting a teen is hard…but do they know why? There is a theory and understanding (past hormones) behind why teens are generally a difficult age group to parent.

According to life span theorists, each different age grouping has different tasks. Tasks need to be successfully met for the individual to psychologically mature into the next life span group. If tasks are not completed then the individual loses psychological growth continuity and will stay stuck in that psychological age until somebody helps them to master the tasks.

I sure don’t want my adolescent to be adolescent for any longer than he has to, so I’m all for helping him to complete his developmental tasks – even though it is conflictual and gut wrenching for me at times.

Adolescence is work heavy in terms of the tasks they need to meet to grow into a successful young adults because there are eleven distinct developmental jobs that must be met. The eleven tasks all lean toward the creation of an adult identity.

The eleven tasks our adolescents need to successfully complete to become functional adults are:

• The adolescent must adjust to a new physical sense of self. At no other time since birth does an individual undergo such rapid and profound physical changes as during early adolescence. Puberty is marked by sudden rapid growth in height and weight. Also, the young person experiences the emergence and accentuation of those physical traits that make him or her a boy or girl. The young person looks less like a child and more like a physically and sexually mature adult. The effect of this rapid change is that the young adolescent often becomes focused on his or her body.
• The adolescent must adjust to new intellectual abilities. In addition to a sudden spurt in physical growth, adolescents experience a sudden increase in their ability to think about their world. As a normal part of maturity, they are able to think about more things. However, they are also able to conceive of their world with a new level of awareness. Before adolescence, children’s thinking is dominated by a need to have a concrete example for any problem that they solve. Their thinking is constrained to what is real and physical. During adolescence, young people begin to recognize and understand abstractions. The growth in ability to deal with abstractions accelerates during the middle stages of adolescence.
• The adolescent must adjust to increased cognitive demands at school. Adults see high school in part as a place where adolescents prepare for adult roles and responsibilities and in part as preparatory for further education. School curricula are frequently dominated by inclusion of more abstract, demanding material, regardless of whether the adolescents have achieved formal thought. Since not all adolescents make the intellectual transition at the same rate, demands for abstract thinking prior to achievement of that ability may be frustrating.
• The adolescent must develop expanded verbal skills. As adolescents mature intellectually, as they face increased school demands, and as they prepare for adult roles, they must develop new verbal skills to accommodate more complex concepts and tasks. Their limited language of childhood is no longer adequate. Adolescents may appear less competent because of their inability to express themselves meaningfully.
• The adolescent must develop a personal sense of identity. Prior to adolescence, one’s identity is an extension of one’s parents. During adolescence, a young person begins to recognize her or his uniqueness and separation from parents. As such, one must restructure the answer to the question “What does it mean to be me?” or “Who am I?”
• The adolescent must establish adult vocational goals. As part of the process of establishing a personal identity, the adolescent must also begin the process of focusing on the question “What do you plan to be when you grow up?” Adolescents must identify, at least at a preliminary level what are their adult vocational goals and how they intend to achieve those goals.
• The adolescent must establish emotional and psychological independence from his or her parents. Childhood is marked by strong dependence on one’s parents. Adolescents may yearn to keep that safe, secure, supportive, dependent relationship. Yet, to be an adult implies a sense of independence, of autonomy, of being one’s own person. Adolescents may vacillate between their desire for dependence and their need to be independent. In an attempt to assert their need for independence and individuality, adolescents may respond with what appears to be hostility and lack of cooperation.
• The adolescent must develop stable and productive peer relationships. Although peer interaction is not unique to adolescence, peer interaction seems to hit a peak of importance during early and middle adolescence. The degree to which an adolescent is able to make friends and have an accepting peer group is a major indicator of how well the adolescent will successfully adjust in other areas of social and psychological development.
• The adolescent must learn to manage her or his sexuality. With their increased physical and sexual maturity, adolescents need to incorporate into their personal identity, a set of attitudes about what it means to be male or female. Their self-image must accommodate their personal sense of masculinity and femininity. Additionally, they must incorporate values about their sexual behavior.
• The adolescent must adopt a personal value system. During adolescence, as teens develop increasingly complex knowledge systems, they also adopt an integrated set of values and morals. During the early stages of moral development, parents provide their child with a structured set of rules of what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and unacceptable. Eventually the adolescent must assess the parents’ values as they come into conflict with values expressed by peers and other segments of society. To reconcile differences, the adolescent restructures those beliefs into a personal ideology.
• The adolescent must develop increased impulse control and behavioral maturity. In their shift to adulthood, most young people engage in one or more behaviors that place them at physical, social, or educational risk. Risky behaviors are sufficiently pervasive among adolescents that risk taking may be a normal developmental process of adolescence. Risk taking is particularly evident during early and middle adolescence. Gradually adolescents develop a set of behavioral self-controls through which they assess which behaviors are acceptable and adult-like.

Many thanks to Dr Michael Carr-Gregg for the above eleven tasks.

Reducing the above eleven tasks into an easy to remember reminder for parents, the major task of adolescence is SEPARATION. They separate from us.

This is why it is so very difficult to parent teens: they are already separating from us in an attempt to fulfil their accepted life stage jobs, but, we parents are trying to fulfil our job of looking after them. It is a mix of jobs sure to meet head on in explosions at times. This is why our teens do things we consider stupid, this is why they get drunk, take drugs, befriend people we find dubious, etc, etc. Our teens are sampling life and sub consciously finding ways to move through their task driven teen years to become successful and well adjusted adults. We are trying to stop them from doing those stupid things so that they can grow into wonderful and functional people. Both parents and their teens are aiming for the same thing but our processes are completely different.

One thing I have learned (by parenting my own teens rather than professional learning about teens) is that six months in the life of an adolescent is a long time. Just because a young person was drinking or smoking at the beginning of the year DOES NOT mean they will be drinking and smoking six months later. Handled in a supportive, educative and understanding way by parents, the young person’s task of separation can be met and they can move toward a much more mature and responsible person without the experience of family fights.

Here’s to the most successful transition toward young adulthood that you can have. I am looking forward to surviving the last of my teenagers. Number four is now 14 and his move toward adulthood is no less conflictual because of my experience. However, it is my attitude and understanding of life stages that has made my life as a parent of a teen way easier. Change your attitude toward your teen and you help them grow up beautifully.