You recently completed a poll of your
"top 3" issues in parenting your teens and pre-teens.
From 27 possible issues to choose from, you selected "negative
attitude," "lack of respect for parents," and
"chores" as the "top 3." "Attitude"
was included by more of you than any other issue.
Why "attitude?" Why
"respect?"
These two are essentially interpersonal-relationship
issues rather than "behaviors." And they are very much
alike. So much are they alike that I'm not sure we should have
included them as separate issues in the survey. Your child's
exhibiting a negative attitude is, after all, likely to be experienced
by you as a child's "lack of respect," and vice versa.
If you add together all the votes for "attitude"
and "respect," you find that 93% of all participants
included one and/or the other as a "top 3" issue!
In other words, almost all
of you who participated in this poll have an issue with your
teen's or pre-teen's emotional stance toward you.
Why is this so?
You have to remember that what
your teen/pre-teen is all about is getting separate from you
and becoming his or her own person. The nearly universal teenage
"bad attitude" has multiple meanings and motivations.
But one common function of "having a bad attitude"
or "disrespecting" you is to demonstrate--to himself
and you--your child's capacity to resist depending on you.
It's like they're saying, "Testing,
testing, 1...2....3.... Can I survive your getting mad at me,
Mom, Dad? Can you survive my being negative toward you sometimes?
Can we both survive my need to push away from you?"
Parents who want to learn more
about attitude, respect can also go to the Archives
and read the Q&A's on "attitude," "autonomy/independence,"
"communication," and "family relations,"
or almost any other topic in the Archives, for suggestions on
management of these issues.
Chores: arguments about them, whining
about them, failure to perform them.... Nag, nag, nag on one
side and whine, excuse, protest on the other.... A not very pretty
but very typical parent/teenager form of communication.
"Chores" were ranked
as among the "top 3" parenting issues by almost 25%
of you (a significant percentage, given that there were, remember,
27 possible issues to select from). This is the only actual behavioral
issue that was chosen among the "top 3"--that is, an
issue about what adolescents do/do not do. Arguing, complaining
about, and failing or forgetting to do chores is probably the
most common and again among the most harmless ways in which adolescents
and budding adolescents demonstrate their need and ability to
push against parental expectations and to resist their need for
your approval.
Different families have different
routines and expectations and traditions around chores, but where
some performance of household duties is expected of family members,
the adolescent finds a ready-made way of going against the flow,
if only just to prove that s/he can.
For more on "chores,"
and how to handle this issue, see this topic in the Archives,
along with "rooms" and "autonomy/independence."
You can ease your own anxiety and salve
your wounded feelings if you can remember that your children,
during adolescence and as it approaches, are engaging in healthy
struggles, whose potential results--standing on their own two
feet and knowing who they are--are goals that in fact you probably
support.
There is no question that the
struggle is hard, that it is difficult, that it is painful and
even dangerous. It is also inevitable, in healthy children, and,
like your child's learning to walk, can and most often does afford
significant rewards to both parties, along with bumps and scrapes
and near-miss injuries. A difference is that, during adolescence,
unlike the learning-to-walk phase, you take some of the bumps
along with your kids. Beginning, often enough, with surviving
their attitude.
