For almost two decades as a therapist, I’ve worked with parents and teens together, and I’ve seen that when parents understand what a teen needs emotionally and developmentally, parents can find completely new ways to interact and respond to their teen’s troubling behaviors.
Teens are on the cusp of adulthood in a moment of accelerated emotional and physical growth. In other words, they can be a hot mess! Their behavior can be horrible: they’re now wise enough to be incredible jerks one moment, yet utterly insecure and childish the next. They’ll get through adolescence—and so will you—but it doesn’t have to be a time of resentment, hair-pulling, and ongoing conflict.
Here are the 4 key things teens want and need, along with 4 specific things parents can do to help.
They want independence/autonomy
Teens consistently tell me how desperately they want to be independent, to be in charge of themselves and separate from their parents. For many teens, this is also a scary proposition: they know they are being swept down the river of time and will soon be adults, but adulthood often seems too much to handle.
To be independent, teens often feel they need to separate from their parent, prompting them to reject the parent. Their quest for separation often includes massive rudeness which, while offensive to the parent, often causes parents to reject the teen back.
In one session, a teen told their parent, “I wish you’d ‘F’ing disappear and get out of my life,” to which the parent coolly responded, “Fine. Then you can get yourself to your soccer game this weekend.” The teen looked close to tears, shook their head and said, “You just don’t get it.”
In this example, while it wasn’t the parent’s intent, their comment left their teen feeling abandoned.
Teens naturally explore their independence—and thus they say obnoxious things—but they need to feel their parent is a secure base of support.
(For more on teens and independence, check out the posts, “The Key Way a Teen’s Brain Works” and “Why Adolescents Sabotage Their Own Success.”)
Teens need to feel competent
If a teen feels capable and competent, they will feel more able to manage being independent in an adult world. They know they must learn life skills, but how and from whom? Learning from a parent can come at a cost.
For example, in one parent/teen session, the parent told their 17 year-old they should dress better for job interviews. The teen responded, “You realize your telling me this only makes me do the exact opposite!”
The parent may have given some good advice, but it made their teen feel dependent, subservient, and incompetent; the teen then expressed these feelings in the form of rudeness and rejection.
Teens are developing their identity/self-knowledge
As psychoanalyst Erik Erikson famously outlined in his 8-stage, psychosocial developmental theory, adolescence is a life stage in which teens must grapple with their identity.
They’re trying to figure out how and who to be in the world. They’re putting together a range of identities, from sexual and gender identity to racial, ethnic, and cultural identities. They’re also trying to figure out their social identity, from what kind of relationships they want, to how they want to show up for friends (and vice versa).
Essentially, they’re trying to figure out themselves and what’s important to them.
It’s a time of flux and experimentation, which means it can also be a time of failure when they realize their choices were poor ones.
All this can leave teens feeling insecure and confused. They may feel emotionally unstable, especially if they already carry unhealthy narratives about themselves.
The antidote to their insecurity? They need to feel loved
We see this need in how desperately they want to be accepted by their peers. Their need for peer acceptance can cause them to make poor social decisions which, when recognizing this, leaves them feeling more insecure and needy of love/approval.
This is a time when parents need to offer unconditional love, especially when disciplining a teen.
In the first example above, rather than the parent refusing to drive the teen to their soccer game, the parent needed to understand their teen’s rudeness not as a personal attack but as a crude attempt to create separation. With this understanding, the parent is more likely able to tolerate the rudeness and stay connected rather than reject the teen.
Four things parents can do
- Repeatedly recognize the teen’s developmental needs. When parents regularly put the teen’s behavior in a developmental perspective, the teen’s obnoxiousness won’t feel personally directed at the parent. This can help parents respond to their teen’s needs rather than react to the behaviors.
- Give teens space, but not too much. It’s a matter of sensing how much space the teen wants at that given moment. But don’t abandon them, even when they’re a total jerk and trigger you. They are allowed to reject the parent, but parents can’t reject them back!
- Listen and ask questions to help teens figure out what they want and what’s the best way to achieve this. By asking questions, you help them be less impulsive and more thoughtful so they can arrive at their own, healthy decisions. Avoid telling them what’s the best choice; instead, help them figure this out while maintaining their sense of independence and competence.
- Be proactive when giving unconditional love. While they push you away, they need to know you’re always there for them when they need it. Regularly show your love for them, whether it’s telling them you’re confident they will figure out a tough problem, or simply telling your teen you appreciate them. Your unconditional love will help them get through their rough times because you’re reinforcing a narrative that they’re a good, worthy, important person.
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