Teens - by Darylynn Starr Rank
March, 2007

I telephoned Elaine Stoll, who is doing a workshop on Parenting Youth:  Survival Tips.  The description of the program read, “[since] many parents experience parenting teens as more difficult than the “Terrible Twos”…  This practical workshop will provide you with tips and strategies.”  

I was curious about the tips, the strategies, that could help parents cope with – imagine the drum roll here – “the terrible teens!”   I kept trying to imagine the tricks, techniques, the gimmicks really, that would transform those lovely children – who had suddenly turned into unrecognizable creatures back into lovely children.  What gimmicks could parents use to change what so many people refer to as those impossible years?

“How do I stop him from doing that?!”  “How do I get her to do what she’s supposed to?!”   “Who is that person?!”

So I asked Elaine. “What do you do to stop them?”

Short answer is you don’t.  You can’t.  Stopping them is not what it’s about, she said, although in very different words.  Her words?  Very straightforward.  “No human being can succeed at controlling another human being,” she said. 

Sigh.  So there went the gimmicks.  Up in smoke, as usual.  She actually implied that teenagers were human beings! 

She talked about the simple fact that we all know (to some extent anyway) how to interact with people in effective, cooperative ways.  We do it at work, with friends, with the checkout person at the supermarket. 

But when it comes to interacting with teenage children, or spouses for that matter – you know, those people who ‘belong’ to us – we often have completely different standards, and utterly different behaviours.  We yell, we scream, we push, in ways we’d never do with anybody else.  And guess what?  The effects are usually pretty ineffective.  Why, I wonder, are we surprised?

So one of the workshop’s major goals is to help parents pull back from trying to control those lovely, unrecognizable teen creatures.  To deal with them in respectful, thoughtful ways instead.  To take a breath before the shouting starts.  On both sides.

So you want them to do their homework.  They don’t want to do their homework.  (Another surprise . . .) It’s hard, and complicated, often boring.  But they know they have to.  So you step in and start urging, then convincing, then yelling at them, to do their homework.  And they get mad at you.  And fight back with you.  Suddenly you’re the problem, instead of their homework.  It’s always much easier to fight with you than to struggle with their conflicting urges around what’s due the next day.

So maybe one of your jobs is to get out of their way.  Not be their “straw person”.  You know, the thing they fight against instead of tackling the real issue.

And it works!  Some parents and teens are so excited with the results of the ‘pulling back’ that the kid actually comes along – voluntarily! – for the second workshop class.

Take a breath, first.  Might be worth a try.  Maybe it’ll actually work better to treat your teens, or even your spouses, like you treat that very nice person at the checkout counter…

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

Back to Article Index