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Adolescence
What to Expect When You're Expecting a Teenager
Advice on the challenges of parenting teens from a psychologist and parent.
Updated August 29, 2023 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- The biggest challenge of parenting teens is learning when and how to give them full control over their lives.
- Every teen has the power to hurt you by hurting themselves, so avoid escalations of spite whenever possible.
- Every teenager learns how to exploit differences between their parents; family therapy can help minimize this.
Parenting a child of any age is tough—"the toughest job you'll ever love," to quote a line from the Peace Corps—but parenting a teenager can be challenging on a whole other level. It's as if the day your first child turns 13, you get a force-fed dose of Morpheus' "red pill," causing you to fall down the rabbit hole of The Matrix and into a disorienting reality where every aspect of your psychological existence is not as it seems.
We could all use an atlas for this new world—I know I could have used one, even though I'm a psychologist—and that's why I offer you this preview: so you can prepare in advance for what to expect when you're expecting a teenager. The intel below comes from my reconnaissance missions as both a psychologist and a parent of two teens. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get through your kids' teenage years without losing your mind and everything you hold dear. Good luck.
The Core Challenge: Relinquishing Control
About 13 years ago, your first child entered the world, and the scariest part was that this child was 100 percent dependent on you. You may recall thinking, as most first-time parents do: "This baby is completely dependent on me. How am I gonna take care of this thing when I can barely take care of myself?" Ah yes, the days when everything your child did was based on a decision you made, with no debate, no backtalk, and no guilt trips. Sure, it was scary, and yes, it was tiring, but you had no idea just how good you had it.
You see, the core challenge of parenting is transitioning from a dynamic in which you have 100 percent control over everything in your child's life (as an infant) to one in which you have 0 percent control over anything your child does as a young adult. This transition happens gradually, over time, and power struggles around eating and potty training mark the first occasions that we surrender some of our control, dropping us down from 100 percent to about 90. Then come the early school years, when kids learn they have the power to refuse school and resist doing their homework, though even at this stage, we still have enough control to set up effective systems of rewards and punishments to shape their behavior.
But then, sometime during the teenage years, we arrive at a watershed moment when our level of control dwindles to about 50 percent, and our child's control over their own lives grows to about 50 percent (en route to 100). It's around this moment that our precocious adolescents make two important discoveries. The first is that they're sufficiently intelligent and independent to make alternate plans when they don't want to do what we ask of them. The second is that they can hurt us in various ways—either directly, with their rejection and disrespect, or, indirectly, by hurting themselves—and this discovery gives them power beyond their wildest dreams.
This new phase of your relationship will be marked by tugs of war over countless issues, battles over "principle," and lessons that will end with the phrase, "You don't even know what you don't know." Your teenager will put you in a position, almost daily, where you question whether you've been consistently overreacting or underreacting to them, parenting too harshly or too softly, or viewing them with too much suspicion or blind naiveté.
You will wonder where this behavior in your teenager is coming from and proudly proclaim:
"When I was your age, I had respect for my parents. I did as I was told. I ate what they put on the table. And I'd never refuse to go to school or go without my homework."
Ah, the lies we tell ourselves. They may help us attain brief moments of moral superiority, but in the big picture, they can undermine our ability to be the best parents we can be. I hate to break the news to you, but you were not the teenager you thought you were. We're all prone to distorted memories of ourselves as teenagers. Furthermore, since many of our parents' discussions about us happened behind closed doors, we were never privy to all the times they called us a $%#@&! behind our backs, but trust me, they called us that and worse.
The Next Challenge: Avoid Escalations of Spite
On Season 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David gets into an argument with the owner of his favorite coffee shop—Mocha Joe's—but instead of just taking his business elsewhere, he decides to get revenge, opening his own coffee shop—Latte Larry's—right next door. Throughout the season, Larry keeps referring to his coffee shop as a "spite store" because he's not interested in making a profit; he just spitefully wants to force Mocha Joe's out of business. As the season progresses, Larry makes a series of increasingly spiteful decisions, and, as always, things don't end well for him.
Parenting a teenager is going to make you angry, sometimes hourly. But getting too caught up in the anger can lead you to parenting decisions that are reactive and spiteful. Learn from Larry's mistakes, and resist the urge to open a "spite store."
The anger your teenager causes will distract you into thinking you need to be tough when, instead, you should be focused on making the right decision for the whole of your child's life. Though meting out a harsh punishment in response to your teen's misbehavior might make you feel good in the moment, it can easily lead to escalating battles of spite between you. Here, it's important to remind you of an inconvenient truth: with each passing day, your teenager increases their potential to hurt themselves (and you) by experimenting with drugs, eating disorder behaviors, risky sexual encounters, and parasuicide attempts, and the more spiteful they're feeling, the more likely they'll push the envelope.
Every generation of parents has decried the degradation of society, as evidenced by the shortcomings of the current crop of teenagers. Though technological advances make each generation more spoiled than their parents, what parents often fail to recognize is that each generation of kids faces more pressures and expectations than its predecessors, requiring that they have more education and socialization to succeed as adults. For this reason, more psychologists and educators seem to be coalescing around the notion that, when considering the age of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, 25 is the new 18.
Tips for Parents
- Recognize that nothing can truly prepare you for parenting a teenager and you will likely have moments when you question whether you're cut out for the job. I say this not to be discouraging but rather to help you adjust your expectations and understand that failure is par for the course.
- Be flexible about your parenting approach. There is an old Yiddish phrase that roughly translates to "man plans, and God laughs." If you're not inclined toward religion, consider the wisdom of Mike Tyson, who famously said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." It's good to start out with a plan, but sometimes parenting a teenager can feel like getting punched in the mouth. That doesn't mean you give up, but it may mean you need to adjust your strategy. Don't let pride get in the way of making changes to your original plan, especially when the evidence is telling you that your plan isn't working.
- Communication with your partner is key. Whether or not you agree on the best way to handle certain situations with the kids (and many couples don't), communicating regularly with your partner will ensure that you can reconcile any differences so you can present a unified front to your kids. If communication around difficult subjects is already a challenge, consider couples therapy before major problems arise, as teenagers are experts at exploiting any differences between their parents to their advantage.
