Respect What Your Teenagers Care About

Just adapted/rollingstone.com pictures

You are only a child once but having children affords you the opportunities of re-living your childhood lifestyles/experiences again and again.
The teen years happens to be one of the most difficult and interesting one at the same time.
Your teenagers would often stop at nothing to drag you to the limits, and if ever you want to remain that strict mum or dad, who is always insisting on having things done your way, you would be causing a lot of damages instead of being adaptable to their choices while playing your roles a caring parent.

I have a friend who went all the way to have his two teenage sons do things just the way he wants without giving them any opportunity of being themselves, he was able to do this till they got older in years, 14 and 16 years and the whole things came back bouncing on him that he wasn't being fare to his children as he discovered that they were behaving abnormally when compared with other teenagers of their age, by the time he sees the needs to let them explore the world around them on their own, the kids were already behaving like adults with confused mindsets.

 Dangers Of Not Allowing The Kids To Live As Kids

1. It hinders their overall growths and makes them incapable of taking their own decisions

2. Their level of confidence would be retarded making them overly dependent on their parents or other kids to fight their battles for them

3. It makes the kids subjects to bullying by other kids of their age and even those younger than them even

4. It elongate the works of the parents because they have to be available to do things for them; even some minor things that they suppose to do by themselves

5. It also makes mixing with other kids very difficult and cooperation with other kids awful.

Granted that the children are bound to make some mistakes but if you don't let them, they would end up not making any improvements in their life because they were not given any chances of being themselves.

When you allow your kids some reasonable spaces to be themselves, you 'll discover that doing things with them affords you some great opportunities of learning new things. from them.

Totally different community of their own/thedenverchannel.com

  It would enable you to know the challenges of their time and probably find out how time had changed thus enabling you to follow them up accordingly and not unnecessarily dragging them backwards to your own time and age of long ago.

Another area to be careful about is with their choices. Your kids would take it personal if you regularly criticize their choices and this often makes them believe that they doesn't matter much to you.

 If you doesn't bow low to their reasoning at times, it will be hard to get along with them and if that gets to their self-esteem and sends wrong signals that you hate and disapproves of them, that on it's own usually creates enough barricades between you and them thereby worsening the whole things.

They have their choices of music, dressing, associates, and many other things. In all of these areas, your parenting roles should be seen and clearly felt. Though sometimes being a bit hard on them to have them do the right thing is good, because if you let them on the loose for them to do everything the way and manner they want, they may end up causing you shame and bringing problems to themselves and you when you least expects it.

A father and his daughter reasoning on some issues of interests/chocchildrens.org

  Knowing one fact will help you to know the extent you can go in doing this, 'ie' knowing that you can't be be there all through life with them. Show them the reason why some choices they make is wrong and needs to be adjusted.

As a parent, you may be doing all you could not to be hard on your children but they may not always look at things that way but would rather continue to explore ways of  rebelling against the rules of their parents.

Whenever the situation becomes tensed with confusions, the parent needs just to know that nothing extraordinary is taking place except mere transitions from dependent child to independent adult who want to live his life just as you are now living without anyone looking over your shoulders, at least to the extent that you now does to him.

 Accept it and move on with the knowledge that this is a stage soon to pass and have things rectified in its own ways.

As a parent, you no doubt have a whole lot to do in bringing up your children to an independent adults but for the mean time, show some interests in the things they enjoy and help them to have the right perspectives about them despite the fact that they tries to outsmart you in most of the times, but never mind and do not try to prove to them that you know all their secrets.

They know that you as their parents are adults and that you have the extents you can go with them in showing interests in their choices and that's pretty cool but just try not to be too hard on them when they do some certain things shows them as children that they are.

Broad mindset is needed even while dealing with others outside our homes and our teenagers are likewise making their moves gradually on into the adult society where things are done differently, so applying all the day to day tactics would definitely help them to be better prepared for the real life out there.

Read More On What Constitutes Real Successful Life Here

Though it may be scary while all these changes are taking place but know that they must occur and the earlier you get your mind prepared for this the better so that it doesn't come to you as a surprise.

 As parents, there were time when you mimicked your children as the toddlers learning how to make some audible sounds and that served its own purpose but now the mimicking has changed a little bit to be between an adult and others preparing to become adults, so let the mimicry run its course for the smooth transitions of your teenagers into adult hoods.

This post is in the series of Effective Parenting Techniques