Sometimes, it can be hard for parents to accept that their children will one day be able to live independent lives, and not have to ask for permission to do so.
Of course, it doesn’t just happen on one particular day. It’s best viewed as a gradual process that parents who are tuned in to their children’s development will recognize and facilitate.
It’s not always a smooth path, though. It’s a bit like living in an earthquake zone, with one force pushing one way and the other resisting it. It tends to work out better when there are many small readjustments: things might be uncomfortable for a while after a minor tremor, but then they settle down with a new equilibrium.
But things can go wrong when parents resist the pressure to change for too long. When two strong and unyielding forces meet head-on, the result can be a major disaster and sometimes families never recover.
Our society and legal system impose restrictions on teenagers to prevent them from being regarded as adults. These include age restraints on a whole range of activities such as smoking, drinking, driving, having sex, voting and consenting to medical treatments to name just a few. There are minor variations from country to country and state to state but the general pattern is similar.
It’s as if some people expect every teenager to spend 17 years and 364 days being treated as a child, and then have them magically wake up on the morning of their 18th birthday as a complete fully-functioning adult. In reality, the skills required are learned gradually over time, and every child is different. In many ways, imposing uniform, artificial, politically-driven age limits on everyone is problematic, because:
This is where parents come in. Many parents think that their influence is largely over by the time their children go into high school as their child’s peers start to take over. This is only true if parents allow it to be true.
In fact, this is the time when parents can have a major influence on guiding their children to adulthood – but it requires some changes.
There is considerable evidence to suggest that if teenagers are treated like adults, they will behave like adults. However, this won’t happen overnight. There will be times when they will slip back. Parents need to create as many opportunities as possible to spend time with their teenagers in ways that signal they are now moving towards being treated more like an adult than a child.
This means doing things like:
The bottom line is this: adolescence is a time of gradual transition, not a sudden leap. If parents refuse to acknowledge this, it’ll be left to those often poorly-equipped (think TV shows and movies, school and other teenagers) to do the job of guiding teenagers towards adulthood.
As parents, you know your child best, and what values you’d like to encourage. Rather than having your world turned upside down because you’ve taken a hard line, you’ll have more success if you allow for some little shifts in perspective along the way.