“The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”-Quentin Crisp. Indeed, as children become teenagers and descends into adolescence, they became more rebellious and emotional even as they become more physically and psychologically mature. At this time, if parents still treat them like children such as taking them to ‘baby doctors’, they will become irritated. To mature, teenagers need more responsibility, as well as the trust that comes with that responsibility.
The problem of parents treating teenagers like children escalates in the case of overprotective parents, who often place restrictions on teenagers’ behavior and lifestyles. At adolescence, teenagers’ ability to feel excitement had been dulled, and therefore they need to perform more extreme activities in order to get that adrenaline rush. However, parents are often unable to understand this, and in the case of overprotective parents, place restrictions on those abilities in order to ‘protect’ them, which would of course just make the teenagers even more rebellious and defy them just for the sake of it, resulting in a vicious cycle.
As the brains of the teenagers mature, the social behavior of the teenagers change. The teenager brain already has the adult capability, but not the restraint that comes with age. It has already developed intellectually, but in the teenage brain, the amygdala is developing faster than the frontal lobes, leading to reactive, but not reflective, behavior in teenagers. Therefore, the surrounding environment is a very important influence on how the teenagers’ brains will develop. So, parents should treat teenagers with respect and give them more freedom, responsibilities and trust.
This is because most parents simply did not want to admit that their children had already grown up and does not have to depend on them anymore. Also, many of them, due to a mix of pride and stubbornness, do not want to admit that their college-aged kids actually know a lot more than them. Also, A generation or two ago, many people finished school, started work, and got married — all while still in their teens. However, now, many teenagers are financially dependent on their parents well into their twenties, leading the parents to be inclined to think of them as children. While those parents are extremely passionate about their children, a trait which served them well when their children are still children, after they start to grow up, many of them manipulate their kids to keep control through guilt, bribery, threats, intimidation, fear, and anger.
Although some parents may argue that teenagers have no sense of responsibility and not enough maturity, actually, teenagers aged 14-15 have a brain that functions better than an adult brain, and most of them had attained both physical and psychological maturity, and when parents give them responsibilities and trust, it had been proved that they can take care of themselves sufficiently well, as well as be trusted with important decisions and have a certain degree of financial independence – just that most parents refuse to admit it.
Therefore, I think that parents should respect their adolescent kids and grant them enough freedom, trust, and responsibilities to sate them and make them feel more mature, as well as to help them mature faster.
