5 June 2024
When my teenage child throws a temper tantrum
Reading time: 3′
Adolescence is a period of changes, physical and psychological, in the life of the child and by extension also in the life of the parents. It is a phase of the family that has special challenges every day.
Parents break out of the pattern of specific behaviors they have been dealing with with their child and are challenged to try something new. Of course, building a proper relationship with the child based on trust, connection and respect from an early age is a very important privilege for the period of adolescence.
One of the common characteristics of adolescence is nerves and anger. The adolescent is called upon to deal with physical changes, in conjunction with his other priorities of establishing independence, social relationships, romantic relationships, challenging parental authority, turning to peers, and school performance.All of the above, together with emotional immaturity and risk-taking, cause angry outbursts, a little different from the angry outbursts we were used to in childhood, and for this reason they need different treatment.
During the tension...
A first and most important difference with childhood, is that while in childhood it is recommended not to leave the child alone when he is angry, because as a small child he does not know what to do with his anger and feels abandoned, in adolescence it is preferable to let the teenager calm down and then talk to him.A phrase like “I see how angry you are, we’ll talk about it later” is enough to let the teenager settle his anger. Of course, if during anger he hits us or pushes us, we do not allow it and leave his space saying. “I understand that you are very angry.And we don’t knock. Hits hurt and hurt. I’ll see you later. We will find the solution together.” Also, teenagers have a tendency to become surprisingly “bad.” They do this by either using bad words or saying things that offend.In general, we can hear incredible conversations from a teenager. The worse these phrases are, the angrier the teenager is. What we must do is, under no circumstances, take these conversations personally. To help with this, we can repeat to ourselves, “Don’t take it personally.”
“It’s a phase and it will pass.” “He doesn’t mean what he says.” And then, after we have calmed down first, let’s say to our child “Out!! That hurt a lot! You say some bad words that I can’t hear my love, take your time and we’ll talk later” and nothing else. Calmly, and without continuing the verbal attack.
Then...
After we have calmed down the teenager and ensured our own calm, we should approach him and discuss the incident and possibly find out the reason for this outburst. Anger should always be voiced, regardless of age, so it doesn’t escalate and cause unpleasant behaviors.Always putting in the back of our mind the fact that we cannot control the teenager or take responsibility for him/her, we arm ourselves with patience and start the conversation. We remember not to be critical of anything we hear, and we stay cool by showing curiosity, even if we hear unacceptable things.Our helper in this effort is empathy and active listening. With these techniques, we try to help the child to deal with what brought him to this situation, to feel the difficult emotions that he is trying to avoid feeling by using anger as a shield – a disappointment, a frustration, an intense anxiety, and even cry.If this doesn’t happen, even if his voice breaks a bit as he talks to us, it’s an indication that he feels the difficult emotions he has accumulated and is working through them with our help.
Indicative:
“Wow, it must have been very hard for you to see that all your friends had gone to the square and no one invited you.”
“You must have been very stressed when you saw Maria kissing George. You liked this girl very much.”
“It sounds stressful to have to wear new clothes to school every day or your friends will make fun of you.”
“Really; Tell me more.”
Therefore, we “respond” to our child’s anger by listening and showing understanding. If we react to anger with anger, the child will shut down and we will never learn what is behind the anger, nor will we be able to get closer to our child.
On the contrary, the situation will escalate, we will drift further apart and have the opposite results from what we want. At any age and especially in adolescence, our only weapon for all setbacks is our relationship with the child.