By: Bertha Parra Lemus (psychologist)

Adolescence is one of the most conflicting and vulnerable stages in human being’s development. This is the time when people are supposed to decide what they want and what they will do with the rest of their lives. But not only that, they also have to find their true identity (the identity of the self) and the sense of their existence. This is a terribly difficult task because besides the internal revolution that adolescents live, they also have to face external circumstances, for example the social, economical and political context that surrounds them. All this can be aggravated by the lack of understanding from the parents of a person who is in search of his/her identity and space in this world.

How these adolescent changes come up will depend, to a large extent, on the socio-cultural context that surround the adolescent, besides the education he/she had received from his/her parents during his/her childhood. This is a very important aspect because if we had a stubborn child without direction, we cannot expect that when he reaches adolescence he/she gets calm, quite the opposite, this adolescent will now be much more vulnerable and susceptible to have conducts that can harm his/her integrity. On the other hand, if parents were respectful with the kids and educated him/her in a loving and understanding environment, they will have as a result, a less confused adolescent than the rest of the other adolescents.

When we talk about adolescence we are talking about crisis. Carvajal (1993) explains the three main crises of the adolescent: identity crisis, authority crisis, and sexual crisis. The adolescent life will develop among these three crises. Such crises will show depending on the kind of adolescence he/she is going through, and the stage he is in. Emotions are never lived as intensely as in this stage of life, everything is experienced in a macro way: sadness, joy, worries, anger, fear, etc.

The adolescence of children refer parents to their own adolescence, this stage is, in many cases, remembered as a very complicated stage in life, that is the reason why we tend to bury it in our memory with good and bad memories. That is, the “whole package” goes to the subconscious and we don’t want to remember it any more.

When our children reach this stage, the first thing we think is: “Oh my God! Here we go to the coming of age!” What happens is that parents forget many times that they also had to go though this stage to get where they are.

This is also aggravated by the situation the parents are going through, because they most frequently are in the middle age crisis, and suddenly they question themselves the same things their adolescent children are questioning with the difference that they don’t have the same time that their children have, that is, they do not have “a whole life ahead of them”, this can provoke jealousy and envy feelings in parents regarding their own children, who (although most of the times we do not accept) are at the peak of their life.

The adolescence process implies to elaborate a series of mournings among which we can find, the mourning of the parents of the childhood, the loss of the child body and the privileges of children. It is very important to be aware of this kind of mournings or pains in the adolescent. We must not take personally their stubborn attitudes, because we can get tapped in an endless battle in which, both, (parents and children) will end losing, nevertheless, the adolescent is the most harmed, since it is his personal integrity that is at stake as well as the integrity he/she might get to consolidate in this stage of life.

All adolescents are “stubborn”, all of them are “impetuous”, all adolescents defy authority and will try, by all means, to do their will and impose their way of thinking. All these reactions are the result of an inner search of the own identity, away from parents and any other authority figure. On the other hand the adolescent is not a fool, he will look for other “ideal” figures in order to carry out this identity process.

As parents of an adolescent kids, it is important to help them feel self-confident, it means that they can be sure that the education, values end principles they have received until this moment, have been the right thing to do. In this way, the adolescent will be protected against the outer world adversities and it will be more difficult that they fall into self-destructives attitudes. This trust in parents will help them both to feel more confident, secure and free because they will be able to use their freedom with responsibility.

As a final remark, it is essential to remember that this is the time of the adolescent, parents already had their time, now it is parents turn to make it easier for children, supporting and understanding them, but above all, loving them. All this will mark the difference between a happy or unhappy adolescence.

There is still a lot to say on this topic about adolescence, and we will later on, but for now, we hope these thoughts may be useful.

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