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Staying Connected to Your Teenager
by Michael Riera, Ph.D.
Staying connected while they're trying to break free.
It is a continual source of frustration for anyone
parenting a teenager- how do you get them to talk to you instead of
grunting one-word answers? According to parenting expert Michael
Riera, letting your teenager establish his independence doesn't have to
mean he becomes a stranger. His latest book, Staying Connected to Your
Teenager, tells us both why and how.
Staying connected can have definite advantages beyond the obvious. One
study showed that an emotional connection with their parents significantly
delayed the onset of sexual activity in adolescent girls; and despite the
fact they are becoming more self-sufficient, teenagers need their parent's
guidance when it comes to negotiating the rapids of life, if they are to do
so successfully.
Riera's prescription for connecting to your teenager isn't always easy to
swallow. For one thing, he recommends you sacrifice sleep by staying up
past midnight to talk to your teenager, because that is the best time to
have a “deep” conversation with a teenager - but throughout the course of
the book he does give us an enlightened look at those strange creatures we
call teenagers. For one thing, they have a vastly different sleep-wake
cycle from that of adults, and have the most energy late at night, which
would explain why they sleep in till noon, whenever they have a chance.
And even if you can take the late hours, there are other pitfalls along
the way. When you finally get your teenager to open up to you, you might
find that the next day she has “an emotional hangover", she's worried that
she told you too much, and is kicking herself for doing so. To hedge their
distance, they'll sometimes drop a bombshell, something they mention in a
nonchalant way as if it were a weather forecast, when to you it is
nothing less than earth shattering (like they've decided
to drop out of school, or something to that effect), and then leave the room.
According to Riera, teenagers often use their parents as a proving ground.
If your teenager hurls profanities at you, it might be because
subconsciously he needs to know how to react when he has to endure the
same behavior from his peers. And when your teenager coughs
up something controversial, such as her previously unknown views on
politics, she's just showing off now that she has graduated to abstract
thinking. Although her views might differ from your own, she wants you to
notice and respect that she has done a very mature thing by formulating an
opinion.
At other times, Riera advocates helping your teenager transition from
abstract to concrete thinking, so that they are able to think in practical
terms when it comes to important issues like how to resist peer pressure
about alcohol or drug use.
The author also tells us, you shouldn't be distraught if your interaction
with your teenager is fraught with peril because they know how to push
your buttons. “In these situations,” he writes, “you simply do your best
not to overreact. And then, after you've overreacted, you clean up what
you've added to the mess. Conflict is never comforting, but depending on
its flavor and your response, it can bring the two of you closer.”
Riera shares how to communicate effectively with teenagers by asking them
meaningful questions about their lives and activities, but at other times
his advice would seem to resemble game-playing, as when he suggests that
if your teenager has a friend that is a bad influence you should tiptoe
around the issue and use reverse psychology by saying the opposite of what
you want to say, hoping that your teenager will be able to put two and two
together himself. Other questionable advice includes Riera's suggestion
that you develop a code phrase that when uttered by your teenager means
you are to rescue her from a peer pressure situation, instead of teaching
assertiveness skills that could help her handle the situation herself,
thereby gaining self-esteem and the respect of her peers.
But most of what Riera has to say is both useful and insightful, including
a detailed explanation of how gender differences affect the father/son
relationship (read: rebellion) during adolescence, and how these are the
roots of conflict between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, fathers
and daughters, and so on.
On the whole, Riera's book puts things into perspective and shows you how
to stay involved in your teenager's life while they are spreading their wings.
Title: Staying Connected to Your Teenager
Author: Michael Riera, Ph.D.
Publisher: Perseus
ISBN: 0738208450
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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