Adolescence is a turbulent time of life. It is the period of time from the early teens, when puberty begins, to the late teens and early twenties when the brain reaches full development. Adolescence is difficult because powerful drives toward sexuality and autonomy emerge while impulse control, planning, and judgment are still underdeveloped due to the incomplete development of the brain. Adolescents often act out if they feel these drives are being thwarted or become depressed and anxious if they feel themselves failing to meet the new challenges they present.
Treating adolescents is complicated both by their developmental level and by the fact that they are often brought to treatment reluctantly. They often enter treatment assuming that the therapist is just another authority figure who is going to tell them what to do. We address this by respecting their psychosexual impulses and their needs for autonomy, while also clarifying that limits in these areas are not intended to thwart their strivings, but intended to guide them as they seek to meet their needs successfully.
Parents often have difficulty understanding their adolescent children as this frequently reflects the difficulties that adolescents experience in understanding themselves. Often teens are not aware of their own emotional dependence on their parents and, since they frequently rebel against it and vocally deny it, their parents remain unaware of it also. Similarly, teens often have low self-esteem, but are not aware of it, feeling intensely that something is wrong but externalizing the causes and blaming others.
In our work with adolescents we allow them to do a lot of talking, but we also do a lot of talking ourselves. We educate them on these various issues while also promoting a greater degree of insight into their feelings and emotional needs. When oppositional behavior is a problem we join with the adolescent in acknowledging that the underlying desire for autonomy is valid, while also making clear that a defiant rejection of parental limits frequently leads to even more restrictions being placed upon them. Where self-esteem issues are a problem we talk about the issues directly and then correct any negatively distorted views and create problem-solving strategies to remedy any actual deficiencies that may be present. We have found that most adolescents respond very well to this approach.
In our work with parents we promote a parenting style that is neither authoritarian nor democratic, but authoritative. What this means in practice, is that parents retain ultimate authority to override adolescent decisions because they are the parent and they typically exhibit better judgment, but that they also must use this judgment wisely in choosing whether overriding a bad decision is necessary.
Thomas B. Hollenbach, Ph.D.
