Teenage Rebellion
Is it Disobedience or Survival?
The truth is - teenagers are like an alien sub-species of humanity and no one seems to understand them and how they function, not even parents who were once teenagers too.
Only a crazy person would be mad enough to sacrifice their own happiness for another person, or is it saint to do so?
Ask a sixteen year old who would choose to disobey her parents to keep a tight relationship with her buddies at school.
Do we wonder why they resort to disobedience?
It has been given so many names; Peer-pressure, low self-esteem or what ever you call it but the truth of the matter is, loyalty is expensive and survival costs even more and high school is a jungle where loyalty to your clique counts for survival, no one wants to be the “awkward weirdo” with no friends.
These kids will do whatever it takes to survive and fit in and sometimes they make the greatest sacrifices including losing their parents trust just to survive, after all, 80% of their life for about 7 years is spent in this jungle.
Parents always view these odd behaviours in their teenage children as disobedience and its understandable, if your sixteen year old sneaks out to a party in the middle of the night and comes home drunk, you have the right to be upset and angry because that is unacceptable for so many obvious reasons.
So what now?
What we need now is to build a bridge of understanding between the two realms, a bridge that does not violate boundaries but creates an oasis above the confusion, where parents and teenagers meet and have an understanding of each others thoughts and feelings without quarrels.
We also need to bare in mind that the structure of the bridge wont be the same in every household, however - it is important that a bridge is built to keep these kids from banging their heads against a wall and to give parents a break from being the bad guy.
Feel free to comment and give an idea of what structures can be implemented to help these children.
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