Teenagers E-Book

Matilda Gosling

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Evidence-Based Parenting
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 439

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'An amazing resource, meticulously researched and full of wise and interesting advice' Professor Suzanne Franks 'Gosling produces a rare entity: a parenting book that is accessible, well evidenced, practical, gritty and not hectoring. In short, one that is genuinely helpful. It's also funny' Hannah Barnes, New Statesman 'A bracingly no-nonsense parenting guide ... valuable advice' The Times Teenagers: The Evidence Base deftly summarises decades of research and expert knowledge to offer parents and other interested adults a roadmap to adolescence. It weaves together insights from fields including social and experimental psychology, neuroscience, family systems and adolescent development, equipping readers with a clear understanding of what it means to be a teenager today: how they develop, the hazard points and opportunities, and how best to support them as they navigate their labyrinthine and very personal route to adulthood. This practical, engaging guide is essential for any adult wanting to understand the turbulence, creativity and brilliance of the teenage years. Reader Reviews for Evidence-Based Parenting 'Most relatable parenting book on the market' 'Will leave you feeling empowered and amused' 'Facts instead of myths' 'A really refreshing alternative to parenting guides'

Leseprobe

‘A brilliant resource for parents navigating the teen years. This essential guide combines the latest research with evidence-based strategies to help you understand and support your teenager through their formative years. Discover practical advice on strengthening parent-teen bonds, guiding friendships, managing mood swings and fostering a positive body image. This comprehensive resource equips parents with tools to handle the complexities of adolescence while offering guidance on shaping your teen into a well-rounded, resilient adult. With a compassionate approach and practical strategies, Teenagers: The Evidence-Base turns the tumultuous teenage years into a period of growth and connection’

Stella O’Malley, author of What Your Teen is Trying to Tell You

‘I found myself smiling and nodding throughout this book as Matilda guides us through the weather patterns of the teen years using an excellent range of research sources. There are entertaining anecdotes from her own parenting, but the real genius is finishing off each chapter with advice bullet points: perfect for all those times we find ourselves in need of guidance but we’re busy and tired and we can’t for the life of us remember what we’ve read’

Rachel Richards, host of Teenagers Untangled

‘A brilliant, must-have book’

Milli Hill, author of The Positive Birth Book

‘As a mum to three and now a grandma, the teenage years come with their unique challenges. In a world that seems to get more stressful for them by the day, navigating the hurdles before we stumble over them is always a wise move. Teenagers: The Evidence Base will help parents and grandparents to do just that.’

Sharron Davies, British Olympian and author of Unfair Play

‘An amazing resource, meticulously researched and full of wise and interesting advice on dealing with teenagers, especially useful for parents on the frontline’

Professor Suzanne Franks, author of Get Out of My Life… But First Take Me & Alex Into Town

‘An invaluable resource for parents of teenagers, offering both reassurance and practical guidance. It delves into the science and addresses key concerns such as risk-taking, conflict and social media – topics that weigh heavily on many parents’ minds… highly recommended for its compelling blend of research and real-world application’

Dr Bettina Hohnen, Clinical Psychologist and Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL, and author of The Incredible Teenage Brain

‘A tour de force. Matilda Gosling, building on her unique reputation as the integrator of scientific evidence with parenting advice, has produced a most valuable summary of developmental, psychiatric and neuroscience knowledge about the teenage years in a language accessible to all to offer sound advice to parents facing the inevitable challenges of supporting young people growing up in the twenty-first century. A book that will help all parents who want to base their parenting on facts rather than fiction’

Professor Peter Fonagy, National Clinical Advisor on Children’s Mental Health, NHS England

For all the teenagers

Contents

Introduction1 A recap and an introduction to teenagers Key parenting evidence Who is this evolving human? Forging an identity Chapter summary 2 Your relationship with each other Shifting dynamics Strengthening your relationship Managing conflict Maintaining your equilibrium Chapter summary 3 Other connections Friendships Love and desire The online world Chapter summary 4 Mind, part 1: mood and maturity Mood Maturity and independence Secrets, revelations and lies Chapter summary 5 Mind, part 2: mental health and resilience Anxiety and sadness Gender identity Resilience and healthy stress Chapter summary 6 Body General health during puberty Appearance and body image Girls and boys Sexual harassment Chapter summary 7 Risk and reward Reasons for risk-taking Sex and porn Drink and drugs Managing risky behaviour Chapter summary 8 Equipping a future adult Building a well-rounded person Permission to fail Chapter summary AcknowledgementsEndnotes

Introduction

We have a deep-seated cultural myth that teenagers are unfathomable. They’re akin to a different species who leave behind them a slipstream of havoc. We’re taught this by angst-ridden coming-of-age films and novels, and the wry grenades lobbed our way by older generations while we’re wrestling our toddlers – ‘Just wait for the teenage years.’

The truth, as with most things, is more complicated. This book draws together evidence about teenagers, with the intention of replacing myth with knowledge and stereotype with data. It weaves together research studies with expert knowledge from the fields of adolescent psychology, biology and neuroscience, family systems, relationships and others to offer parents a clear understanding of what it means to be a teenager today, how they develop, the hazard points and developmental opportunities, and how best to support them as they navigate their labyrinthine and very personal route to adulthood.

This book is for everyone with an interest in teenagers – but it’s predominantly written with parents, step-parents and other caregivers in mind, using the shorthand of ‘parents’ for ease. If you’re a teacher, adolescent psychotherapist or someone else who wants to understand the teenage mind, and assuming you’re happy to filter out some of the more parent-specific ideas, there’s plenty of information in here for you, too.

Chapter 1 offers a brief recap of key cross-cutting evidence on good parenting – as originally set out in this book’s predecessor, Evidence-Based Parenting – with thoughts on how to apply these research findings to the particular context of teenagers. The chapter summarises modern adolescence and how teenagers forge their eventual adult identities. Chapter 2 looks at parents’ relationships with their teenagers, encompassing the shifting dynamics that are inevitable during the teenage years, how to manage conflict and how parents can maintain their equilibrium through any turbulence. Chapter 3 addresses other connections in the form of friendships, love and desire, and the online world.

Teenage minds are sufficiently complex to warrant two chapters. Chapter 4 encompasses mood, maturity and independence, and the increasing propensity for cards to be held close to teenage chests. Chapter 5 explores anxiety and sadness, gender identity – whatever your views on the wider debate relating to sex and gender, this is increasingly affecting teenagers’ lives – and resilience, including the need for teenagers to experience healthy stress. Chapter 6 focuses on the body, covering puberty and general health, appearance and body image, and the biologically and socially driven differences between girls and boys. Chapter 7 is about risk and reward. It looks at why teenagers might take risks, sex and porn, drink and drugs, and how to manage risky behaviour as a parent. Finally, Chapter 8 covers equipping a future adult, including how to support your teenager to become a well-rounded person, the importance of giving them permission to fail and how to help them become a perfectly imperfect adult.

The word ‘teenagers’ is a mild misnomer. I’ve used it to encompass the body of research on adolescents, most commonly referring to those between the age of ten and adulthood. I’ve chosen this terminology because ‘adolescents’ is a little clunkier and colder than the word ‘teenagers’. You can assume when reading that the cited research covers pre-teenagers as well as teenagers themselves. Some of the studies relate to a narrower age range – early adolescents, for example – and where this is important to any conclusions inferred from the research, I’ve made it clear.

Some of the caveats I made in Evidence-Based Parenting remain true for Teenagers. Having a link between two areas – increased time on social media, for example, and worse mental health – doesn’t mean that one element necessarily causes the other. Often, two linked factors will feed off each other, or be driven by some other, underlying cause (such as less time spent outside, independent of adult oversight) – or, most likely, represent a complicated mesh of different links and relationships, much of which we don’t yet have enough information to begin to unpick.

In recognition of the fact that teenagers have a rightful need to guard their privacy, I’ve only attributed stories when they’re not personal. I’ve therefore anonymised stories belonging to friends and family when they stray into the private realm.

In some other ways, Teenagers takes a different approach to Evidence-Based Parenting. There’s much less in the way of common experience by the teenage years, and teenage outcomes are partly driven by earlier parenting and life experiences. They’re also more likely to be fired in the crucible of trial-and-error parenting, as well as by myriad other ingredients, often outside parents’ control. There’s less ability to learn from other parents during our children’s adolescence – they have increasingly different personalities, interests, relationships and experiences, and our teenagers are less likely to share the intimate details of their lives. Moreover, rapid changes mean that what worked to smooth ruffled feathers six months ago may have no hope of working today.

Anyone who’s read my first book will know that I don’t believe in a sweeping, one-size-fits-all approach to parenting younger children. For teenagers, this is even more true. For this reason, I’ve focused more on understanding individual differences and fortifying human relationships – underpinned by the evidence-based but generalised idea (I didn’t promise not to make exceptions) that all teenagers need guardrails in the form of parents’ boundaries.

Chapter 1

A recap and an introduction to teenagers

Key parenting evidence

In some important ways, being the parent of a teenager isn’t so different from being the parent of a younger child, however much you might struggle to believe it if you’re waiting anxiously for your child to get home safely and wondering if those are alcohol fumes you smell when they do. In Evidence-Based Parenting, I explored some cross-cutting parenting approaches that are useful across many different situations – several of these can work across the ages, too, and I’ll set them out briefly in this section.

The starting point is you and, if they’re in your child’s life, the other parent. You are the centre of gravity for your child: the axis around which they spin, whatever else might be happening in their lives. It may be that they’re going through a break-up, or they’re experiencing the giddy feeling that comes from the end of exams, or the hormonal shifts and brain changes that come with puberty are making them feel Lana Del Rey levels of melancholy. Having a warm, centred, available parent helps them to navigate everything else within their lives, even if they’re working very hard to make you believe they’re independent. This gives you, as their lodestar, permission to prioritise your well-being, first and foremost – if you’re sleeping well, exercising, making time to throw pots or read novels, or doing whatever else it is that props up your own mental and physical health, your teenager will be better off.1

And it’s a good idea to make sure your relationship with your partner (if you have one) is in reasonable shape, if you can.2 All relationships go through rough patches, at which point couples’ counselling can be useful3 – or, more affordably, you could try watching videos put out by individual and organisational experts like The Gottman Institute on YouTube.4 A research review has found that online relationship education, even without support from professionals, can be helpful.5 It goes without saying that the source of this education should be someone with credentials – and perhaps not the influencers telling you to build your relationship with your partner by jointly cleaning your chakras.

Learning how to handle your emotions, if you’re someone quick to feel anger or sadness, is likely to be useful for your teenager, as is helping them to do the same.6 One way to do this is to be clear to your teenager that their emotions are genuine, whether or not you believe they’re warranted, and merit discussion.7 If my teenager rages at me that she shouldn’t have to unload the dishwasher when she needs to revise for her mock exams, we can discuss – perhaps at a slightly calmer moment – the underlying pressure on her from multiple sources and other reasons she might feel angry. At the same time, I can hold the line that she needs to contribute to family life and make it clear that her anger can be expressed without shouting at me. (Or I can get cross with her. The original driver for researching this book was that I get things wrong, regularly.)

There are things to avoid as a parent and as a family. Conflict can be constructive,8 but not if it’s at unhealthy levels.9 If the exchanges of insults between you and your teenager have reached Premier League calibre or family dinners are marked by rows, it’s probably time to take action. Household chaos is another area to minimise, where possible.10 It’s measured by a lack of family routines, lots of noise, background TV and an absence of calmness, among other things.11 Routines are important for teenagers, independently of household chaos measures.12 It’s probably fair to say that chaos varies by time of day and occasion. My home’s more chaotic on a weekday morning – with the radio on, cereal bowls clustering on every worktop and regular yells of ‘Has anyone seen my [schoolbag/Chromebook/scientific calculator/right shoe]?’ – than it is at 8 a.m. on a winter Saturday, when the dog and I are the only ones up, and I can quietly watch the sunrise over a cup of coffee.

Harsh discipline goes on the Avoid List, too. This means trying not to threaten your teenager and to avoid yelling at them if they don’t behave as you would like. I’m sure most of us are occasionally guilty of both these things – in my experience, it’s very hard not to shout when the dog has just run off with the third pat of butter in a week after it’s been left carelessly on the edge of the countertop. (The dog has a table-height snout and is terribly trained.) But harsh discipline is linked to teenagers both feeling and behaving worse than they do without it.13

Also on The List is psychological control.14 This can be linked to short-term compliance15 but tends to lead to a longer-term increase in problematic behaviour.16 Psychological control entails making your teenager feel guilty about what they’ve done or said. It should probably be distinguished from being clear about the consequences of their actions – for example, if you’ve asked them only to eat and drink downstairs, but they ignore you and then spill hot chocolate indelibly into the carpet (this is a real example, a reminder of which I get to witness every time I go to bed or come down to breakfast), it seems reasonable to be clear about the outcome without getting overly guilt-trippy. I probably failed on this last point.

Psychological control is also measured by withdrawing your affection or attention – for example, by withholding eye contact from your child – if they’ve upset you, by using threats to induce anxiety, and dismissing or minimising what your teenager has said to you. My maternal grandmother had a catchphrase that beautifully illustrated this last point, which she would wheel out every time my mother or I said anything that didn’t conform perfectly to her world view. ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous.’ I remember being cut down by those five words and how small that made me feel – and how much I resented that feeling.

Enmeshment – which happens when relationships are interlaced to such an extent that boundaries are lacking – warrants attention if you think it might be an issue in your family.17 You might be contributing to an enmeshment scenario if you want to know everything about your child’s life, if you expect them to have the same opinions as you, or if you rely too heavily on them for emotional support. You can help to avoid enmeshment by respecting your teenager’s boundaries and ensuring they have plenty of opportunity to assert their independence (see Chapter 4).

Links between home environment and teenage traits18

A more positive step you can take is to aim for an authoritative parenting style.19 This means loads of warmth coupled with plenty of guidance and limits (see Chapter 4). Authoritative parents show their love, give their teenagers good dollops of support when they need it and set boundaries (for example, by ensuring their children don’t stay up all night gaming and allow themselves enough time to do their homework). Another model known as ‘sensitive attunement’ has been suggested by researchers. This is similar to authoritative parenting, and involves being positive and respectful when engaging with your teenager, keeping an eye on their behaviour and communicating openly.20

Being able to communicate well with your teenager includes talking about your opinions and your feelings,21 while being careful not to step into the degree of emotional support that can characterise enmeshment. I might tell my daughter I’m excited about a new research project, nervous about an upcoming presentation or still grieving the loss of my dad. I won’t tell her if I’m experiencing a rocky relationship patch, or tell her about my grief in a way that would make her feel it’s her responsibility to give me comfort.

Finally, consistent discipline is important,22 as is flexibility23 and being confident in your abilities as a parent24 (despite your teenager’s potential attempts to convince you otherwise. There’s only a very small link between how parents view their parenting and how their teenagers perceive it. Parents are more likely to believe they’re parenting well than their children are to think so.25) This book can give you the evidence. Only you know how to apply it in your particular circumstances with your unique teenager. You’re well qualified for the job of seeing this human into adulthood. Also, as I said in my last book, it’s OK to mess up from time to time – and undoubtedly important for your teenager that you do. That way, they can see that fallibility is part of the human experience.

Who is this evolving human?

For some parents, the teenage years roll in like a gradually shifting weather front. The skies may occasionally cloud over but they remain, for the most part, clear and predictable. For others, storms ebb and flow, rocking family stability and leaving parents desperately nostalgic for a small, warm body wrapped around them in the shared peace of a bedtime story. The humdrum reality for most of us is that it’s sometimes so tempestuous that it’s impossible to remember the calm – and at other times, in moments of plain sailing and satisfying glimpses of our future adult, we struggle to remember the turbulence of the shifting seas.

The teenage years, though, are unlikely to be marked only by squalls. Many of us have absorbed the ‘storm and stress’ model of adolescence through popular culture, but more recent research suggests it’s unhelpful as an exclusive lens through which to view teenage development.26 Rebellion and defiance, which are often marked by a sudden, 180-degree revolution from calm to chaos, aren’t necessary for healthy development,27 while teenagers’ emotional shifts are gradual28 and personality changes are small.29 The extent to which the storms engulf teenagers varies, too, in accordance with the people and ideas around them, with adolescents showing different levels of internal and external struggle depending on the country in which they grow up.30

There are also risks attached to typecasting teenage behaviour and feelings in the way that the storm and stress model invites us to do, as parents’ stereotypes are linked to their teenagers’ later behaviour.31 In other words, your beliefs may get confirmed by your child. If I expect my daughter to erupt when I ask her to put away her clothes, towel, shampoo, candles and seventeen mystery face products after she’s had a bath, I’ll probably sound exasperated when I ask her, making said eruption more likely. (Resetting my expectations here may be challenging – history does have a habit of informing our predictions.)

And these stereotypes do not hold true for teenagers as a whole. Recent international research has found that teenage behaviour tends to be more positive than it is negative, and this is true across different cultures.32 The storm and stress model, on the other hand, foretells pretty dreadful behaviour. Dr G. Stanley Hall, who originally coined the term back in 1904, suggested that adolescents are cruel and lazy, and that they lie and steal.33 They may be and do all of these things from time to time – but most humans are surely guilty of the first three, at least on occasion. The model also leaves out the many upsides of the teenage years – among much else, it’s a time of curiosity, creativity and feeling deeply.

Another area in which our commonly held ideas about teenagers prove inadequate is in the link between brain development and risk. The stereotype is that teenagers’ brains are too immature to be able to make sensible decisions about rock-jumping or that little white pill their friend has slipped them at a gig. But teenagers’ approach to risk is driven more by the way they process information that comes from the world around them than it is by immaturity. They become more sensitive to rewards, other people’s emotions and social feedback, and this sensitivity is related to the risks they take.34 Chapter 7 has more information on this.

Some incredible things happen over this period. According to Scientific American, the ‘computational bandwidth’ of the brain increases by a factor of 3,000 between a child’s birth and the time they reach adulthood.35 It’s little wonder teenagers sleep so much. The number of synapses in the brain increases around puberty and starts to decline again a little while afterwards. The structure of synapses also reorganises itself at around this time, which can disrupt key processes – for example, the ability to recognise other people’s faces or to work out what they might be thinking.36 Adolescence is also a period during which children develop the ability to think about thinking. This isn’t just biological – it’s probably driven by a pressure to fit in and by the emergence of crushes.37 These new ways of thinking drive creativity and a fresh perspective on the world.38

There’s a popular idea among people who write about teenagers and young adults, and a research literature to back it up, that proper maturity isn’t reached until the age of about twenty-five.39 But a recent paper drew together four datasets containing information about more than 10,000 children and young adults, and found that by one measure of maturity – executive function, which covers skills such as self-control and flexible thinking – teenagers tend to stabilise to adult levels between the ages of eighteen and twenty. This paper argued that earlier research showing later maturity was based on theory, rather than real-world observations, or looked at an overly narrow range of measures.40

These years are marked by an increasing drive to be autonomous and to try out different ways of being so, while each teenager’s social world aligns itself with that of their peers.41 Teenagers may seek more independence from their parents due to hormonal changes, brain development and desire for a sexual partner.42 The clay has started to harden on their general personality by this stage,43 but the effects of puberty continue apace.

Parents, sometimes harshly and occasionally with charm, start to be given the cold shoulder. My own mum swears I was horrible between the ages of nine and eighteen, which makes me want to yell at her that she’s ruining my life and slam the bedroom door shut. It’s normal for a teenager to try to separate from you and to do this in a way that hurts. Here are some things I have been told in the years immediately before or after the teens are reached: Get out. I don’t want you in here. I hate you. Can I leave home when I’m sixteen? Why are you such a control freak? Why are you so difficult? Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. There’s also the go-to Could you NOT?, which is remarkable in its applicability to almost every situation (and all the more cutting as a result). It’s bruising. It’s horrendous. When you are operating on little sleep or under high stress, it can feel soul-flattening. But it’s standard. It means your teenager feels safe enough to push you away.

More likeably, when I was badgering my daughter (amusingly, and with GIFs) about taking up football, she texted me, ‘Bye bye x’. End of conversation; gate locked; drawbridge raised. When attempts are made to shut communication lines down, it’s parents’ job to keep them open – if only with a flickering, intermittent connection – because teenagers, whatever their instincts say, will be lost without them.44 I can probably dial down the football badgering, though.

If you’re feeling excluded from your child’s life, it might be time to manage your expectations. Rare, surface-level chats don’t mean that something is amiss, necessarily.45 You might also need to remind yourself of the natural self-absorption of teenagers, and that there’s probably no malign intent behind their words or actions – even if you’ve just picked them up from a party or ironed their school uniform to a thudding silence in place of any acknowledgement. Defensiveness is best avoided, but you can certainly be assertive if you think some better parental treatment is in order.

There’s a disconnect between teenagers’ need for parental approval and a commonly held misconception that their parents are thinking about them critically. When you (genuinely) criticise your teenager, they typically feel it deeply, but the parts of their brain that allow them control over their feelings show less activity in brain scans than when you’re discussing more neutral topics.46 In other words, your child isn’t being deliberately difficult when they scream at you for saying they’ve left the bathroom in a mess – instead, the parts of their brains that would allow a more measured response aren’t quite in alignment yet.

It’s hard to guess what a teenager might be thinking and feeling. An uncommunicative, grouchy toddler is probably the wrong temperature, tired, hungry or in need of some attention. A teenager in a similar mood, on the other hand, might have one of a hundred things going on. Perhaps their hormones are raging. Perhaps they’re feeling excluded on social media. Perhaps they want more space but don’t know how to get it. Perhaps they’ve suddenly decided you’re not as nice as Toby’s mum. Who knows? You don’t, and probably never will. It’s possible – even likely – that they don’t know. The uncertainty can make it hard to work out how to respond.

An invisible wall often prevents teenagers sharing their emotions with their parents, and parental uncertainties can be compounded by rapid shifts in mood.47 What teenagers do with their feelings can vary by sex – girls may be more likely to engage in parental battles when they feel angry, whereas boys can hole up in their room.48 (This is, of course, an average and therefore a generalisation. I’ve witnessed room-cave tendencies in girls.) The psychotherapist Philippa Perry suggests you imagine your teenager experiencing emotions in colour, while you experience them in monochrome.49

There’s a yawning gulf between what parents and teenagers think they understand about each other and what they actually understand. One study team placed fifty families, each with two parents and a teenager, in a lab. They videoed these families talking about areas on which they disagreed. Researchers then took family members into separate rooms, played them the video discussion and asked them to describe what they were thinking at each moment of the playback. They were also asked what they believed other family members to be thinking. Three quarters of the time, they were wrong.50

There are some clues you may be able to use to work out how your teenager is really thinking and feeling, assuming they’re not keen to share. One thing you can do is to look at your child’s behaviour – they can be more likely to act up when they feel deeply unhappy. Another is to consider how you’re feeling when you’re talking to each other. A teenager’s emotions may be transferred, subtly and unconsciously, to the parent.51 If I’m feeling frustrated and on edge when talking to my child about her maths revision, it may be that she’s feeling this way about her upcoming exam. You can also think about whether your child’s basic needs are being met – do they have reasonable, age-appropriate levels of autonomy, are they supported to feel competent and to deal with the challenges they face, and do they have decent enough relationships with the people around them?52 This point about decent relationships is notwithstanding the fact that you’ll probably be held at a slight distance while your child attempts to do their job of separating from you.

As well as misconstruing each other’s thoughts, teenagers and their parents tend to have quite different perceptions of the relationship. This is true even of something simple like how much time they spend with each other. Using a dataset of several thousand teenagers, one American study found that teenagers think they spend about fifteen hours a week in the company of their mums – whereas the mothers think they spend twenty-four hours together.53 In other words, mothers’ estimation of the amount of time spent together is 60% higher than that of their teenagers. (Twenty-four hours, to me, sounds like loads – which makes me wonder, of course, where I have gone wrong.) And some parents believe their teenagers no longer care what their parents think about them. They do care, though, despite their increasing orientation towards their friends.54

Differences in perceptions extend beyond thoughts, feelings and relationships to things as mundane (yet important) as how chaotic your home life is. If you believe you live in order and calm, and you have plenty of family routines, it may be worth asking your teenager what their views are on these things. Teenagers may see these matters more negatively than their parents and, if so, they risk having worse well-being than they would if they saw these aspects in a more positive light.55 Asking this question might help you to work out what would help your teenager to perceive the environment at home more positively.

One task for parents during this period is to let teenagers experience (safe, legal) things for themselves, despite the potential to be hurt, and to be there for them as needed. Learning by experience informs teenagers’ future behaviour.56 My daughter probably isn’t going to listen if I warn her that one of her friends can behave viciously towards her. She’s much more likely to look out for future warning signs once the so-called friend has brought her unpleasantness fully into the light. There’s more on this in Chapter 8.

Teenagers’ life satisfaction is linked to how admiring their parents are of them, according to one international study, as measured (for example) by their parents letting them know they’re good at lots of things.57 There’s probably a fine line here between letting your child know they are competent, and that you like and admire them, and slipping into unhealthy levels of child worship. There’s a protective shield built into parent–teenager relationships here, as the generational gap means you’re destined never to understand certain decisions – and therefore unlikely to descend into uncritical exaltation. I will never comprehend, for example, why my daughter would choose to wear the inch-long acrylic nails that prevent her from heading out to the climbing wall. We are, in some ways, from two different species.

Teenagers can mark their increasing independence through emotional autonomy. They show new levels of defiance at decisions they dislike, backed up by a mint-fresh realisation that adults can be wrong about an awful lot of things.58 Parents get rudely toppled from the lofty pedestals on which they previously stood. At the same time, their younger teenagers may be showing a contradictory hankering for the trappings of being much younger than they are – they want to be cosseted, to enjoy their leisure time and to avoid the responsibility of chores or picking up after themselves (you may need to push the chores, constantly and tirelessly, to avoid you having to do everything on their behalf – as your beloved no doubt intends).

Volumes of research on teenagers have been published over the last 100 years or so, but in some fundamental ways, our understanding of teenagers hasn’t shifted. Anna Freud, a psychoanalyst and daughter of Sigmund, wrote in 1936:

Adolescents are excessively egoistic, regarding themselves as the centre of the universe and the sole object of interest, and yet at no time in later life are they capable of so much self-sacrifice and devotion. They form the most passionate love relations, only to break them off as abruptly as they began them. On the one hand they throw themselves enthusiastically into the life of the community, and on the other hand they have an overpowering longing for solitude… They are selfish and materially minded and at the same time full of lofty idealism… At times their behaviour to other people is rough and inconsiderate, yet they themselves are extremely touchy. Their moods veer between light-hearted optimism and the blackest pessimism. Sometimes they will work with indefatigable enthusiasm and at other times they are sluggish and apathetic.59

But this description risks us seeing teenagers as a uniform group. The reality is they vary hugely. Some go through extreme emotional swings. Others do not. And in the time since, as we’ve seen, the storm and stress model has developed and was then shown to be inadequate. But most parents will recognise at least intermittent squalls. And those parents at the Severe Weather Warning end of the teenage spectrum may benefit from knowing that the portrait their child displays to other adults is probably the person they will become. If your child is sullen and uncommunicative with you but friendly, polite and funny in the company of Auntie Joan, it’s this more appealing version that’s likely to constitute their adult self.

This is no reflection on you – you are their safe harbour who (sometimes to mostly) allows the full range of their feelings to be tested and expressed. There’s a Kevin the Teenagersketch by comedian Harry Enfield in which Kevin’s friend Perry is over for tea. Kevin, having just bellowed at his mother, is impossibly polite to Perry’s mum when she calls the landline asking to speak to Perry. Perry picks up the phone and roars, ‘WHAT? No, I don’t want to. No. It’s so unfair. I hate you.’ He slams the phone down, gesticulates at it wildly and then smiles fondly at Kevin’s mum. ‘I’ve got to go now, Mrs Patterson. Thank you!’60

Be optimistic. If your child was once charming but is no longer – at least not to you – the chances are that, one day soon, they will be again.

Forging an identity

Teenagers tend to try on various identities before they commit to a set of values and beliefs.61 They might define themselves by the sports they play, their favourite music or the clothes they wear, but also by deeper things – what it means to live a fulfilling life, what job they might want to do, or how they want to treat others and be treated themselves.

I used to dance slightly frantically between identities as a teenager – I’d change my handwriting every few weeks, as it never seemed to represent quite how I viewed myself, and my chosen career would change almost weekly. I wanted to be a doctor (hindered by my dislike for science and a nausea when I consider what happens beneath human skin), a lawyer (I wasn’t keen on following structure or tight processes), an artist (foiled by insufficient talent), a diplomat (I’m terrible at arguing for things I don’t believe in) and a politician (criticism destroys me). Everything was the right fit until it was the wrong one. But there was such promise and opportunity attached to every new identity cloak – the pleasure came from stepping lightly into each one to see how it felt.

One theory of identity development proposes three main approaches to its formation. Teenagers might rely on outside information to help them construct an identity – they try different options according to the world around them and make changes if they come across information that conflicts with their sense of self. Others might construct their identities based on those of their parents or other authority figures. A third set of teenagers avoid any thoughts of identity until they’re forced to – if, for example, they have to choose a set of A levels that will naturally shut off a large number of future careers. These teenagers acquire an identity that’s forged more by randomness than it is by self-determination.62

It’s fair to say the first two groups are probably the healthiest. Exploration of identity is easier for teenagers whose parents are authoritative and give them plenty of room both to try things out and to get to know themselves.63 You might see your teenager’s friendship groups shifting rapidly as they explore their identity, or perhaps you witness their interests changing – one week they’re at the boxing gym and the next it’s all about track and field or quilting. Changes in friendship groups may reflect ongoing processes of identity development. These shifts can make teenagers feel unhappy and isolated – older friendships tend to offer more support than newer ones, and growing apart from long-standing friends can feel incredibly difficult.64 If your child doesn’t seem unhappy, though, these changes in friendships and interests are probably nothing to worry about.

A difference between our own experience of identity development and that of our children, unless we’re very youthful, is the effect of social media. In one view, social media allows teenagers to try out different personas. They can simultaneously be an Instagram artist and a Reddit intellectual. But at the same time, social media drives teenagers to conform to global trends and may distract them from the very important task of self-reflection and insight. It also bears the risk of making identity experimentation fossilise into something that’s hard to shrug off – unlike the echoes of a conversation in the school canteen, there’s a permanent record: a public transcript of every conversation and fleeting statement.65

Your influence is likely to be limited unless your child is one of those who adopt their parents’ identities as their own. Your teenager’s friendships will, almost certainly, influence their identity more strongly than you do.66 There may be areas, though, in which your influence is unwittingly exasperating to your identity-flexing teenager – if they’re trying to separate from you, any traits you have that they want to adopt become a source of deep frustration (they are yours, but they want them for themselves). At the same time, any traits you have that they’ve rejected become irritating, too.

We become a ball of vexation, as far as our teenager is concerned. My daughter might become annoyed by me listening to classical music while cooking dinner. (She hates it! It’s so boring! Why would I want to listen to anything created by dead white men?) At the same time, she might deeply resent the parts of me she sees in herself – perhaps she’s developing an interest in an author or subject I love, so we reach a tacit understanding that we Will Not Discuss my own thoughts about it. And we will certainly not discuss the Kurt Cobain poster on her wall, even if he is a dead white man.

A key role for adults when it comes to identity development is encouraging teenagers to experiment and explore.67 You’re sailing a boat propelled by a healthy following breeze when it comes to your input here, as teenage identity experimentation is embraced by society as normal.68 My daughter’s probably going to be more comfortable trying on a new identity if I’m accepting and curious (but not, of course, annoyingly so) than she is if I express surprise that she’s moved on from last month’s interests and presentation.

There are certain areas in which you might need to be more careful – those in which peer-influenced identity can lead to poorer outcomes for your child, or where your child is closing off the ability to change their mind later. The key point about identity is that it’s fluid. The end of the teenage years seems to be more important for identity development than any earlier time,69 and there’s evidence to suggest that identity development continues into adulthood.70 Helping your teenager to keep their options open is therefore vital.

Parents also need to be cautious when it comes to negative identity labels. If teenagers see themselves as being a ‘risk-taker’, for example, they can take on the mantle of this label in how they permanently see themselves.71 The same point no doubt applies to other negative labels – if your child sees themselves as ‘troubled’, say, or ‘anxious’. The risks of children identifying with mental health conditions are explored in Chapter 5. It’s all too easy to ascribe labels linked to our negative assessment of our own traits, too – ‘He’s scatty, like me’ or ‘She gives up on things easily, like I do.’

Again, keeping things open is likely to be useful – the danger comes when negative ideas get internalised and made concrete, or when identity becomes crystallised too soon.

Chapter summary

Teenagers

The myth of storm and stress. The legendary teenager who rages, tears apart relationships and pushes the edges of every boundary might exist, but they’re not the norm – and if this is what you witness in your teenager, it won’t be the same from day to day or month to month. Healthy development doesn’t depend on the emotional turbulence that many of us have come to expect from teenagers, and any storms tend to blow themselves out. Teenagers’ later behaviour can be informed by stereotypical beliefs their parents hold about them – if you have negative expectations of your child, they’re more likely to end up acting these out. Adolescent behaviour tends to be more positive than it is negative, overall.

Brain changes. Risk-taking is related more to the way that information is processed by teenage brains than it is to brain immaturity. Brains change tremendously over this period, and these changes may – among other things – affect teenagers’ ability to work out what other people are thinking. They develop the ability to think about thinking during these years, generating a torrent of creativity. They reach adult levels of maturity, according to some measures, between the ages of eighteen and twenty – though some studies show brain development continuing beyond this point. There are some aspects of your teenager that a combination of genes and earlier life experiences will already have crystallised, and over which you may now have little influence.

A drive towards independence. Your teenager isn’t rejecting you when they try to put clear water between you (or, more accurately, they are rejecting you, but this is normal and necessary). They need to learn to function without you in the world. At the same time, it’s your job to keep communication lines open, however much your teenager’s trying to shut them down – they still need you. Teenagers’ natural propensity over this age range is to orient themselves more towards other people, and those who are the same age in particular.

Different perspectives. When the perspectives of parents and teenagers diverge on an issue, it’s teenagers’ feelings that – perhaps unsurprisingly – are most likely to inform their outcomes. It’s easier for teenagers to learn from experience than it is from our well-meaning advice.

Shifting feelings. It’s hard to work out what a teenager is thinking and feeling if they’re not willing to share this with you. If they’re acting up, they might be feeling unhappy. Your own feelings when you’re talking to your teenager – frustration, anger, hurt, sadness – may provide clues as to their own internal state.

Identity development. Identity exploration is a normal and natural part of teenage development. Teenagers can try on different identities according to the information they get from the world around them. Some keep those aspects that fit with their sense of self and reject others. Other teenagers may adopt the identities of their parents, while the identities of the rest are driven more by circumstance and being forced to make choices that close options down. Social media has a potentially huge (and, as yet, not fully understood) influence on teenagers’ identities. Parents’ influence is likely to be secondary to that of friends. Identity development continues beyond adolescence into adulthood.

Ideas for parents

Look inwards. Prioritise your well-being. You probably have more time now your child’s a little older – use it wisely on things you enjoy. Learn how to manage your feelings if you’re quick to react to things. Be optimistic if you find your relationship with your child challenging – things will improve again, in all likelihood. Don’t worry too much if you face temporary setbacks in your relationship with each other. At the same time, you may need to lower your short-term expectations.

Look outwards. If you have a partner, make sure your relationship’s in a tolerable state. Couples’ counselling or YouTube relationship education videos can be useful if it’s not. Work to minimise conflict in the family if it’s at unhealthy levels. Try to have household routines and minimise chaos, if you can.

Focus on how you relate to each other. Aim for an authoritative parenting style, balancing warmth with limits. Make sure both you and your teenager are able to have boundaries. Acknowledge your child’s feelings – this doesn’t mean you have to agree with them or validate how they express these feelings – and discuss your own, ensuring you’re not looking to your child for emotional support. Encourage your child to experiment and explore different identities, and to keep options open. Avoid harsh discipline and psychological control. Take guesswork out of it – you’re unlikely to be able to pinpoint with any accuracy what your teenager is feeling. Consider asking your teenager what their perspectives are on things like family routines and household chaos.

Remember that everything else follows from your relationship with each other. Challenge any stereotypical beliefs you may have about your teenager’s behaviour and development. Be assertive, not defensive, if your teenager’s treatment of you needs work. Be consistent, but not to the point where you can’t be flexible. Have confidence that you’re the right person for the job of seeing your teenager safely into adulthood. Know that you’ll make mistakes, and that this is fine – and is probably better than making none.

Chapter 2

Your relationship with each other

Shifting dynamics

There’s a moment when you realise that, at some forgotten juncture, you carried your child for the final time, read them their last chapter of a bedtime story or saw the end of an easy, uncluttered relationship in which there were no feelings or information they were trying to hold back. The new world order may be no worse. It may even be better – you can talk about ideas and share humour that’s not just related to bodily functions. But it’s certainly different from the one that preceded it.

There are many factors that change the shape of your relationship with your teenager, one of which is a necessary shift in power – when your child is younger, you have the lion’s share (although, ideally, you’ll have given them enough freedom that this power is flexed delicately), but your relationship needs to become one of greater equality by the time your child reaches adulthood.

I was apprehensive about my children’s entry to the teenage years, due to the cultural myth of storm and stress that had woven itself into my knowledge of how much I hate conflict. But endless battles don’t need to be a defining feature of your relationship, and manageable levels of conflict can be positive. It can serve as a useful mechanism to help teenagers to separate from parents and to reset the relationship to one that’s more equal. I remind myself of this in mantra-like tones when bracing myself to ask my daughters to walk the dog or re-do the washing-up so the pans are cleaner than when they started.

There’s a tension in the research here, though. The value of conflict is seen through gradually equalising the parent–child relationship, but boundaries and limits – which challenge this fragile equality – are still important. What are parents meant to do with this information? We’re meant to be less controlling, but only sometimes. Research on teenage delinquency suggests it’s probably a matter of degree – high and low levels of parental control are linked to worse outcomes for teenagers, but there’s a sweet spot in the middle.1

Teenagers’ desire for greater independence is part of the broader shift in power. This drive towards self-determination can make parents feel their authority is under threat or that they’re no longer needed by their child. You are needed, of course – much as it might be hard to remember when you’ve just been told firmly that you’re getting in the way of successful homework completion or a stomach-churning baking experiment. But these doubts and authority challenges may be at the heart of the less appealing elements of parents’ changing relationships with their teenagers, as the mismatch in expectations undermines trust and underpins feelings of separation.2 Teenagers’ and parents’ expectations about freedom are better matched by the end of adolescence, resulting in improved relationships.3

There are several other ways in which parent–child dynamics change during this period. An experimental study involving a stressful situation showed that parents’ support reduced production of the stress hormone cortisol in younger children, but had no effect in adolescents.4 Teenagers believe that trust between them and their parents dwindles between the early teenage years and the end of school, and they feel more alienated from their parents.5 Feelings of closeness between teenagers and their parents, while high, also decline over this period.6 This may be for the best – you need to know how to support a child who is struggling to make friends, but you might benefit from not knowing exactly how your eighteen-year-old spent their Saturday night.

But despite teenage moves to separate – and, perhaps, evidence to the contrary – teenagers tend to like and feel close to their parents.7 And while some teenagers perceive relationship difficulties with their parents over adolescence, others may sense improvements. Overall, though, there’s a sharp fall between the ages of twelve and sixteen in the proportion of teenagers who believe their parents are both supportive and powerful, and an increase in those who perceive turbulence. A course correction then takes place – relationships tend to improve again between the ages of sixteen and twenty.8 I keep this nugget in mind during moments when it’s harder to find perspective.

Much of the popular narrative about parent–teenager relationships misses what’s good. When your child’s older and has a tendency to duck affection, a proactive hug can take your breath away; and the intellectual challenge of a dinner-table debate brings an entirely new dimension to your relationship. I enjoy my daughters’ company now, most of the time, in a way that I could never have imagined when they were younger. The narrative also misses the things you won’t be sorry to leave in the past – you no longer have to be woken by a small finger worming its way into your ear at 5 a.m., or to swim through hairbergs and slicks of Lynx at the local leisure centre. And it misses the many positive ways a parent can shape their teenagers’ well-being and worlds. Parents still tend to have the greatest influence on their children’s decisions, despite the increasing importance of friends,9 and are central in shaping their attitudes.10