Dealing with teenagers is easy, the real problem is cars.
Most parents get pregnant, and decide to move to the suburbs to raise their kids. This is the wrong decision. Suburbs are built for the car. Kids can’t drive. And little Timothy might be happy to walk to the park and be driven to playdates, but teenage Tim wants independence. He wants to go to the mall on his own two feet. And if his neighbourhood isn’t walkable, he can’t.
If you want easy teenagers, then live somewhere with good walkability and transit access, and teach your kids how to take the bus when they’re little. They ought to feel safe going out on their own for errands by the time they’re 10, and they ought to have a late curfew and plenty of options for getting around by 15. That’s the secret. Independence. That’s what teens want. Provide a safe environment at home and let them explore the world on their own terms with the courage and street smarts you taught them. And when you have a kid, remember that you’re preparing them to be an adult and yes, a teenager. Teach them the skills teenagers need.
Even if you’ve given kids good independence skills, there will always be a certain percentage where hormones just hit them like a ton of bricks and they go kinda wild. A lot of serious mental illnesses can emerge at this time as well.
Teenagers are a problem that predates cars or suburbs.
Emotional coping strategies, meditation, and mental illness are topics you should have already discussed with your kid before they hit puberty. By the time your kid is 10, they should know a few breathing exercises, how to deal with uncomfortable thoughts, which mental illnesses run in the family, and what works for calming them down in a panic attack.
The problem with many parents is they don’t teach their kids how to be teenagers until the teenagers are already experiencing puberty. That’s wrong. You have to be prepared and your kids have to be prepared too. Even if mum and dad know what to expect, it’s no good for 14 year old Tim to suddenly be angry all the time and not know how to deal with it. Tim ought to have a firm grasp of mindfulness skills already by age 14, and he should know what to expect from puberty and who he can talk to about it.
Also some of the worst mental illnesses a young person can deal with are caused by early childhood abuse, sooooooo don’t abuse your kids and raising teenagers will be much easier.
These are all excellent and effective strategies for most human brains, but just not all. Very difficult to deal with teenagers aren’t solely a product of ineffective parenting - it’s not a 100% preventable problem. There’s neurodivergences like ADHD or ASD, hormone-affecting conditions like PCOS, and more severe behavioural health problems like schizophrenia - these are all incredibly difficult for well-adjusted, materially comfortable adults to deal with.
I definitely agree that not abusing kids will help reduce the amount of un-deal-with-able issue that those kids have as teens, but you can’t just wave a wand and make abuse stop. Unless we as a society allocate a large amount of resources to break cycles of abuse and eliminate the kind of poverty in which abuse festers, there will still be noteworthy amounts of childhood trauma.
I think some kind of state-run teenaged-care facilities is the best, most realistic option. It’s still a lousy option, but there would be more accountability than the private-run troubled teen industry, which is itself an abuse factory.
I have autism, and it’s not an insurmountable problem for a parent to deal with. Good strategies for raising a child with autism include having good sonic insulation in the walls, installing proper blackout curtains in their bedroom, getting the family used to using headphones, teaching your kids to cook, using movies to explain complex social situations to your kids, stim toys, and a healthy tradition of philosophical and sociological debate around the dinner table.
The movies thing is especially important. Any time there’s a juicy scene of interpersonal drama, you should pause the movie and have a discussion among the family about what each character is thinking and feeling and why they’re saying what they say. Good TV and a good discussion about it can help an autistic child to understand the world of social interaction and subtext. Autistic kids don’t absorb this stuff automatically like neurotypicals, so you have to talk about it and explain it regularly. Even something as simple as explaining why Han Solo doesn’t believe in the force (He’s lived a life of poverty and needs to believe that he’s in control of his own life in order to feel safe), can be really useful for a kid struggling to understand why people act, think, and speak the way they do. Everything’s got lessons in it for kids, and the thing about autistic kids is you gotta discuss it instead of expecting cultural osmosis to work properly.
Dealing with teenagers is easy, the real problem is cars.
Most parents get pregnant, and decide to move to the suburbs to raise their kids. This is the wrong decision. Suburbs are built for the car. Kids can’t drive. And little Timothy might be happy to walk to the park and be driven to playdates, but teenage Tim wants independence. He wants to go to the mall on his own two feet. And if his neighbourhood isn’t walkable, he can’t.
If you want easy teenagers, then live somewhere with good walkability and transit access, and teach your kids how to take the bus when they’re little. They ought to feel safe going out on their own for errands by the time they’re 10, and they ought to have a late curfew and plenty of options for getting around by 15. That’s the secret. Independence. That’s what teens want. Provide a safe environment at home and let them explore the world on their own terms with the courage and street smarts you taught them. And when you have a kid, remember that you’re preparing them to be an adult and yes, a teenager. Teach them the skills teenagers need.
Even if you’ve given kids good independence skills, there will always be a certain percentage where hormones just hit them like a ton of bricks and they go kinda wild. A lot of serious mental illnesses can emerge at this time as well.
Teenagers are a problem that predates cars or suburbs.
Emotional coping strategies, meditation, and mental illness are topics you should have already discussed with your kid before they hit puberty. By the time your kid is 10, they should know a few breathing exercises, how to deal with uncomfortable thoughts, which mental illnesses run in the family, and what works for calming them down in a panic attack.
The problem with many parents is they don’t teach their kids how to be teenagers until the teenagers are already experiencing puberty. That’s wrong. You have to be prepared and your kids have to be prepared too. Even if mum and dad know what to expect, it’s no good for 14 year old Tim to suddenly be angry all the time and not know how to deal with it. Tim ought to have a firm grasp of mindfulness skills already by age 14, and he should know what to expect from puberty and who he can talk to about it.
Also some of the worst mental illnesses a young person can deal with are caused by early childhood abuse, sooooooo don’t abuse your kids and raising teenagers will be much easier.
These are all excellent and effective strategies for most human brains, but just not all. Very difficult to deal with teenagers aren’t solely a product of ineffective parenting - it’s not a 100% preventable problem. There’s neurodivergences like ADHD or ASD, hormone-affecting conditions like PCOS, and more severe behavioural health problems like schizophrenia - these are all incredibly difficult for well-adjusted, materially comfortable adults to deal with.
I definitely agree that not abusing kids will help reduce the amount of un-deal-with-able issue that those kids have as teens, but you can’t just wave a wand and make abuse stop. Unless we as a society allocate a large amount of resources to break cycles of abuse and eliminate the kind of poverty in which abuse festers, there will still be noteworthy amounts of childhood trauma.
I think some kind of state-run teenaged-care facilities is the best, most realistic option. It’s still a lousy option, but there would be more accountability than the private-run troubled teen industry, which is itself an abuse factory.
I have autism, and it’s not an insurmountable problem for a parent to deal with. Good strategies for raising a child with autism include having good sonic insulation in the walls, installing proper blackout curtains in their bedroom, getting the family used to using headphones, teaching your kids to cook, using movies to explain complex social situations to your kids, stim toys, and a healthy tradition of philosophical and sociological debate around the dinner table.
The movies thing is especially important. Any time there’s a juicy scene of interpersonal drama, you should pause the movie and have a discussion among the family about what each character is thinking and feeling and why they’re saying what they say. Good TV and a good discussion about it can help an autistic child to understand the world of social interaction and subtext. Autistic kids don’t absorb this stuff automatically like neurotypicals, so you have to talk about it and explain it regularly. Even something as simple as explaining why Han Solo doesn’t believe in the force (He’s lived a life of poverty and needs to believe that he’s in control of his own life in order to feel safe), can be really useful for a kid struggling to understand why people act, think, and speak the way they do. Everything’s got lessons in it for kids, and the thing about autistic kids is you gotta discuss it instead of expecting cultural osmosis to work properly.