Parenting a teen has its own unique set of challenges. It is one key aspect of your journey as a parent. Many times, people do not realize that parenting a teenager will present different kinds of difficulties. It’s not uncommon for teenagers to crave independence and resist parental guidance. This phase can leave you wondering, “How can I reconnect with my teenager?” In today’s blog post, I’m going to teach you about understanding the five C’s of knowing your teen’s struggles and what to do to reconnect with them. This will help you to navigate the complexity of parenting a teenager.
- Connection: The number one reason why parents struggle with their teenagers is connection issues. In my book, Connect to Correct, I explained that the child you do not build a connection with today as a toddler will be a problem for you as a teenager. This reflects the principle of seed time and harvest. Many times, you do not have to struggle with your teen if you have established a strong bond with them. I have heard people say that their children are not old enough for them to be in the academy or join the inner circle because their children are still toddlers. But by the time your children reach the adolescent phase, the struggle has already begun because you have lost connection with them. You should know that there is a lot of conflict that happens during this phase, and it is not because of you or the child.
These are conflicts that are inevitable and natural. And when they happen, one of the things that will help you is the fact that there is a connection between you and your child.
- Control Issues: Control issues are one of the reasons why we are big on connection in the Inner Circle. We provide a daily tool that keeps you on your toes to connect with your child. Connection is not a weekly or once-in-a-while endeavor, it’s daily because anything you build is what you will reap.
Under control issues, you have autonomy struggles and power struggles. I was listening to my children review the book by Coach Chiedozie “Why Teenagers Fail”, and in this book, he was talking about the identity crisis, the autonomy crisis, and the destiny crisis, that teenagers face. These are all the crises that happen to your teenagers when they are going through this phase.
One of the bonus classes that we are offering for becoming an emotionally intelligent parent this year is understanding the teen’s brain and how to navigate it on your parenting journey. So if you haven’t registered and you have teenagers, you are on your own. I mean, this class will give you insight into how you can navigate through the process of understanding what is happening to the teen part of the brain. Register for this course here
When it comes to autonomy struggles, children begin to seek independence at this phase. Seeking independence is a good thing, not a bad thing. The problem is that we fight it because we don’t know how to find the balance between guidance and autonomy. There has to be guidance, of course, but that also leads us to power struggles.
There are a lot of power tussles that we engage in. We say, “No, you cannot do this or that,” because we do not understand how the teen brain works. There is something that makes them want to see what will happen. Most of the things your teenagers do are not because they don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. Some of them know it’s wrong, but they just want to try it because the brain tells them that that’s how to find independence. It’s a fight for life.
Have you read anything about the fight for independence in different countries and all of that? It’s similar to what your teens are going through. So all your threats, all your “I will do this or that to you,” your teen’s brain gets excited by that kind of challenge. So control issues are one of the reasons why you struggle with your teen.
- Communication Issues:
So far in this blog post, we have explored reasons why you struggle with your child which included, connection, control, and for this third communication. In my book, “Solving Family Problems Through Effective Communication”, I wrote that the risky thing about raising teenagers in our world today is that they have a lot of options. There are a lot of people and media bombarding them with messages.
The problem is that you don’t fight to become the loudest voice in your child’s brain. No, you create it. You connect to influence, you don’t fight to influence. Many times, those communication issues happen because there is a difference in how you and your teen perceive and interpret things.
You cannot become the loudest voice in your child’s life by fighting. You fight and you lose the battle. That’s it! So, of course, in this phase, your teenagers have a problem. There is a communication gap, there is a misunderstanding. They interpret messages in different ways and I will tell you why as we go along. There is a limit to how much they share their thoughts with you.
The steps to influence your child are what we teach in the Creating a Social Roadmap for Your Genzer Inner Circle Class coming up this weekend for parents in our Inner circle. Book a slot here.
At some point, you will be on the fourth floor. When your children turn 13, you are on the fourth floor. You will no longer be the most influential person, even though you will still be the most important person if you have done the work to be the most important person. You will no longer be the most influential person when they are 13. Your influence is on the fourth floor.
If you have a child right now who is not 13 yet, please bear it in the back of your mind. Keep it in the back of your mind that at some point, you will not hear everything the way it is. Not because they want to lie to you, no, but because some information you cannot process the way you need to process it. And it’s also because you do not have the emotional intelligence to be able to take in some information. Because you have communication challenges, there is a lot of misunderstanding. There is a lot of back and forth.
That’s why you need training. Because if you are trained, you are in a better position to help your child. If you are not trained, you do your children a disservice by your ignorance. And then you fight because you will continue to fight where there is no fight.
- Change in Priorities: One of the first things you learn as a teen parent is that the priorities of your teenager will change. They are now navigating their world and their priorities will shift. You begin to struggle when they begin to prioritize their friends. Do you know who is at the top of the fourth floor? Peer group. Do you know who is in the second group on that floor after the peer group? Other adults.
One of the most important people in the life of a teenager is other adults, not just their parents. That’s why we keep emphasizing mentorship. Your children will need it like their life depends on it, because at that point in time, they will need the other adult. And if you don’t set other adults in their life, they will pick any other adult, because there is no vacuum in parenting. Your child will fill the vacuum with whoever they can. It could be Kim Kardashian, it could even be Bobrisky, it could be anybody.
If you don’t intentionally create that system of who the other adults should be by the time they are teenagers, you will just be running around, because now you don’t even know who is influencing them. Remember, we are talking about the order of influence.
If you are an intentional parent, you will have created all of these four influence groups.
- Coping with change: Coping with change is another reason why children struggle with their parents. Most of us do not understand why children struggle with the emotional roller coaster of their teenage years. Do you know that puberty affects the brain? There is something called the puberty brain in medicine. The brain changes its development during puberty. If you don’t have the book “Walking Your Child Through Puberty, get it here. I wrote this book while I was trying to understand what happens to children during puberty.
• Do you know that children at puberty become lazy?
• Have you noticed that your children become 14 or 15 and they are lazy about things? The brain and the whole drama during puberty, weigh them down. The reason for this is that we are not intentional in building our children’s emotional capacity. When puberty comes, it overwhelms them. And when this happens, You struggle to adapt to their mood swings, you struggle to adapt to their change in behavior.
The most difficult time for any child is between the ages of 13 and 18 because they are trying to navigate their world. They are trying to understand who they are. They are trying to understand what they are doing. If they get it wrong at this age, it will make a mess of their future. You know what they say, a fool at 40 was a fool at 14.
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