Teenagers, Limit Setting, Emotions and Moods

Over-reaction to limit setting can occur in the context of any event that produces any emotion. Your teen will likely be sadder than usual when there is a frustration with a relationship. S/he will be more hurt than usual when there is personal injury involved, again, usually relative to peer interaction. Pick a feeling and pick a situation and put on your seat belt. The issue may be curfew, whether or not to have a cell phone, or attending a party with older teenagers. Your task as a parent is to set appropriate limits--do your research and
figure out what is "appropriate"--despite the turbulence to follow.
Why? Because teenagers actually need those limits. It's paradoxical. They feel safer and know that you really love them when you say "No" to something they are not ready for. Paradoxically, their anxiety actually goes down because they know in what areas and in what territory they are safe; also when to protest, but more importantly, when not to. On the surface, teens will like you less, but at deeper levels, they will respect you more, and later be able to return your love with conviction and certainty. Unless there is some underlying pathology, each phase will pass as skirmishes resolve.
How do emotions and moods manifest? Usually with noise. What are the kinds of behaviors to expect? Many teens will, on purpose, yell or otherwise act out their feelings by stomping off, grimacing, slamming doors or locking themselves in their rooms (until hungry). These are the normal variants of teenager moods. Back talking, making funny hand gestures are borderline "OK" behaviors, depending largely on the parent's temperaments. Breaking things, hurting self or others, withdrawing for extended periods of time, running away, leaving without permission, not
coming home at night, indulging in sex, drugs or alcohol are "Not OK." Remember The Dance? (See previous articles by this author.) When the latter maladaptive behaviors show up, we no longer have a waltz-we have a boogie woogie.
As with younger children, your challenge is to pick the behaviors to change. What behaviors should be on the "radar screen?" How many do you work on and which ones should come first? One hint, if you pick the wrong behavior or group of behaviors, you will get change but the change will not "stick." The old behaviors will come back sooner than you want. This tells you that something else might be the problem or that your focus is too superficial. Change your focus and apply the techniques to a different set of problems or level of behavior, e.g., need or mood, and see if that produces more positive results. For example,
with teenagers, you first have to get them to really listen to you. Then, you talk about issues. Maybe they don't clean their rooms. They could suffer from lack of motivation, especially for school projects. Not giving you respect can be troublesome. Acting bigger than their britches is a complaint I used to hear a lot; now we just call it defiance, oppositional or other names. But if addressing any of these problems "takes" for only a short while, consider looking deeper.
Most of the examples mentioned above could be symptoms of normal mood variations. In that case, parents ought to consider talking frankly about teenager moods-yes, with the teenager. Parents who verbalize their observations with their teens, in this case feeding back something about their own experiences with mood or observations about their teen's mood, help teens to more quickly come to terms with themselves. Teenagers don't always like hearing negative things about themselves, but then, who does? And, remember, your teenager is not a young child anymore, so consider the level of your approach. It has to be exactly at the teen's level of maturity and understanding--no more, no less. "Coming in" at just the right depth is crucial and presages greater success. And, when
communicating, consider your attitude. Presenting "information" to your teen as if your version is the truth and his or hers is not is asking for rebellion, even if you are right. The trick is to ascertain the real issues, and approach them at just the right level and tone. It might also help to teach your teenager a vocabulary of his or her feelings. In the literature, there are eight major feelings that we humans have. I think there is a ninth, so in my office, there are nine major feelings. Have your teen look up the nine and find as many synonyms as possible for each. Then, both you and your teenager start using these feeling words or their synonyms in assertiveness sentences. (BTW, I have compiled these ninefeeling words in the back of my ebook, "The Five Steps of Assertiveness." I also had fifth graders look up these and their synonyms, and the synonyms of the synonyms on thesaurus.com. I now have nearly eight hundred synonyms for the nine major human feeling words, all available for assertive use by both teen and parent, alike.

-Dr. Griggs
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How To Think About Teenagers

I'm a child psychologist. This includes training about teenagers. Teens, by definition, are still children from the ages of thirteen to the day before they turn eighteen. Nineteen year olds, though technically adults, are still teenagers. On the low end of the teen spectrum, very mature twelve year olds will act like immature thirteen or even fourteen year olds. For this purpose, I treat mature twelve year olds like immature teens, even though the chronology doesn't exactly line up. The same is true in reverse for nineteen year olds. If they are immature, they will respond to the ideas that are aimed more at 13 to 18 year olds.
Teens are different "animals." They are transitional beings; neither really young, nor particularly mature. They are neither fish nor fowl. They sometimes look like adults, even though their nervous systems are not mature. They sometimes look like younger children, even if their
nervous systems are comparatively more mature. Their behavior changes from one to the other. For example, one minute your sweet child is begging you to come on the class trip or to lie down with him or her while s/he falls asleep. Then, seemingly overnight, s/he starts treating you like dirt, discounting everything you say and snickering at your suggestions. Some parents think of teenagers as just larger children, while other parents think teenagers are smaller adults. Technically,
they are still children, even though it's sometimes hard to tell whether they are acting like children or adults. They are both and they are neither.
Teens are beset by pesky hormones, which start earlier than you think. This hormonal shift actually begins between the ages of 8 1/2 and 9 1/2 years, depending upon whether your teen is a girl or boy, respectively. Hormones spark huge emotional and physical changes. Teens often look lanky, having just experienced one or more growth spurts, which usually means they are not well coordinated because, literally, their brains have not gotten used to their new physical dimensions. This and numerous glandular changes cause tremendous behavioral changes and concomitant self-consciousness.
At thirteen, parents become "aliens;" that is, thirteen year olds
typically withdraw from parents and overly bond with and seek refuge and
support from peers. Again, mature twelve year olds do this earlier and
immature fourteen year olds do it later, but this stage is one most teens
traverse in this age range. All of this is normal.
Over my many years of working with individuals and families, I have
developed techniques that profoundly influence behavior. Despite being in
that awkward stage, teens, just like little younger children and adults,
respond to these and other often simple, but well-understood treatments.
When I say simple, I do not mean that everyone knows these things--they don't. And, when I say profoundly, I mean they are powerful and work quickly--instantly in some cases. I developed one technique only after observing successful families for a whole year. Other ones I swiped from
minds greater than my own; for example, from B.F. Skinner (the "rat" psychologist) I use some behavioral techniques. Skinner never applied his findings and techniques to what I address in the articles to come. I put these and lots of other experiences I have had with kids over twenty-six years to form a system--a way to think about behavior and many ways to positively change it.
The best part is that my system is positive. The emphasis is not on
punishment even though there is a place for that, if needed. It's all based upon parenting techniques that are sort of good, then tweaked with hard research evidence of what really works and then applied warmly, with love--that makes them really good. I've been developing and using these ideas for years with very, very good results. Mothers leave my office shaking their heads after I've turned around "monster" children in a matter of minutes. Parents report a sharp increase in the quality of their relationships with their children. If you have younger children, these techniques are described in my ebook, How to Change Children's Behavior (Quickly), and are repeated in part, but modified (for teens) in this ebook. For the present publication, I use different examples because I'm talking about older children, for the most part. Younger children often will "change" in a matter of hours, even
minutes. Teenagers typically take longer, owing in part to their newfound independence, which predisposes them to resist older folks. The techniques still work, so be persistent and patient.
-Dr.Griggs
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Changing Teenager's Behavior-A Word About Curfews--Part I

Changing Teenager's Behavior-A Word About Curfews
What happens when your teenager is defiant, not remorseful,
not conciliatory and/or not cooperative? Remember the previous
examples from previous articles, when your teen came home a
half-hour late on Friday night, but the next day was somewhat
better behaved? What if your teen came home two hours late,
slept most of the next day, and "blew you off" when confronted?
This is when you rename your child "Darth Teen."
The establishment of curfew is a very common example of
household conflict. As teenagers get older their curfews change,
getting later and later, until at some point, it disappears.
This is the natural evolution of the "time boundary." In most
homes, not counting "school nights," curfew is set for ten or
eleven at night for early teens, twelve'ish or so for later teens,
and "whenever" when the teen technically becomes an adult-usually
at age eighteen. Now, most parents reading this just said to
themselves, "Whoa! These numbers are way off." The interesting
thing I encounter is that half the parents who just had that
reaction are more conservative relative to the above times, but
half the parents are more liberal. In other words, half the
parent population wants their teens home earlier and half the
parents allow their offspring to wander in (sometimes much) later.
The battle over curfew is usually intense, powered by surging
hormones, newly arrived and very intense social needs, the drive
for independence, and of course, moods, which is the underlying
thread in this discussion. The biggest and first emotion that
usually surfaces is anger. (For more information on this subject,
see Anger Management, Types I and II.) The short
definition of poor anger management has to do with thwarted
expectations powered by out-of-whack attachments. What?
This is when we expect things to be a certain way, and then
reality presents something else. Anger is the natural response
to obstacles. At first we experience frustration, and then as
things fail to change, we "amp up" and usually get mad. Anger
powers our assault on the thing(s) in our way. We become
energized via anger and deal with the resistance. Our investment
in succeeding, or the need to have our expectations met is what
I'm calling attachment. This is when we are really, really set on
having things go our way. Higher attachment fuels greater anger
when expectations are not met. Attachment is to expectation what
gasoline is to fire.
In teen-speak, anger comes when "unreasonable" parents block
their hormone-driven, intense need or drive to do whatever they want,
in this case stay out "all night." They are really flexing their
independence muscle because they are bigger people now, and
"therefore" can manage their own affairs. When parents challenge
this assumption, natural conflict follows, but the emotional backlash
is big, usually strongly punctuated by anger. Teens think parents
disrespect their newfound status, invalidating them when they are
obviously now "grown up," generally denying their rights to make
their own decisions. Teens are right in theory but wrong in extent.
Teenagers understand that they have greater abilities, but their
emotions and undeveloped thinking push them into thinking they know
a lot more, can manage themselves better, when usually this is
questionable or wrong. Because they are not as mature as they
think, their emotional reactions to the structure you provide is
over-produced. In common parent parlance, your teen throws a fit.

-Dr. Griggs
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Changing Teenager's Behavior-A Word About Curfews--Part II

Changing Teenager's Behavior-A Word About Curfews
I've been a child psychologist for 27 years. Here's a short summary of some of the things parents consider when it comes to curfew; that variable time of night or day when kids should be home from the parent's perspective, and when they actually arrive, and the implications of both. This is the third in a series of article on Changing Teenager's Behavior. The First article covered Cell Phones. The Second covered Grades.
Parents are more prone to fudge when consequences are less; for example when their teen comes home a half-hour after curfew on a Friday night. Parents rationalize their teen can sleep later Saturday morning, ignoring the underlying defiance. On Saturday morning, the teenager will probably sleep in, but on that day, s/he may be just a little bit friendlier or more helpful or better behaved around the parents. This subtly celebrates the fact the teenager "got away" with something (the "dark side" of individuation), but also tells the parents the teen is aware of the slip up (if it really was "accidental") and is paying penance. The parents use the temporary but appreciated "sudden" conformity to behavioral and other expectations as justification to ignore the previous night's violation of curfew, thus avoiding the unpleasantness of confronting the teen and at the same time reinforcing looking the other way. This little game both parties play is a step-by-step manifestation--the minutiae of "The Dance." ("The Dance" is a concept that is discussed in great detail in an ebook entitled: How To Change Teenager's Behavior, which is linked to the
author's website, below.) While it isn't primarily pathological, it does illustrate the levels of interaction and some of the games parents and teenagers play in working out privilege. The bottom line for most parents is subjective.
At some point parents say to themselves, "My teenager is mostly OK, therefore, s/he gets ______________." In the first article in this series, that referred to cell phones. In the second article, that could have referred to any behavior as long as the school grades are high enough, which is also subjective. This kind of thinking depends in part upon the totals of the tally sheet of expected good teenager behaviors compared with the "other" ones. So, in this respect, parental expectation, temperaments, and adult circumstances play an important part in deciding what is OK, or not, and what rewards will follow what contingency of behaviors. Sometimes, parents are compromised too much and they tolerate less, but sometimes that investment paid off the night before, so one or another egregious teen behavior is more likely to be ignored.
In general, in trying to determine whether a behavior is normal or should be of concern, you can ask the following questions. How different is the behavior or attitude when compared with other children in his or her age group or his or her normal personality? How frequently does it occur? Does it interfere with others or with your child's ability to cope with his or her environment or to get along with people (not only his or her parents, but teachers, coaches, friends, neighbors, and others whom s/he deals with on a daily basis)? Don't hesitate to ask other
parents about what their teenager does. Don't hesitate to read. Don't hesitate to wait until you have your wits about you before you decide whether some behavior is OK, or not. Don't be pressured by your teen's insistence, impulsivity or impatience. If in doubt, consult with a behavioral health professional.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page18.html

Changing Teenager's Behavior--The Cell Phone

Changing Teenager's Behavior--The Cell Phone
We parents know that most teenagers are wired to their
electronic devices--computers, Play Stations, X Boxes, or
cell phones. Talking on cell phones is ubiquitous.
Texting each other during school hours is endemic and has
replaced passing notes between classes. It used to be
that only doctors had pagers and cell phones. Now, pagers
are obsolete and everyone has a cell phone, and that is not
much of an exaggeration, at least in developed nations.
From the teenager's perspective, no one who is anyone doesn't
have one.
Of course, your teenage wants a cell phone, and according
to his or her perspective, will suffer much social stigma
should s/he be "deprived" of one. Your task, as the parent,
is not to hold your teenager back; rather, to give him or her
the tools to succeed, again, recognizing that the limits of
having tools are set by need, circumstances and your teenager's
maturity.
The immediate questions I hear from parents, are "At what
age should a kid have a cell phone?" (I often also hear the
question, "Should s/he have one at all?") "How much should we spend?"
"How long can s/he talk on it per day?" "What constitutes abuse?"
"What other conditions have to be met in order to get one?"
"What happens if we say 'No?'")
The short answer to the above questions is, "when you teen is
ready." The longer answer involves discussing the details.
Some kids need a cell phone earlier, if for example, they are
latchkey kids and need to be more or less immediately or
predictably available by phone to a working parent. If this
teen is responsible enough to manage going straight home after
school and calling Mom or Dad at work to let them know s/he has
safely arrived, then probably this teenager can be trusted with
a cell phone. Or, put another way, if necessity mandates the
teen have some communication device, the parent and teenager will
have to work out all the contingencies to make functional
meeting that need. The reality of being safe pressures both
parent and teen to accommodate other circumstances, like being
home alone with a cell phone when other teenagers are also out
of school and likely chatting away (instead of doing homework).
At the other extreme are the teens who do not need cell
phones for any other reason than to fit in with peers.
"Everyone" has one and "everyone" talks all the time, and
"everyone" texts, etc. "Therefore" I need a cell phone, or
so goes the argument. Teenager's social and peer needs peak
during these critical development years, and modern technology
has given them a way to socially network that has never been
extant before. Both the pressures to interact this way and
the consequences of not are now much more extreme, especially
amongst teens. (One psychologist dryly commented that the more
communication devices teenagers posses, the less they
communicate with their parents.) Not surprisingly, the
ramifications for inclusion or exclusion from social gatherings
also have increased, and cell phone interaction is at the hub of
this interactive wheel. I'm not saying the cell phone is THE
thing necessary to be popular, but it seems that without one, it
is much harder to compete with those who are "in." (The age-old
have vs. have-nots argument has invaded the realm of cell phones.)
This cell phone need is typical of teenagers who have a lot going
for them, either monetarily from parents, or from natural looks
or personality or brains. These teens do well and use the cell
phone to commemorate their triumphs, big or small, immediate or
delayed, social, academic or personal. If this teen succeeds at
getting good grades, avoids the usual pitfalls of being a teen
(alcohol, drug use, or excessive sexuality), then parents usually
grant use of a cell phone, justifying it with acknowledgment of
his or her successes. Parents say their teen is doing very well,
"therefore" a cell phone is allowed. As long as successes keep
piling up--good grades, clean rooms, good driving records
(for older teenagers), the more likely the teenager can keep his
or her cell phone.
Most teenagers fall in the middle between these two
extremes. Most teens do not have stellar grades and seldom
clean their rooms. Most teenagers talk back to their parents,
pick on their younger siblings and often do not cooperate.
What about these teens? Here's when judgment and deal making
interface. Remember, at this age, teens are sort of adult-like
but sometimes more child-like, alternating between the two poles.
Sometimes teens cooperate; sometimes they are obstreperous.
Sometimes parents will back up and the teen will advance in
maturity and privilege. Sometimes the teen will regress and
the parents will retrench, resulting in loss of privilege, status
with peers, etc. I call this "The Dance."
Parents want teenagers to "shape up" and know that rewards
shape behavior. Remember, at this age parents can't give kids
stars on a chart or easily send them to their room. But, teenagers
have needs that adults can meet, like cell phones, being taxied
to and from events, getting money, being allowed to stay out longer
at social functions. These are the "things" parents use to bargain
for better behavior. Not surprisingly, when teenager's needs are
highest, they are most responsive to bribes and other parental
"manipulation." (A very concrete approach to controlling teen
"talk time" is to have them pay for their own cell phone bill, A
ND work for that money. This does not obviate conforming to other
household expectations.)
This is part of a series of articles on teens and specific
issues. Read the other articles on teens and curfew, teens and
grades or just read the ebook on teens for the whole presentation.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page18.html