Playtimes HK Magazine September 2017 Issue | Page 55

TEENagers
Keep them talking, but don’t be too picky about
who they are talking to, advises Dr Hannah Reidy
A
s a psychologist, parents
often come to me feeling
worried, confused or
upset that their teen is
no longer sharing their
feelings with them and
seems to be isolating him- or herself.
They recount times when their child
would confide the details of their day
- an act that is now rare and normally
occurs only after quips have been made
about the stony silence at the dinner
table, or when the parent has learned
from another source that something
needs to be discussed. Parents also feel
frustrated about the amount of time that
their teen is spending on social media or
messaging their friends on their devices,
rather than conversing with the people
sitting next to them in the real world.
Now for the teen’s perspective.
When we discuss these topics in the
therapy room, teens share their parents’
frustrations, but tend to feel that their
parents aren’t giving them enough space.
They perceive that they do in fact speak
regularly to their parents, albeit less
than they had prior to their teen years.
Rarely is the stereotyped response of
‘my parents just don’t understand me’
articulated; teens are more likely to feel
embarrassed that their parents probably
do comprehend the situation. They are
often slightly uncomfortable with the
realisation, as they become adults, that
their parents are more similar to them
than they had realised. The dissonance
that occurs between their mental
depiction of the consistent, unconditional
‘parent’ of their youth, and the parent
as the ‘person’ in their own right, is one
that is pretty hard for a teen to hold in
mind. Most adults will remember a time
– whether that be a slightly sickening
feeling when their parent recounted a
story about ‘dating’, or a realisation of
vulnerability on witnessing their parent
cry – where the internal representation of
their parent changed. This is often quite a
defining moment, and often one that feels
quite difficult. It is worth remembering that
this is what is going on for your teens in
real time.Teens are moving on up towards
adulthood. Slowly, slowly; day by day,
they are forming relationships that are
more adult in nature, and are becoming
more dependent on people outside of
their family network. They are still relying
on their parents in a way, though. Their
attachment style – the model of social
interactions that is used as a template
for new relationships – is based on the
experiences that they had in early life with
their parents and other caregivers. This
will at least in part provide the basis of
how these new relationships will play out.
It is new territory for them, so there is a
lot of trial and error, and a lot of energy
and emotion invested in each of these
new relationships.