Teen Introduction

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, So He loves also the bow that is stable. Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran, in his book, The Prophet, presents an image of the parent as a bow and the child as a flying arrow. He gives us a clear picture of a healthy relationship between ourselves and our children: interdependent yet independent; paths intertwined yet separate. However, navigating the path to a balanced relationship that Gibran speaks so eloquently about can be both challenging and exciting, especially during the teen years.

 Even if the relationship is relatively easy, the adolescent period can be full of change. Our teen is experiencing significant physical changes. He or she may feel that their body is a stranger to them with hormones exploding, body shape maturing, and emotional reactions more unpredictable. A teen's self-esteem is often especially vulnerable, when the pressures upon them and choices before them are highly complex.

As our teen changes, our life is impacted as well. If we have provided our children with opportunities to play soccer, take piano lessons, and engage in all the other activities available to children these days, how do we feel when they change their interests and withdraw from us? What if we are especially dedicated to maintaining a strong, healthy family and our teenager is rarely available for family time? What effect does it have on us when our model child becomes a teen and begins demanding our attention by acting bizarrely or negatively?

These common and disconcerting changes can lead us to doubt our ability to be good parents, and to distrust our relationship with our teenager. None of this is made easier by the general atmosphere in which our children are growing up with drugs, violence in schools, and sexual promiscuity. It can be a fearful and anxiety-ridden world for our teenager to navigate. Sometimes we deeply long to take a trip around the world and arrive home just in time for our teen's 20th birthday!

For most of us, that trip around the world is not an option, so we need to develop answers to some of the questions at the heart of what is going on with our teens and ourselves. Here, we will examine our "own stuff" and the emotional baggage we may carry from our past. We will talk about replacing expectations that block the building of a stronger relationship with our teen to ones that are realistic and healthy. We will discuss the "whose problem is it" framework and how that can help us sort out conflict. We will examine the powerful changes we can make when we transform a judgmental attitude toward our teen to one that is based on a deep sense of trust and respect.

Finally, we will looked at our deep spiritual bond with our teen and how to build connections from the heart that can transcend and transform our daily life. What are reasonable expectations for us and for our teen in this time of deep change? How do we appropriately allow our maturing teenager more freedom? How can we gain fresh and healthy perspectives that will bring more trust and respect into our relationship? How can we better understand and hold our spiritual connection in our awareness with our teen? We will discuss these questions and other subjects, as together we examine our relationship with our teens.

There are no easy answers, but support and dialogue with each other can help us develop new perspectives and healthy results. This section of the site is focused on fairly average situations that most teens experience. Unresolved chronic or severe problems may require professional help.

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