Guys? Girls? Both? Or are ya undecided?

I ask because I want to make sure I tailor my clinic interaction to the teen in my clinic room.

More and more the answer is often something like undecided or bi? There’re some very noncommittal teens out there who are taking their time to wonder about the possibilities. This has done a lot to these teen’s parents some of whom are hoping this is totally a

PHASE. 

Yes and no. It just so happens that this time in life is about figuring out who you are and that isn’t just about the color of hair, your teen’s political beliefs or whether their clothes are all black or all preppy. This is about who your teen is into sexually as well. Teens today have a more open-minded peer group. It turns out that more of them have no issues about Gay marriage, but their parents well, let’s just say their parents have different thoughts on the issue. Even among college conservatives 14% approve of Gay marriage.

What does this mean for your teen?

Just like their purple hair, they’re open to seeing if they are bisexual or gay too. With the freedom to figure it out they learn whether it is or is not them early enough in their lives so that they evolve into their adulthood in a healthier way, a more honest way.

For some it will be a phase, but for others it might stick as part of who they are. They might find their happy place in bisexuality. Let them experiment and learn about this part of who they might be. For this, your patience will be required.

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Patterns or the occurrence of one person having a behavior and the other person learning what that behavior means can really only occur through constant and repeated contact with someone.  Something happens and your teen tells them the comment hurt their feelings. If they care enough about the relationship then they try and remember not to react that way again. They learn the way your teen would like them to react when they do that. This is similar with you and your teen not just romantic relationships. You start to relearn who your child is as a teen. Your reaction to certain behaviors hopefully changes based on their feedback. This is something that can’t happen efficiently if you don’t have a good relationship with your teen; you have minimal interaction with your teen, or there is too much conflict to ever have any interaction as in the “silent treatment.”

Patterns are there to teach you how to parent your teen, but you have to be willing to endure the difficulty of the interaction so you can learn how to handle it better next time. In doing so, you teach your teen how to handle their future partner’s behavior when they start to interact more with you and the world around them through romantic and intimate relationships.

Related posts:

1. Patterns In Life
2. Teen Romantic Relationship
3. Difference In Boys And Girls In A Relationship

 There are expectations that your teen thinks they’re supposed to meet. They should do this or they should look like that. It can be overwhelming at times.

The expectation of what they think they’re supposed to do when they start to develop who they are is what others think of them. Your teen’s sense of self begins by their best guess about what others think of them and what others think they should do. They do this so they can be accepted. This acceptance gives them value. If your teen never grows out of that outside acceptance being more important in their process of acceptance, life is a bit more stressful.

What your teen is supposed to do is follow their own heart and learn how to accept themselves for who they are in their own very unique way.  Now that, takes a lot of patience.

Related posts:

1. What Are Your Expectations?
2. Do You Have Good Or Bad Expectations?
3. Great Expectations from your Teen

The toughest decision you have to make about your teen is whether to override their sense of free will; to take their power away to make choices for themselves.

You do this with grounding or other disciplinary action and it can be hard to make the decision sometimes no matter how much of a hard a@# you consider yourself; seeing your teen miserable is not fun. This is why it’s important to think of your teen as a middle aged person STILL doing unbecoming behavior because thinking of your teen as forty and STILL doing this behavior will help you do what you need to do.

Whether it’s an eating disorder, drug use or just being downright selfish, making the tough decisions like hospitalization, rehab and not feeding into all their desires is the best gift you can give whether you call it tough love or just plain ol’ love.

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1. Tough Decisions
2. Your Teen’s First Real Love
3. I Love that Age!

5. I thought I was already pregnant so I didn’t use birth control the last time I had sex.  

4. I’m tryin’ to lose weight. I work out for 2-3 hours every day and then all day I eat like 9 granola bars, 3-4 cups of rice, meat, a salad, soup, two pieces of cake and a bag of hot cheesy things.

3. My Mom is always exaggerating things. She’s mad because I want to hang out with my Dad. I know he smokes weed and hangs out with his girlfriend while I’m there, but we have a good time.

2. You want to me get the HPV vaccine?! A vaccine made by pharmaceutical companies to make money. I’m not giving them one red cent! I don’t want the vaccine.

Me: Umm..its over 98% effective against penal, anal, throat cancers and genital warts. Maybe you’re getting something in return for your money? Doh!

1. Smokin’ weed helps with my ADHD and my sleep issues. Can I have a medical marijuana card doc?

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1. 5 Amazing Things Teens Did This Week
2. 3 Things Teens Learn From Their Mistakes
3. How Teens being Kind leads to Adult Happiness

This is really normal and yes some people NEVER seem to outgrow it. Your teen controls their desire to be too selfish by your limit setting and discipline. This means when you say, “No” to something you aren’t just being a pain in their a*s, you’re actually teaching patience. When you say, “Raise your half of the car cost if you want one,” you’re actually teaching delayed gratification, which teaches a lot about patience and throws in some lessons about budgeting and sacrifice as well. Get the picture?

If you love your teen so much you give them everything you never had because you had to work for it or even worse…go without, then you teach your teen to think about themselves. That is, you teach your teen to be selfish. This Dad got It right the second time, but you can get it right the first time by learning from his lesson.

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1. When Selfish is Good
2. 5 Reasons Teens need Friends
3. Teens Will Be Teens

You know that feeling you get when your boss wants to chat with you on a Monday morning? That’s the same one your teen can feel when you suddenly walk in to have a chat with them. Know why?

They get this feeling for the same reason you get this feeling; You know your boss is too busy or too “bossy” to just come down and have a happy chat about what you did over the weekend so any “chat” they want to have is about something related to the job. So having a chat with your boss isn’t associated with anything positive. Sure your boss could do away with this association by chatting you up more about nonwork issues or coming down to tell you something you did great, but how many people are really that chummy with their boss? How many teens are that chummy with their parents? Well there’re certainly more teens that are chummy with their parents, but if you only want a sit down chat when you have a problem with your teen then when you want to chat, they’re going to think what did I do now? So they’re going to be anxious no matter what the chat is about.

Your teen is not your boss. Chat ‘em up. Get to know other things about them and talk to them about all things so when something that is behavioral comes up, it doesn’t stand out so badly it creates a feeling of panic just because you want to chat with them.

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Your teen feels bad when they disappoint you so when they do something that seems natural to them or part of who they naturally are becoming like not being inclined to excel at academics, not passing up the joint offered at the party or starting to have sex well, your disappointment is like a knife to their heart. Depending on how you follow up the initial surprise of the activity they’re either going to know you still trust them even though you don’t like their decision and would not have made that decision for them; or they‘ll know they have blown it and they can never win your trust or respect again.

Give them a graceful way back into your good graces and tone down on the disappointment. When your teen knows there’s still hope to regain your trust and respect while being who they are, they’re more likely to keep trying. Once they give up, it’s over.

Related posts:

1. Teens And Trust Issues
2. Building Your Teen’s Trust In Others

So much acting out behavior that parents see comes from being hurt by someone your teen loves. Although your teen may seem to love being with their friends more, the hurt that hurts the most comes from you. If you know this hurts, why would you…

…Yell when you can speak calmly

…Shove when you can extend your arms for a hug

…Watch TV when you can watch your teen and hear how their day was

…Play Sudoku when you can send a text that says, “I’m thinking of you.”

…Call them outside their name when you thought so hard of the name they would be called

…Assume the worst when you know you gave birth to someone who has the potential to be the best

…Ask them to be someone else when you understand how much easier it is to perfect being yourself

Over time, hurt feelings become feelings of resentment and then turn into anger and it is very hard to get someone’s trust you when they believe they hate you.

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Your teen badly wants your support. Yes, they want their privacy, but that’s appropriate to helping them start to problem solve situations. In the end, when they look around the room of dance partners, they want you to be the person they finally talk it over with. It’s just that, they have a way they would like the conversation to go. It never seems to involve yelling or judgement.  It’s all about you being this pillar of support.  It’s about you being this Batman and Robin like team when it comes to something they need your help with.

She hoped you were going to say something like, “Wow, that’s a lot. I was really hoping you wouldn’t have to experience something like this. I love you and we can get through this together.” She was hoping you would say something like that. She already felt horrible about having to tell you she had messed up so royally. It took everything she had to crawl from under the rock of shame and guilt to just stand before you.. She didn’t want to hear you rub that in at all.

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1. Your Teen’s Fantasy