When You and Your Parents Don’t See Eye to Eye
elsey is angry with her parents because she thinks they’re too strict. “They get on my case when I’m up late talking on the phone,” she says. “They think by 10 p.m. I should be in bed sleeping because it’s a school night. But I just don’t need eight hours of sleep every night. Why can’t my parents understand that?” Jason hasn’t spoken to his parents in two days. “They’re making my life miserable with an ultraearly curfew,” he says. “I can’t even go to 7:30 movie showings because my parents want me home by 9. It’s totally ridiculous.” Kelsey and Jason are hardly the first teens to clash with their parents. You, a teen, are fighting for independence. Your parents are fighting to guide and protect you. They’re acting from a perspective of wisdom, experience, knowledge and understanding, trying to show you the way until you can learn these things on your own. “In some ways teens and parents almost have mutually exclusive agendas,” says Kathleen Galvin, Ph.D., associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University. “Parents are probably still focused inward in terms of what’s going on with the family, and most teens are beginning to focus outward, paying a great deal more attention to their peer groups as sources of influence.” As a result, teens clash with their parents about everything from parties and grades to how neat their bedrooms need to be and their choice of friends. But, although you may think your parents are unreasonable when they tell you to get off the phone after you’ve been talking for only three hours, the resulting conversation they have with you about the proper use of the telephone doesn’t have to turn into a big blowup. Here are some ways to sort out your differences:
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Get to know your parents
You can put an end to a lot of misunderstandings with your parents just by learning more about them. “I thought Dad was horrible for not letting me go ice-skating on the pond,” admits Melodie, age 14. “But then my father told me the story of how his best friend almost died when they were teens playing hockey on a pond that hadn’t frozen over completely. Dad’s friend skated over a thin patch of ice and fell in. Now I understand why my father was so concerned about me.” Take some time to talk with parents and get to know How can you improve your them better. Ask what it was when they were teens. communication with your like What did they do for fun? Did parents? For one thing, it they have a lot of friends? What was school like? See if helps to understand what any of their experiences contribute to the way your parents they expect of you. deal with conflicts and why they set certain household rules. Try to find out where by Becky Sweat they’re coming from, why they react the way they do. Any effort you make to learn more about how your parents’ lives are going will help you interact with them in the future.
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