When a teenager rebels and no longer listens, parents don’t really know how to react. However, there is one thing that can make the difference.
Adolescence is an often complicated period for young people, but also for their parents. Some are completely contained on themselves, by not communicating anymore and isolating themselves in their room. Others explode at the slightest remark by an adult, become insolent, aggressive or provocative. There are those too who dry the lessons, go out in the evening in secret, lie, sometimes run away. And then those who test their limits with alcohol, drugs and dubious frequentations. Behaviors that leave parents completely helpless. So, they try as best they can by tightening the screw: punishments, prohibitions, permanent surveillance … But sometimes, nothing helps. This is exactly what Rox Rose, a former “problem teen”, who confided in filter to the Huffington Post.
When she was younger, she chained bad experiences. “Shooting flight at 12 years old. The Marlboro Lights at 13. What I was doing at 14 years old? I was not going on the internet. My parents tried everything: listening to my phone calls to sabotage my vodka projects in a local park, forbid me to go to a disco, and to reprimand me forcefully when I became too insolent“, She explained. Reactions which, in her eyes, have been useless. According to her, her parents have forgotten an essential thing: “They never asked me why I was acting this way”, she said.
“I was an unmatched neurodivergente child in a house full of cries, shame and secrets. I shouted in the only way I knew: by bad behavior. It is easy to punish a difficult child. It is more difficult to wonder if there is something that pushes him to act in this way.” In general, when a family crosses this period, dialogue often ends up cutting between the teenager and his parents. However, it is precisely in these moments that it would be necessary to succeed in talking to each other, without cries, without reproaches, to really listen to.
