Family Relationships Essay, Research Paper
I would like to begin this report by stating the fact that not all of the teenagers out there are hormonal freaks. We all have our own opinions and we all like to voice them so that we can explain our emotions. But with these emotions come certain consequences and certain behaviors. I am writing this report on a more personal level, and the reason that it is personal is because I have problems with my parents. Now I do understand that I am in a step family situation but I also have problems with my real dad and he has problems with me. So this report is not only for myself to pass but also for my father so he can learn how to raise me. Now to explain what will all be included in my report. Now this report includes how to treat a teenage son and also how to treat a parent.
First off I am going to explain how to be friends with your adolescent. Most parents (well at least mine) consider me to be they re working force and they also consider me the enemy. Well that is in my eyes I consider it that way, even though they probably don t see it that way. Now most parents know how the back-talking and the messy rooms, bad grades and paying attention to the ladies or guys, goes. But what most parents do not understand it that this is just all a facts of life. When children reach that magical age the parents think oh no, we are all in trouble and we will all but be good for them . Many parents are not sure how much to loosen the reigns. It almost seems like you should not let go because your kids are in the most dangerous part of their life. But studies show that when you do let your kids go they will stand by you better because you don t have constant supervision over them. But I am not trying to say that you should let your kids go on a rampage. In fact that is the worst thing that you can do. You need to find a way to let your kids go but still keep in touch without them knowing. This probably sounds like a load of crap but your kids often are maturer when they are by themselves. I personally belive that is because we as rebellious little devils don t have anyone to rebel against. So there for we will be more mature around our friends. Another point on the same topic is the fact that you should always love and cherishes your teen. And no matter what you should always tell your teen about how good he or she is doing on no matter what they are good at. Because what you think really does matter to your teen. One of the more important things that you teen needs is listening. We don t need to be bullied around all day and for you to expect us to exceed in everything. What we do need is discussion. But with discussion we also need for you to listen to our problems or things we do, even in the event that they are not the most interesting to you as a parent.
Next I would like to go into specifics with all of this. I would like to bring up the topic of raising teen boys. Of course there are a few things more difficult that the difficulties of raising a baby to an adult. Once you see your teen age boy get to about the age of twelve he suddenly goes from a nice young gentlemen into an aggressive person that does anything to do something more dangerous that anything else. A mother could take a child anywhere and now all of a sudden she must refer to her son when he is around his friends as Jon and the son will refer to his mom as Fran or what ever her first name is. God forbid he calls her mom or that he will let her call him son or something that would make them related. It used to be that he would watch sesame street and Barney but now it is scary movies and alternative rock. Most parents are not ready for these years to come when their son will become the most hateful person that you think that you will ever meet. A lot of people like to call this stage in life Heart Break Hill . This means that you will get many of those I hate you s and those I never want to see you again s Now no matter how much you tell your self that they don t really mean it, a lot of times they really do. And your teen will also be very rebellious and do anything that would scare you. A lot of times just to scare you. They seem to get the attitude that they can do anything. But don t give up on your teen. If you don t you will soon be in the end of this stage. When you get to the last stretch you will be faced with two choices, one, throw in the towel and give up, or two keep going. And once you get there you realize that it was all worth while.
You will also realize the difficulties of Seeing Eye to eye with your teen. You will begin to notice that they never see the same thing when you look at a situation. For an example, you see an apple as something that will benefit your teen and will make him or her stronger but your teen sees it as something gross. So you tell your teen to eat it but they refuse to and both of you get a ruined night and both of you are hurt and very frustrated. This seems to happen everyday. But it more that just and apple. You will also begin to notice that your teen is hanging out with people that aren t fit in your eyes so you figure that by just telling them that it will save them a lot of trouble in the future. So you have it all planed out and you go for it. You say to your teen How about you invite one of your old friends over tonight and you guys can hang out here and we can play a game or something. I think that you have more in common with them anyway. You expect that since you and letting them have someone over that you will have implanted the thought into their mind that you want them to hang out with their old friends. But to your surprise you get a whole new comment that you didn t expect. So instead you should start by asking the how there old friend is. But be caravel that your teen doesn t say something like I don t really care about him anymore. Or I think that he is such a loser. The second mistake that you made what by telling the they have more in common with the other friends. This seems to the teens that you are trying to control their entire life right before their eyes. And they definitely don t want that to happen. See teens have to feel as though they are controlling their entire life themselves. But in reality they are the ones being controlled by other people. And the final mistake with what you said is that you said we can play a game or something. If you say that you teen will feel embarrassed with you and will assume that you done what to take the time to get to know there new friends. They also would definitely not want to spend the next several hours trying to restart the relationship with there old friend with you breathing down there neck. The best way of doing things is to just treat them like an adult. See you child wants to have adult freedom and child responsibilities. Another thing is that you should always tell you child why you think the way you do and never disinclude your teens ideas.
As much as I didn t want to bring this topic up I felt that I needed to. It is now time for me to explain the SCHOOL issue or should I say the waking up for school issue. If you seem to be having trouble getting your teen out of bed in the morning for the school but it is probably for a good reason. This is because they aren t getting enough sleep to fulfill the daily amount of sleep. All teens once they hit puberty their bodies change their bodily clocks. All teens need at least 9.2 hours of sleep and they of course never get it. So when they go to bed at the average time of around eleven o clock they would have to get up about eight twenty. But most teens can t get up that late. Especially because of the early school hours. This lack of sleep is also very dangerous because your teens start driving around this age and if they have insufficient amounts of asleep they will fall asleep at the wheel. And if they do that they will probably endanger the lives of others around them and then they will wind up with an expensive court fees and medical bills. So all in all you should make sure that you teen gets the right amount of sleep.
Another aspect of your teens life is the social life of your teen. This especially occurs when the teen goes back to school in the beginning of the year. He teen almost feels to be pressured into getting all of the right cloths and equiptment for the entering of the school year. In your teens mind there are two aspects to school, now being the aspect of their social life and the other being the aspect of there learning life. Depending on how they were raised they might see one aspect as being much more important than the other. For the social life any teen will tell you that there are three social levels, popular, middle, and the unpopular. The popular kids are easy to pick out and they have very nice clothing and get the best grades and they are always the happy and giddy types. The middle class people are the ones who are friends with everyone and they get the average grades and high grades and the low grades so they aren t so easily picked out. These teens are usually friends with everyone and they almost never have really close friends. And the unpopular kids are really easy to pick out. They tend to not have such nice cloths and they always have really close friends. The only reason they are unpopular is because they speak their mind and the popular kids need someone to pick on or make fun of. If your teen is having a problem with social alienation then you should do several things. First you should tell you teen to speak there mind in a kind way. And to not let people make fun of them. But yet you should also not let you teen get into the cool crowd because the cool kids are the ones who are actually disliked by there peers cause they are mean to most people. You should teach you children how to be well liked. One way you can do this is by telling them how to sit up and carry themselves. These qualities are some of the most important in a teens popularity. One thing that you should heed is the fact of you adding to there trouble. Your teens need to know that you will not make them feeling bad for being disliked. But no matter what you think your teens really do need you in their life and they want to be accepted by you. If they aren t then they will want to runaway from you and your ideas because they don t feel comfortable around you. And finally you need to let your teen know that the in crowd is the crowd that likes to put people down and that that is not the way to go about.
Another thing that I would like to talk about is comparing siblings. When you do this not only does the child feel insulted but they will also rebel even more if you are comparing them because of something they did wrong. But if you are just comparing them and they don t know it you will begin to notice yourself favoring one or the other. When you do this then you children will notice and the one being left out will begin to dislike you and to act in ways that you don t approve. You will begin to chip away at your teens self esteem and you all do know where that goes. When you do this you make the child that you put down feel like you have set them for failure and in fact you have. So there for they feel less compelled to achieve and succeed in life. You need to praise your children and do so by going to there special events such as, chorus, track, band, sports, art shows, and various honors. When you do this, your child will seem to do greater and will want to succeed. And since you are there your child will want to impress you. But don t think that just because you went that you can get away with not praising them when you see them next. In order to praise your child you have to put aside all of the things that your child has done wrong and praise them. Now I am not trying to say that you need to forget the things that he or she does wrong. Because if you do that then they will assume that they can get away with things by distracting your attention.
Now for some of my own advise to you parents. This is coming from my own experience. The first bone I have to pick with you parents is that you need to acknowledge when you are wrong. Don t assume that you people are perfect. When you do something and you know that your teen is right then you should say something along the lines of Oh, ok I see, I understand now that I am wrong and that I will fix it. So now you understand that you are wrong sometimes. I am not trying to say that you are wrong all the time though. I will give you credit, you are right sometimes. Oh yeah and another thing. You guys always seem to complain that you never get enough respect. Well how about you try looking at it from our point of view. Do you think that we ever get respect. With you people constantly looking down are back and never letting go then you won t be giving us respect. When you don t give us the respect that we deserve then you shouldn t expect us to give you the respect you deserve. Ok I have just thought of another thing that I need to say. When you have a bad day at work or out with the girls, you don t need to take it out on us kids. So pay more attention to what you say because you are angry. Trust me I know all about this, my father has his share of bad days at work. When he comes home from a bad day at work, all of my siblings will admit that I am the one that he takes everything out on. When you have a bad day at work you need to watch how you walk and talk to you family. And don t be surprised if you ruin everyone s night by treating them bad and making them upset. Another thing that I need to say is that the biggest complaint of all teens is the fact that their parents get on them about all of the little things.
One other topic that I would like to bring up is the step-family topic. The biggest problem with step families is the phrase it s not fair! This phrase has got to be the most commonly used phrase there is in the teen language. Everyone understands that it is hard to be equal to everyone. But you must try extra hard with step families, because if you don t you will only end up with disaster. For instance, if you tell your husbands son No, you cant go out Friday night! and then you turn around and tell your daughter Yeah, sure you can go out Friday, in fact how much money do you need? And you assume that the other kids will never find out. Well you thought wrong because not only do your kids communicate more than you think they also do notice everything that goes on no matter how obvious they actually seem to you. When you are playing favorites you will begin to build a wall between you and the child that is not your favorite. That particular child will begin to grow a strong disliking towards you and eventually if you don t prove that you are not playing favorites it will begin to get to every other child in the family. This brings me to another point. When you tell your child No you need to have a reason for what you said. And the excuse Because I said! Never works. This will only frustrate your child even more than they are. You must be sure to always have a good reason to what you say. If you don t this will cause your child to rebel against your thoughts. And another thing, when you child misunderstands you or you misunderstand him or her don t flip out! That is the worst thing that you can do. When you do that they will have a ruined night and they will problem not want to speak with you for a good while because you scared them away from you and your advice. This happened with myself and my father one night. We were sitting down and discussing the actions that were going to be taken the next night. I had said I am going to have to stay after school tomorrow. And he said well, you cant because you have something to do. Then I commented I told you about this a week ago. And he replied I was not paying attention. Now you see here that he is making me pay for something that is not my fault. Well that brings up another subject. You parents have a job as being parents. This job is not to have a war type relationship with your son or daughter. There is no offence or defense. There is only a I will help you along the way strategy. This consists of keeping your cool when things go rough. Such as misunderstanding your child. You need to understand that your child is going to be harsh because they are not yet trained to be gentle with the person they are having a problem with. But you are, so you need to set the example for this. If you do then eventually they will learn to do the same and then your arguments will become peaceful debates And when this happens you and your child will notice that you will work things out a lot easier and more calmly.
No matter what your friends say you should not always assume the worst. Because if you do you will find yourself getting angry at things that you shouldn t or wouldn t normally. Also if you don t expect your child to do something then you shouldn t expect them to do something that is even less important to them. So when they do screw up on those things don t flip out just let them know what they did. Do you know the phrase Do you understand me? well you don t really need to use it. Because if we don t understand what you are saying then we will ask anyway. When you say that you make your child feel as though he is a baby and that he or she doesn t speak English or something. So all in all you just need to understand what your child is going through and you need to look at things from there point of view as well as your own. This will help you better understand what your child is going through.
This will conclude this lesson in life. For all of you who still don t know how to do things with your child or for you who need more instruction please refer to www.parentingteens.com and they will help you with your problems. I hope that this information will help you as a parent to grow a healthier and more relaxing relationship with your son or daughter. I do understand that this doesn t cover everything in life. But what it doesn t cover you will need to figure out for yourself. And for you teens who read this, I hope that this will help you to show your parents how to handle you and I also hope that it shows you where your parents are coming from. But I don t want you to act like this is your ticket to freedom because you still need to listen to your mom and dad. Thank you for taking the time to read this material and learn from it.