Families with adolescents often live very worried about this stage in their children's lives.
To avoid worrying about everything, it is very useful to detect in advance what are the most frequent risks that adolescents run. We must be aware that most of them will not have these problems, but if we evaluate in advance where the problems may appear, we will be more prepared and prepared to face them if they do occur.
Knowing the most common problems of adolescence can help families to deactivate them.
• Problems at school. Some teenagers who have never had performance or behavior problems in school begin to show them now. The solution to this is to act immediately. The family must get in touch with the school and jointly develop a strategy that prevents boys and girls from wanting to drop out of school or from dropping their performance to levels that affect their future.
• Problems in family relationships. The most frequent problem of adolescence is usually the relationship with their parents. To avoid it, or at least minimize it, parents should take adolescence with a lot of patience, a lot of love for their sons and daughters and a good dose of humor. Nor does it hurt to remember adolescence itself, that brings us closer to them and makes us understand their responses much better. And above all, always be aware that it is only a stage, that there comes a day when adolescence ends.
• Eating disorders. Adolescence is the time when eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia often appear. There is no one hundred percent effective formula to avoid them, but getting our sons and daughters to have a healthy relationship with food and knowing the diseases well to detect them in their first symptoms can help minimize their consequences.
• Bullying. Bullying at school is another of those serious problems that threaten adolescents. The best way to combat it is information. We must ensure that both our sons and daughters and we and ourselves have enough information about it. As with eating disorders and other problems that can appear in adolescence, detecting it early makes the problem much easier to solve.
• Internet harassment. The Internet is a very powerful tool and from which you can get great performance. But they must know how to use it safely. We must ensure that from childhood they know what can and cannot be done online; This will reduce the possibility of them suffering this type of harassment or of taking other risks associated with the use of these tools.
• Substance use. Education within the family, and fostering the responsibility of adolescents, are the methods to fight against substance abuse, whether legal or illegal.
If we promote a healthy life in our sons and daughters and give them enough truthful and objective information on the effects of drugs, we will be putting measures to prevent and / or reduce the risks associated with these uses.
• Unwanted pregnancies. Teen pregnancy can ruin the future of our daughters. The way to avoid this is for boys and girls to have sufficient sexual information and access to contraceptive methods.
• Depression. Depression appears relatively frequently in adolescence. If we have the slightest suspicion that our son or daughter is experiencing depression, we must ask for help from professionals.
• Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is a problem that adolescents suffer especially, but it is very important to talk both with them and with them so that they understand what abuse is, they understand that they do not have to allow it or carry it out and that it is a crime. It is important that they know that they should report it if it happens to them.
• Traffic accidents. It is important to encourage the responsibility of sons and daughters when they start to drive any vehicle and set an example when they see us driving.
Families with adolescents often live very worried about this stage in their children's lives.
To avoid worrying about everything, it is very useful to detect in advance what are the most frequent risks that adolescents run. We must be aware that most of them will not have these problems, but if we evaluate in advance where the problems may appear, we will be more prepared and prepared to face them if they do occur.
Knowing the most common problems of adolescence can help families to deactivate them.
• Problems at school. Some teenagers who have never had performance or behavior problems in school begin to show them now. The solution to this is to act immediately. The family must get in touch with the school and jointly develop a strategy that prevents boys and girls from wanting to drop out of school or from dropping their performance to levels that affect their future.
• Problems in family relationships. The most frequent problem of adolescence is usually the relationship with their parents. To avoid it, or at least minimize it, parents should take adolescence with a lot of patience, a lot of love for their sons and daughters and a good dose of humor. Nor does it hurt to remember adolescence itself, that brings us closer to them and makes us understand their responses much better. And above all, always be aware that it is only a stage, that there comes a day when adolescence ends.
• Eating disorders. Adolescence is the time when eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia often appear. There is no one hundred percent effective formula to avoid them, but getting our sons and daughters to have a healthy relationship with food and knowing the diseases well to detect them in their first symptoms can help minimize their consequences.
• Bullying. Bullying at school is another of those serious problems that threaten adolescents. The best way to combat it is information. We must ensure that both our sons and daughters and we and ourselves have enough information about it. As with eating disorders and other problems that can appear in adolescence, detecting it early makes the problem much easier to solve.
• Internet harassment. The Internet is a very powerful tool and from which you can get great performance. But they must know how to use it safely. We must ensure that from childhood they know what can and cannot be done online; This will reduce the possibility of them suffering this type of harassment or of taking other risks associated with the use of these tools.
• Substance use. Education within the family, and fostering the responsibility of adolescents, are the methods to fight against substance abuse, whether legal or illegal.
If we promote a healthy life in our sons and daughters and give them enough truthful and objective information on the effects of drugs, we will be putting measures to prevent and / or reduce the risks associated with these uses.
• Unwanted pregnancies. Teen pregnancy can ruin the future of our daughters. The way to avoid this is for boys and girls to have sufficient sexual information and access to contraceptive methods.
• Depression. Depression appears relatively frequently in adolescence. If we have the slightest suspicion that our son or daughter is experiencing depression, we must ask for help from professionals.
• Sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is a problem that adolescents suffer especially, but it is very important to talk both with them and with them so that they understand what abuse is, they understand that they do not have to allow it or carry it out and that it is a crime. It is important that they know that they should report it if it happens to them.
• Traffic accidents. It is important to encourage the responsibility of sons and daughters when they start to drive any vehicle and set an example when they see us driving.
how to solve it
“I START THINKING THAT THIS HAS NO SOLUTION. MY SON'S BEHAVIOR IS INCOMPRISIBLE AND THE SAD IS THAT HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A HAPPY CHILD, BUT NOW… ALL THIS MAKES ME FEEL VERY BAD; I THINK THAT I HAVE NOT KNOWN TO EDUCATE MY CHILD WELL AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ANYMORE, I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING BUT I THINK I HAVE NO SOLUTION "
Problems that cannot be solved end up causing chronic discomfort. When strategies to deal with them fail, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness arise, which make it difficult to find new solutions.
It is clear that some parents typically handle different problem situations with their teenagers, from minor frustrations or disagreements, to major trauma and conflict, quite effectively. Other parents, on the other hand, are overwhelmed by the slightest obstacle. Thus, it is important to consider that a large part of family conflicts between parents and children is ineffective behavior, in which the subject is unable to solve certain situational problems and his inappropriate attempts involve undesirable effects such as: anxiety, depression or sadness and generating additional secondary problems.
We must learn to see life not as extreme impossible situations, but in terms of inappropriate solutions, so the important thing will be to find new and appropriate solutions.
The problem-solving or decision-making strategy (Golfried and Golfried, 1884) seeks to modify the way in which people approach situations for which they had no solution, insisting, above all, on a greater collection of information and its more adequate processing, in order to guide its performance in a more correct way. The aim is to learn a systematic methodology (a way of doing it) to deal with different problems.
Problem solving is a useful method of addressing multiple situational challenges. Learning it and putting it into practice increases the overall effectiveness of parents by training them in the necessary skills and abilities that enable them to face the challenges of everyday life with their children on their own.
In short: it enables a variety of potentially effective response alternatives, and increases the probability of selecting the most effective response among the various alternatives.
Therefore, once you have the understanding of how it works, you will need to prepare yourself to approach all problem situations with such a strategy. This will not be difficult, for you will have innumerable occasions to practice; think about the number of decisions we make at the end of the day, from some very insignificant ("I will tell him to stop watching television and go to bed"), others something more important ("Am I or am I not going to scold my son for be late? Will I show much disgust for his behavior or not? ”), to other possibly very decisive (“ should I influence more in your decision about the studies you want to start the next year? ”), these decisions that you have to take at all times will serve as a parent to practice what you have learned.
The 5 strategies necessary for effective problem solving are:
1- Develop a general orientation to recognize the problem.
2- Define and formulate the problem.
3- Generate as many alternatives as possible to the problem.
4- Make a decision about the problem.
5- Execute and verify, implement the solution and assess the results.
We therefore conclude, thinking that: first, human behavior is subject to elements over which we have some control and, consequently, our child's behavior and our own behavior can be modified. Second, in the face of daily problems and conflicts of all kinds and with our children, we can use a "general strategy" of work, an action methodology that, based on the problem-solving process, will allow us to have a greater number solutions to these problems.
How to put these 5 strategies into practice? We need information and certain skills that we can and must learn to be competent in our parenting profession:
1-Recognition of the problem: make a list of problems with your child. Analyze, first, what are your opinions, beliefs, attitudes and general expectations about the problems that arise in relation to your children. Eg: “There is no one to understand young people”… Second, think about your own general ability to solve these problems. Eg: "I am not prepared to educate this monster" ... You can also start with a general list of problems. Eg: "The relationship with my son is not satisfactory" ... Now something more specific; write down everything your child does that bothers you. Eg: "Lies about homework", ...
2- Problem analysis: With our new attitude to recognize problems, once they have been detected, our goal now is to clarify and understand the specific nature of the problem. From the list of problems that you have written, choose one of the most important, the ones that bother you the most, and we will carry out the following problem analysis exercise.
Problem: who is involved? What exactly happens? Where does the problem occur? When does it happen? How does it happen? What is my usual response to the problem? How do I feel about this problem? What do I do about this behavior? What explains this situation? What does your answer explain? What do I want to change?
3- Brainstorming: next we focus on the third step, which is considered the most important point in the problem-solving process. Our main task will be to be able to generate the widest range of possible responses (solutions, strategies) to the behavior of our children, so as to increase the probability of identifying the most effective ones to achieve the objectives that we have set.
Continuing with the previous example (problem analyzed: “He does not do homework”), list at least five possible strategies or responses to achieve the following objective:
Ex: Objective "That my son learn to study". Answers: find him extracurricular help, enroll him in a study habits program, study and do homework with him, put him in a study group his age, study every day for at least 1 hour, ...
4- Communicate, negotiate and set limits: the purpose at this time is to evaluate the available solution alternatives and select the best one. Generated alternatives must be evaluated. To do this, you must:
• Predict the possible consequences that the application of each alternative generated in the previous phase will have.
• Analyze its personal and social consequences, short and long term. Logically, not all possible consequences can be predicted, so that for each of them only one degree of probability can be conjectured.
• Evaluate its usefulness, that is, its advantages and disadvantages. When evaluating their usefulness, it is only possible to assign them an approximate value.
• Compare the expected results for each of the available alternatives with the desired result or goal, selecting the most appropriate alternatives.
5-Modify problem behaviors: this is undoubtedly the most important moment in the problem-solving or decision-making process, now it is necessary to act. Once you have implemented the new course of action, you will need to look at the consequences and check its effectiveness.
We recommend reading the book “A teenager in my life, Diego Macía Antón. Readings that help us in the difficult task of being parents. And our last recommendation: “patience, large doses of patience.