A person’s teenage years are often a sort of a rite of passage. It’s a very difficult time in all of our lives, and it’s a difficult time to be around someone, let’s be perfectly honest here. It has always been this way throughout human history and is unlikely to change any time soon.
When it comes to teenagers, they almost always inspire a range of emotions in the adults around them. In fact, often we want to save them and strangle them at the very same time!
People who are just starting to come of age in 2020 are definitely disadvantaged, because this is a time where they naturally want to start spreading their wings, and they have had their wings pretty severely clipped for the time being!
We want to share some strategies with you for dealing with teenagers during these times of crisis, and helping them to cope with situations that hit them harder than many others.
Get Them Something Nice
To be clear, there should be a clear line between giving a teenager a gift and spoiling them. It’s never a good idea to enable someone’s entitlement, especially when dealing with children or teenagers. However, something small given at the right time can go away to show they are loved and help combat the depression that’s constantly poking at them.
From a gift certificate to a new cellphone cover to a new airpod case cover, it’s very easy to make a statement without overly complicating things or breaking the bank.
Work with Them on a Project
Depending on your teenager’s tastes, this could be anything from school fundraising to a science project to learning a new language to digging a garden. Ask them what they would like to do. Don’t give up; they may be depressed and sulking. Insist on it being their choice, but it has to be something you can both work on.
They will be glad in the end that you are interested in them as human beings, no matter how hard it is for them to show it. And in the end they will cave in. We are all social creatures, after all.
Be A Communicator
Talk to them incessantly. Get their opinions on everything. Teenagers tend to have uninformed (so as not to say sometimes ridiculous) opinions on a lot of things, but that’s not the point. The point is to get them to open up.
You may be an authority figure, but try not to be overly judgy. It’s much more important to gain the confidence of a teenager. In the end, any human being has a real easy time clamming up or lying about everything to people they feel they don’t trust.
If a teenager feels that they can trust you, you will be surprised at how much better the relationship gets. And sometimes it takes a long time but eventually from one minute to the next it’s like a switch has been thrown, and now you are close.
