It’s up to you how your teenager copes with life

Adolescence is full of emotional, intellectual and social challenges, which call for a degree of stability. As parents, we may no longer play a major role during this period, but in the years leading up to it, we can lay the foundations for the support our children will need to cope. It is also up to us to help them develop a positive self-image that can protect them.

We are probably not giving away any great secret when we say that the image we have of ourselves has a significant influence on our outlook on life. Our relationships, their quality, and our attitude towards life’s difficulties all reflect how we think of ourselves, what our self-image is like, and how we rate ourselves. When we read about parenting, we often come across the importance of fostering self-confidence and self-esteem, as these values play a key role in healthy personality development.

Our personality develops throughout our lives, yet it is our experiences in the early years that have the greatest influence on the direction our development will take. Children’s sense of self develops gradually, and the environment around them plays a major role in this. The image they form of themselves during their early years depends on the feedback they receive from their parents and carers. Who am I? Am I valuable, lovable and important? They first look to us, their family, for answers to these questions, and then to their peers, or perhaps even strangers. However, the wider the circle, the more divided the opinions may be, and accepting them requires a certain degree of emotional stability. To ensure this emotional balance, we need to understand the stages through which children’s positive self-image develops, and the factors that play a role in shaping it.

A parent’s feedback shapes a child’s self-image

At first, the infant has no sense of „self” and „other”. Although the infant and the mother no longer physically form a single entity, the process of realising this separation is not yet fully complete; thus, emotionally, the infant continues to experience everything that affects the mother. Gradually, the infant begins to discover that, separate from others, it possesses its own body and the ability to control it. As the infant begins to recognise its own physical reality, the independent existence of „another person” also takes shape within it. However, even at this stage, the discovery of their personality still takes place with the help of the parent caring for them. The mother’s and father’s attentiveness and responsiveness provide the child with the primary feedback as to whether they are important and lovable. The parents’ behaviour, conduct and emotional state are of great significance to the child in shaping their self-image right up until early adolescence.

Although we tend to emphasise the importance of a parent’s responsiveness most often in relation to newborns and infants – as this is when the formation of the bond is most pronounced – this ability does not lose its value later on; quite the contrary. As time goes on, it is not only our silent attentiveness and understanding care, but also our communication that will bear witness to this. How we feel about our child’s behaviour, and the style and choice of words we use when speaking to them, will lay the foundations for how they think of themselves. If they hear us say, „I heard you were a naughty boy”, we are suggesting to them that it is their very being that is wrong, rather than their behaviour, yet it is up to us to make that distinction for them. When we insist that „there’s no need to cry about this”, we are rejecting their emotions, rather than teaching them first to accept them and then to manage them. Our responses must therefore reflect that we understand and accept them, and that we are trying to help them discover, in their own way, the limits of themselves and the world. It is this kind of parental support that will help them to believe in themselves, to value their own strengths, and to have the confidence to venture out into the wider world.

Peers are a secondary reference group

Children gradually become more independent from their parents. As early as the age of 2 or 3, they begin to express a desire for independence, yet their emotional dependence at this stage is still unquestionable. The need for acceptance and recognition from their parents, of course, never truly disappears, yet it takes a back seat with the onset of adolescence.

By this stage, the child has already formed a fairly clear picture of themselves, and sees this as an opportunity to further develop and reinforce that image through the eyes of their peers. This means that, whilst the family’s opinion has been the most influential factor for them so far, from now on greater emphasis will be placed on what their peers, team-mates, older pupils and all those who are not yet considered fully grown-up think of them.

We know what dangers this period entails, as we’ve been through it ourselves. Children can sometimes be surprisingly cruel. Popularity, mutual acceptance, respect and inclusion can hinge on the smallest of details: what cartoons they watch, what they play with, which social media sites they use, how they dress, or who they are friends with. Their situation is further complicated by the fact that their cognitive development has not yet reached the stage where they can make moral judgements or assess real risks, so they are rarely able to anticipate the consequences.

This is an emotionally turbulent period. As parents, we naturally want to protect them, particularly from expectations that we regard as frivolous and dangerous. They do need a certain amount of protection, but we must also respect the fact that what their peers think of them is important to our children, so banning them from socialising with their peers or trying to talk them out of it will never be a real solution. Our children need to test themselves in the wider world without us, as this experience will lay the foundations for their future independence and resourcefulness. They must forge their own path to find their place within the community. In this match, we can only be supporters.

Our role in reinforcing a positive self-image

Adolescence is full of emotional, intellectual and social challenges, which call for a degree of stability. As parents, we can no longer play a major role during this period, but in earlier years we can lay the foundations for the support our children need to cope. During the first ten years or so, the family – and within that, the parents – represent the child’s primary reference group; in other words, the child forms their self-image based on how their parents behave and communicate with them. Do they trust them? Do they believe in their existing abilities and skills? Do they accept their emotions? And what about when they make mistakes?

At first, our child will only be able to accept themselves as they are if they sense that we do the same. This is reflected not only in the way we behave towards them, but also in how we relate to our own to ourselves. For children, parents represent security and stability in life, which is why they are sensitive to our every reaction. If we we are uncertain If we are unsure of ourselves or at odds with each other, the child may also become insecure. This does not, of course, mean that we have to be rock-solid under all circumstances, as we are only human. The emphasis here is rather on honesty and communication: whether we can articulate the difficulties to ourselves and to our children.

There are challenges at every stage of life, and what will help our children is not trying to shield them from these challenges, but teaching them to identify them, accept them and face them with courage. Children who feel any kind of rejection from their parents will be even more inclined to conform to anyone who makes them believe they are accepted. Those, on the other hand, who experience full acceptance of their person from an early age its adoption, and as they learn to tackle difficulties together, they will be better equipped to weather the turbulent period of adolescence, as they will know that they have everything they need to come out on top in the end.

Originally published on: divany.hu, 5 October 2020.