SOCIAL EMOTIONAL CHANGES
The Changes That Are Coming
In the pre-teen and early teen years, it can feel like everything changes with your child, including big emotions and a new social scene. It can be really hard on everyone, but it also is a time that comes with opportunity. Your support during this phase can help set your kid up for a positive sense of self, health coping mechanisms, and a protective social network.
All The Emotions
Having a tween or teen can feel like an emotional rollercoaster that is really big with sudden twists and turns. But these emotions are perfectly typical, controlled by changes in the brain, body, and the challenge of navigating developmental tasks.
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We may joke about “raging hormones” but these are one of the most powerful forces in our bodies. These chemical messengers get carried through the bloodstream to organs and tissues to make them do their jobs the way they’re supposed to. So when one part of the brain releases a hormone that tells all the other hormones that it’s time to get moving, we are off and away on the puberty path, and it is a big deal. For information on all the physical changes during adolescent development, there are a ton of resources online and great books to share with your children. But the puberty changes we are talking about go beyond the physical changes we learn in health class. . They also impact mental health and substance use prevention.
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Emotions become big. Your child may be quicker to anger, more sensitive, or just unpredictable. They may feel self-conscious about their changing body, confused about romantic feelings, and unable to control impulsive feelings because they are still developing the ability to self-regulate. This is all normal, but it’s also a lot for kids to manage and can be hard not to take personally at times. As caregivers, we can lead with compassion while keeping clear boundaries and providing support.
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For our nonbinary and transgender youth, puberty can be a time of confusion as the body develops in a way that does not match the person’s internal identity. This may be an important time to reach out to your pediatrician and to mental health professionals for support.
Shifting Relationships
During adolescence, relationships change. Your relationship with your child will change, and your child’s friendships will change as well. Here’s what to expect.
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Once upon a time, it probably felt like you were the primary person in your kid’s life (and you were right!). In middle school, peers grow in importance. It can seem like we no longer matter, but the research tells us otherwise: parent communication, values, time and engagement continue to be essential in our child’s lives.
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Often our kids have the same friends and classmates through primary school, and we have known the same group of parents. But as they advance to middle school, friend groups often change. Your kid may be talking about friends you’ve never heard of with parents you have never met. This can feel as if you are suddenly an outsider in your own child’s world. What’s more, although this change in friend network is quite common, it can also cause disruptions in academics, emotions, and social relationships.
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One of the key tasks of the adolescent years is answering the question: Who Am I? Our children are figuring out who they are and in the process, they are pulling away more from their attachment to us. This is all a part of a normal developmental process called individuation that will ultimately help form the independence and self-assurance that we hope for in our children as they grow into adults. But in the meantime, that process can disrupt the parent/child relationship that you’ve previously known, with new levels of conflict and detachment.
Navigating Developmental Changes
When our kids start “acting like a teenager” we generally mean defiance, moodiness, secrecy, separation from parents, and obsession with what friends think. But these characterizations all miss the parts of “acting like a teenager” that are creative, insightful, driven towards independence and understanding of identity, funny, and deeply feeling. The way that we respond when our children exhibit the first set of characteristics just may help us see through to that second set more easily.
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Adults sometimes respond to this period of intense growth with humor or by making light of their kids’ feelings. Adults may think they are helping, but really it is at the expense of a young person who is already really self-conscious. To a teen, puberty is all encompassing. Validating feelings, even through the wild swings, can help your child feel heard and seen.
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If we want to help our kids work through BIG emotions in a thoughtful way, we need to ask ourselves how we, as parents, respond when we are sad or angry. Do we yell and slam doors? Do we pour a drink? Or do we instead go for a walk, call a friend, and let ourselves feel the feelings, recover, and set a new course? We can help our youth identify what tools they have for coping with these feelings, and we can model healthy tools as well.
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We aren’t all experts in adolescent development. And some of us are uncomfortable merely mentioning puberty! But you can provide resources to your child so that they can get the information they need about what they are going through. There are many excellent books written for adolescents that are honest and accurate that can be found at the library or online.
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Our LGBTQ+ kids experience even more challenges during puberty due to social expectations and norms that directly or indirectly invalidate their identity and experience. Some parents don’t know that their kids are LGBTQ+ and so they miss the opportunity to support their kids through a tough time. As a parent of any kid, you can ease that pressure by sending proactive messages of support. That may look like:
Being mindful of any biases or judgements you may have and how you may unintentionally talk about “others”
Letting your child know that you love them and support them if they do identify as LGBTQ+
Using inclusive language like “Is there a special person in your life?” rather than using “special boy” or “special girl”
Educating your child about gender identity and letting them know that you accept whoever they are in this world
