I needed help, from the ultimate authority. Terri Apter is a psychologist who specialises in family dynamics — specifically those between parents and teenagers. She has written many books on the subject, one of which, The Teen Interpreter, has become like a bible to me. In this she explains the extraordinary changes that are occurring in the teenage brain and body, specifically from 13 to 16 years of age. It is a time of growth, learning and adaptation, often scary and overwhelming, that is analogous to the changes occurring in a child in their very earliest years.
But we don’t get angry with a toddler when they are being unreasonable (or at least we try not to). We comfort them. “It’s easier to deal with rudeness in a younger child because it doesn’t hurt you so much,” Apter says. “When a four-year-old says, ‘I hate you, you’re useless,’ the parent knows they don’t mean it. When a 14-year-old says that, you’re not so sure.”
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So what is a teen trying to communicate when they are rude? It might be how scared and overwhelmed they are feeling, and also, Apter says, that “they’re different, they’re seeing the world in a different way, they’re feeling the world in a different way, and they’re seeking recognition of this. It’s partly a case of them feeling uncomfortable in themselves and wanting to express this while not really knowing how, and you’re walking around assuming they’re like they were two months ago, which feels like an insult to them, disrespectful even. It’s a real change from what’s called the epistemic trust of young children, where so much of the attachment is, ‘I trust your view of the world. I trust you to see what’s happening, I look to you for clues, whether something is safe. Whereas now I feel on my own and it’s all your fault.'”
Apter agrees that this doesn’t mean rudeness is acceptable. So how does one explain to a teen that you won’t be spoken to in this way in your own home? First, shouting doesn’t work. “They hear the anger, they don’t take in the message,” she says. Likewise, telling them how their behaviour is making you feel is unlikely to get you far. “An approach that is more likely to be effective is saying something like: ‘I want to hear what your complaint is. I know I’m annoying you. And maybe I’m annoying you just because I’m your parent and everything I do is annoying, but I’m not giving up on this relationship so I need your help. I need you to tell me what I can do better, because I can’t interpret the sneers and the eye-rolls.’ It’s very likely that, at this point, you won’t get any information. But you’ll be recalibrating your teen’s response. They’ll think: ‘I’m not going to get anywhere just by rattling her with my disapproval. I’m going to have to be articulate about this.'”
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There has been a narrative around teenage years that it’s a period of parent/child “divorce”, with a child having to rip the affection they felt for their parents out of their heart to progress into adulthood. This was the theory proposed by the child psychologist Anna Freud, but thankfully it is one that Apter says we have moved on from. “If you realise what they’re trying to do is to get through this very difficult time and remain attached to you, to find ways to prod you into connecting to them in an up-to-date way, and that it has a strong chance of getting better, then the whole experience of being a teen parent gets a more positive spin,” she says. Phew. Now tidy your bedroom.
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