Supporting Your Teen: Finding Your Role
A Season of Becoming
The teenage years are a period filled with continuous, often difficult, transitions. Teenagers are discovering more about themselves; their interests, their identity, the world around them, and even the family members they thought they already knew. Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, described adolescence as the life stage organised around identity versus role confusion, a period in which young people experiment with different values, beliefs, and roles in order to answer the question, “Who am I?” (Erikson, 1968). This journey is rarely tidy, and it rarely stays private: it plays out at the dinner table, behind slammed doors, and in long silences, which is why it can be a difficult period not only for the teenager but also for the loved ones living alongside them.
Renegotiating Your Role
Many parents ask themselves how they can better support a teenager who increasingly seems to want less of their support. There is no single formula, but research on family relationships during adolescence points to some genuinely helpful shifts in communication. Psychologist Laurence Steinberg’s long-running research on parent-adolescent relationships found that healthy development at this stage depends less on parents stepping back altogether, and more on renegotiating the terms of their involvement; a gradual, ongoing transfer of autonomy that keeps the relationship close while making room for growing independence (Steinberg, 2001). In a similar vein, Grotevant and Cooper’s work on individuation describes adolescence as a period in which young people need both continued connection to family and the freedom to develop and voice their own point of view; families who manage to hold both at once tend to see their teenagers develop a stronger, more settled sense of identity (Grotevant & Cooper, 1986). It is important, therefore, to keep in mind that your role is no longer the same as the one you held in their younger years; attempting to keep roles the same can often widen the gap you are trying to close.
Trading The Advisor Hat
It is important, then, to take a stance that is not that of an all-knowing adviser. Your role is no longer the one you held during your child’s younger years, and attempts to hold on to that earlier role can create conflict and widen the gap between you and your child. Psychologist Diana Baumrind’s research on parenting styles found that teenagers tend to fare best under an authoritative approach, which combines warmth and responsiveness with appropriate, flexible structure, rather than either tight control or disengaged permissiveness (Baumrind, 1991). In practice, this often means trading the instinct to direct for the discipline to ask, staying curious about what support your teenager actually needs from you, rather than assuming you already know. Carl Rogers, founder of person-centred therapy, argued that this kind of non-judgemental curiosity, what he called unconditional positive regard, builds the psychological safety a person needs to keep communicating openly, even about the topics that are often hard to raise (Rogers, 1961).
A Transition for You Too
It is worth remembering that adolescence is not only a difficult time for the teenager, who is working out who they are and where they fit in the world. It is also a transition for you, as a parent, figuring out what your new role looks like and what level of support is genuinely being asked of you. It should be approached with curiosity rather than certainty; this season of change can become less a widening gap and more a relationship being renegotiated into its next form; one where connection is not held onto but continually re-earned.
References
Baumrind, D. (1991). The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence, 11(1), 56–95.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. Norton.
Grotevant, H. D., & Cooper, C. R. (1986). Individuation in family relationships: A perspective on individual differences in the development of identity and role-taking skill in adolescence. Human Development, 29(2), 82–100.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
Steinberg, L. (2001). We know some things: Parent–adolescent relationships in retrospect and prospect. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 11(1), 1–19.
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