As parents, what can we do to prevent relationship abuse from happening to our teen? What can we do to prepare our children for healthy relationships? How can we teach them not to be abusive toward or to be abused by someone they love? This chapter will be helpful for parents of preteens, teens, and young adults who are in an abusive relationship, or for parents of teens who are just beginning to date.
One possible challenge for parents is that they might not have spent much time thinking about what makes relationships healthy, or how to talk about relationships with teens. It is also challenging for parents to think about their own relationships in this way.
Teen relationships provide a way to experiment and practice for future long-term relationships and marriages. It is critical for parents to pay attention and help teens use this time to develop their healthy relationship skills, in dating and in general. Parents have an important role: to model, teach, and support these skills for developing good relationships as well as preventing abuse.
You have already taken the most important first step in preventing relationship abuse: By reading this book, you are acknowledging that abuse can happen in teen relationships. You are also finding out that it can happen not only to “other people,” but also to families just like your own. Denial, or the “not my daughter syndrome,” hinders parents from preparing their children to be on the alert for relationship violence. The best approach to preparing children for this is (1) to teach them skills that form the basis for healthy relationships, which we will cover in this chapter, and (2) to teach them to think about their own safety, which we will address in chapter 8.
Adolescence is a time when tremendous growth takes place—physically, socially, and mentally. Research based on imaging of teen brains has revealed that the brain takes much longer to develop and mature than we had previously thought. There are substantial brain changes during adolescence. Teens do not have all the hardware yet to think like an adult; the adolescent brain goes through major remodeling that starts around puberty and continues into the early twenties. Teens need parents and caregivers in their lives more than ever to help them with their brain development.26
Teens and young adults undergo a major developmental reorganization between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. Their brains don’t grow so much as undergo “pruning” and become more efficient, allowing them to get better at integrating memory and experience into their decisions. David Dobbs, a writer for National Geographic magazine says, “When this development proceeds normally, [teens] get better at balancing impulse, desire, goals, self-interest, rules, ethics and even altruism, generating behavior that is more complex and, sometimes, at least, more sensible. But at times… the brain does this work clumsily. It’s hard to get all those new cogs to mesh.… The [new] ‘adaptive-adolescent’ story casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.”27
Not all teens develop in the same ways and same time frames, and there are many steps forward and backward during these years. One day a parent may be talking to their stable, mature, thoughtful seventeen-year-old, and the next day a cranky, emotional thirteen-year-old shows up.
Adolescents are frequently curious and open to new experiences and risk taking, which can be useful. They reason about risks as much as adults do, but they weigh risks and rewards differently: They value the reward more heavily than adults do. This gets them to try new things and expands their learning.
Social connections are especially rewarding to teens; these connections help them mature as they invest in the future and learn new ways of engaging others and being themselves. All of these characteristics of adolescence help teens accomplish a very difficult challenge: learning how to negotiate their surroundings so that they can move successfully from family to the outside world, where they will function as adults. This is not an easy process, and this time of life is full of potential challenges that can throw off healthy development, such as alcohol, drugs, violence, difficulties in school, and problematic relationships.
David Dobbs emphasizes the importance of parents in this process. “When parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life.”28 Parents must adapt their ways of parenting to accommodate their changing teens.
Psychologists have divided adolescence into three stages: early (ages 11–14), middle (ages 15–18), and late (ages 19–21). The brains of young adults are still developing and maturing between the ages of 22 and 25, which could be considered a “late, late” adolescence stage.
Preteens and young teens experience huge hormonal and physical changes, accompanied by awkward feelings about their bodies and worries about being normal. They may feel like hiding their developing bodies, or they may feel proud that they are becoming “grown up.” Girls tend to mature faster than boys, and sometimes girls physically develop before they are emotionally ready to deal with their new, womanly bodies. Scientists have recently documented that puberty is starting younger than it did years ago. Because of these physical changes, preteens and young teens may suddenly demand more privacy.
Children this age have emotional highs and lows as their hormones fluctuate. Their conversations with peers often seem overly dramatic. Peer groups have increasing influence, and they may learn about sex from their peers. They become more interested in popular culture, media, video games, and the Internet. They may turn more to peers than adults for information, and peers are not the best source of information about sex and relationships.
This stage of adolescence is challenging for parents for many reasons, but especially because preteens and young teens begin to test rules and limits.
Fifteen-to eighteen-year-olds are self-involved, concerned about their appearance and sexual attractiveness, and preoccupied with fitting in to a peer group.
Intellectual interests gain importance for this group, and their capacity for moral reasoning grows. They become more focused on school and more anxious about their academic performance (striving to do well, having too much interference to do well, or withdrawing out of frustration at not doing well). They might have unrealistically high expectations of their abilities and worry about failure. Parents may appreciate these teenagers’ improved capacity for setting goals, abstract thought, and thinking about the meaning of life.
Adolescents in this age group tend to spend more time away from home and with peers, and they demand more autonomy and independence. They negotiate new boundaries and test limits with their parents. They complain that parents interfere with their independence, and that parents don’t trust their capabilities to handle things by themselves. They appear to have a low opinion of their parents and other adults, and withdraw from them.
This age group begins to have intimate, often sexual, relationships and frequently changes relationships. They more clearly define their sexual orientation.
During this stage, identity becomes firmer. These young adults are better able to delay gratification, and they have greater concern about their futures. They aren’t as self-involved, and they show more concern for others. They are thinking about their lives as “grown-ups,” what kind of work they might want to do to support themselves, and their roles in life. Their emotions are more stable, they are more focused in their work, and they are better able to make good decisions. They are more independent and self-reliant. They get along better with their parents, and value them again. They are able to express ideas, and to negotiate and compromise. Sometimes the stresses of the transition to adulthood—for example, going away to college—can make this age group vulnerable to serious emotional distress, binge drinking, and drug abuse.
Young adults are ready for intimacy and commitment in their relationships. They may be preoccupied with their own growth and goals—in relationships and education, careers, and jobs. Their relationships with their parents improve. When teens enter young adulthood, their thinking capacities, relationship skills, and ability to regulate emotions have improved, but they still aren’t fully prepared to cope with the demands of a diverse, global, technological, rapidly changing world and the pressures to function independently as adults. If all goes well, biology and environment bring a surge of growth paralleling those of childhood and adolescence. The vulnerabilities to binge drinking, suicide, school problems, mental illness, and other risks continue from late adolescence, but gradually young adults become more stable.
Parents have an important role to play in a teen’s developing ability to have good relationships both with peers and with intimate partners. Parents’ roles and how they influence their children change as teens grow and develop more capabilities, autonomy, and independence. As their children go through the stages of adolescence, parents evolve from being “managers” who are actively in charge of almost everything in their children’s lives, to “consultants” who provide an important connection, along with values, information, and feedback, supporting their children’s increasing abilities to make decisions for themselves.
Even though peers are important in all the stages of adolescence, and cultural messages support the idea that peers are paramount and parents are irrelevant to teens, parents are more important than peers. Psychiatrist Gabor Maté, in his book Hold On to Your Kids,29 makes a valuable point that parents too often give up influence to their teens’ peers, which leaves teens without adult connection and influence during a time when they need it. The ways they need parents may change, but the need is still there.
Parents remain important influences in the parent-child relationship, as teens experience their parents’ gradually increasing respect for their children’s ability to make their own decisions. By adapting parenting styles to teens’ developmental changes, parents maintain connection.
According to Michael Riera, author of Staying Connected to Your Teenager, teens want to change the terms of parents’ influence and engagement. Teens want to run their own lives. Parents have trouble understanding this shift in power, and thus the battle lines are drawn. Parents generally want more control than teens are ready or able to relinquish. In a consultant role, parents give up the illusion of power in favor of real influence. Teens still want their parents involved in their decisions, but it is a matter of degree. “During adolescence, teenagers need to extend away from their parents all the while staying connected to their parents. Their job is to extend, [the parents’] job is to connect.”30
The only exceptions to the consultant role are when teens’ health and safety are endangered; in these cases, parents must actively intervene. Of course, determining when health and safety are in danger is a matter of perspective that most parents and teens disagree on. Riera does not suggest “laissez-faire parenting; in fact… consultant parenting is more demanding and time-consuming than managerial parenting. Here’s the payoff, though: it is more rewarding for both adolescent and parent.”31
This approach successfully avoids two common errors that can occur when parenting teenagers: treating them like children (over-parenting or overmanaging) or treating them like adults (underparenting or abandonment). Overparenting is avoided by understanding that this consultant role involves much less doing; underparenting is avoided by being present and actively listening in order to make the most of your “consultations.”
When teens are in trouble, especially in their intimate relationships—which they protect from parents’ interference more than any other aspect of their lives—overparenting or underparenting doesn’t work. Parents who try to control their teens, maintaining the illusion that they have more power over them than they actually have, inadvertently lead teens to accept sneakiness and lying as viable strategies in their relationships with their parents.
To be authentic and effective when talking with teens about healthy relationships, parents must first think about what a healthy relationship means to them. Parents can do this by examining their own values, feelings, and experiences with relationships. They can ask themselves: What have I modeled? What were my first relationships like? What problems came up? How did I resolve conflicts when I was young, and how do I resolve them now? What are my children learning from the media? Do I show them ways to think critically about what they see? Am I communicating my values and allowing them to develop their own?
Teens learn about navigating relationships and treating others more from watching what parents and other adults do than from anything they say. This does not mean parents have to be perfect. It simply means they need to be honest about their own experiences, successes, and failures—especially if they want teens to be honest about theirs.
Parents have an active role to play in preventing violence. We all must challenge the attitudes and institutions within our own cultures and communities that create and sustain a tolerance for violence in intimate relationships, and violence in general.
If we do not take action when we witness violence in our families, communities, or the media, we are actually contributing to the problem. When ignored, violence can get worse. The idea of being an “upstander” is important for parents and teens. Parents can speak up and get involved, and they can teach teens to speak up and get involved.
Parents may be aware of the extent to which children are exposed to justifications for violence. We are all surrounded by violent images: in our neighborhoods, in movies, on television. Violence is accepted as a way to resolve conflicts and as a means to retaliate against wrongdoing. “He made me so mad, I hit him.” “They started it, but I finished it.” These statements are often uttered between peers and, in different contexts, between countries at war.
Parents can prevent violence by challenging these mistaken ideas and the damaging images of “justified” violence. When they recognize the presence of these attitudes, they can speak up. If they do not, violence in relationships remains invisible, tolerated, and accepted. Many girls have told us that when they were hit by their boyfriends in school or in a public place such as a mall, people walked by and said nothing. Both the boy and girl then believed there was nothing wrong with the boyfriend’s behavior. Silence reinforces the impression among teens that violence in relationships is normal.
In everyday family life, there are opportunities to challenge mistaken assumptions about violence. Parents can help children critique what they see in the media and discuss alternatives to what they see. They can repeatedly assert that no one deserves to be emotionally, verbally, or physically abused, and that violence is never justified. During this process, parents usually find they have to confront some of their own values and attitudes. We must all learn to expand our awareness of the messages about violence that surround us.
Parents also have an important role in influencing policies in their children’s schools and in their communities. Schools and communities must have educational programs, policies, and protocols in place to inform everyone that relationship abuse is a real problem, how to recognize it, how to prevent it, and how to intervene when it occurs on campus. Dating violence prevention policies should be incorporated alongside other school safety policies.
The teen years are a time of exploring and learning about relationships. Teens often don’t know what constitutes a healthy relationship, or have not defined what this means to them personally.
Parents can encourage children to think about their relationships, both present and future, by talking to them about healthy relationships, pointing out features of good relationships they see around them or in books and movies, and opening a dialogue in which teens can think about what they look for in a boyfriend or girlfriend. To identify the differences between relationships that are built on respect and those that are not, describe examples from your own experience. Support teens for thinking for themselves if they express an opinion different from yours.
Of course, experience is the best teacher, but parents can help teens develop their own ideas and good judgment about what is healthy for them. Parents can’t prevent broken hearts from failed relationships, but they can help their teens to strive for what is healthy and positive, and to seek it in all areas of their lives, including relationships.
Violence prevention measures can be implemented in a multitude of ways and settings. Skills for healthy relationships can be encouraged and learned from many different sources, including friends, school, media, and families. As parents, we can be a tremendous resource for our teens when we are aware and informed, foster good self-esteem, encourage assertiveness, talk about sensitive and volatile issues with teens, empower them, communicate openly with them, and respect their ideas and feelings.
As noted in the pamphlet “Healthy Relationships Protect Teens,” children of all ages need reliable and accurate information about healthy relationships: what a healthy relationship feels like, looks like, and sounds like. One of the most effective ways of teaching a child about healthy relationships is to model positive qualities in your own relationships. Parents must not forget that even when they think teens are not listening to or watching their parents, they often are.
Preteens and young teens start to explore the idea of a boyfriend or girlfriend by interacting at school or through cell phones, instant messaging, or social networking sites. They often have relationships with someone they consider a boyfriend or girlfriend, but do not consider themselves “dating.” Parents should consider “hanging out” with friends at the mall or going to a movie in a group as an early form of dating.32
The following section contains guidelines for having conversations with teens about healthy relationships, what teens are thinking about, and what’s going on in their lives. (These guidelines are also provided in appendix C for easy reference.) Although the information parents uncover is important, the process of having these conversations is equally critical. It is important for parents to be seen by teens as available whenever something comes up that requires adult assistance. Teens need to know that it is safe to tell their parents about problems that arise in their relationships.
Parents can create opportunities for discussion by doing the following:
Parents can use moments when the subject of relationships comes up to discuss healthy relationships.
Use open-ended questions to start a conversation with your teen, and then listen to his or her feelings and opinions. Have a relaxed dialogue about your different points of view. Here are some examples of open-ended questions you can ask your child: