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Teen_crisisMany families move through the teenage years with extending some of the limits but safe inside the borders that they and their teens consistently bargain. When your teen’s actions become unpredictable or harmful — coming home very late at night or not coming home at all, taking drugs, stealing, has become promiscuous, or dropping out of school — your method of relinquishing the strings bit-by-bit may end in abrupt rupture. It doesn’t matter whether the crisis is about drugs or pregnancy, there are quite a few methods you can take as a parent to mend this.

When your child is in crisis

The first thing you do is to determine whether, in fact, you are faced with a serious crisis. All adolescents experience these phase of experimentation and risk taking. But when the hazardous behavior becomes habitual, your child may be in a serious fix. When your child comes home drunk or stoned once or twice, it isn’t a crisis but, coming home drunk or stoned almost every night is. You should consider whether your child’s erratic behavior in one area of her life is in conflict with other parts of her life. Has her enthusiasm in attending dance clubs meant she has lost contact with her former friends and stopped activities she used to love? Is your child’s behavior stopping her from going on with her life? Is she cutting classes so often that she’s in peril of failing or dropping out of school altogether?

The teen crisis immediately becomes the family crisis. As you handle your teen’s predicament, the needs of his siblings can get pushed aside, and everyday life dims with the dread that your teen’s trouble may become tragedy.

The duty of adolescence is to constitute a separate identity, which means she should establish a few degrees of separation — even from the people who matter most to her. Although being apart from one’s parents is an important step in a healthy adolescence, it becomes difficult if family relationships go wrong somewhere along the way. Maybe there’s an alcoholic in the family generating constant uncertainty or you just never really connected with your child. It could also be unresolved difficulties in the early life of your child.

It will help a lot, however, for you to realize that the change process is slow and will take time. Over time – usually considerable time – you troubled teen will make a big progress, especially you as a parent are able to find constructive and effective methods or programs. Progress varies tremendously in teens; some move in the right direction more quickly than others. Wise parents keep in mind that most of what happens on the path is out of their control; they just do the best they can to give the right support and environment so that their kids will progress as quickly as they could.

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