How To Deal With Rebellious Teenagers

What do you mean when you talk about rebellious teenagers? What does this term really mean? Is there anything parents can influence? There are many types of child and teenage defiance, such as laziness and irritability. However, there are only two types of real uprisings, roughly speaking.

The first type of rebellion appears around preschool age and increases gradually during the early stages of development. The second type usually appears after the age of ten and is often related to the start in high school. In the latter case, certain environmental variables or hormonal changes may explain adolescents’ conflicting attitudes.

What you should know about rebellious teenagers

Today’s article will offer some guidelines to help you interact with children and teens. Finally, describe a specific therapy that is showing promising results in this demographic.

Behavioral problem

Let us answer a few questions before we go into the guidelines. How do rebellious teenagers behave? Above you have read about defiance, which can manifest itself as aggression, lies and disrespect among other behaviors.

Keep in mind that teenagers are in a complicated stage on an emotional level, as a supplement to the hormonal changes that the arrival of the new stage entails. All this can create a strong identity crisis.

Therefore, try to be careful and empathetic when interacting with them, even if it is not always easy. Keep in mind that serious cases may require professional help. Keep reading to find out how to recognize these.

How to detect this behavior

Parents are often the ones who notice a change in the behavior of their children. It may be that they suddenly distance themselves from certain activities or goals that previously motivated them. Then there are times when the conflict turns into a strong aversion on the part of the teenager. It is relatively easy to detect changes by analyzing their behavior.

As for the stronger feelings of conflict, these can lead to some teenagers causing problems both at home and away from home. These feelings can cause them to get into trouble, to feel lost or to end up in a serious identity crisis.

One can also detect these conflicting attitudes by lying, having lost hope or experiencing increasing sadness. It is important that parents detect this early. This is because young people can hide other emotions such as fear, insecurity, loneliness or sadness through their aggression and defiance.

How to interact with rebellious teenagers

How should a parent interact with rebellious teens? It depends on what role they have in their lives. That is, it is not the same to be their father, mother, brother or sister, or their psychologist or teacher.

The following are general guidelines only:

• Take the initiative to create spaces for communication with them.
• Work with your connection to them.
• Find out what is happening in their lives (often grief is behind aggressive behavior).
• Spend time with them.
• Negotiate with them.
• Do not judge them.
• Set boundaries but be flexible.
• Use behavior modification techniques (this is important to reinforce appropriate behavior).
• Strengthen their self-esteem, show them that you value them.
• Talk to them with empathy (put yourself in their shoes).
• Contact a specialist (especially in more severe cases).

• Be consistent.
• Lead by example.

Some guides on adolescent behavior also suggest different strategies that focus on providing them with comprehensive care during therapy. Mainly medical, but it can also be psychotherapeutic.

Examples of these:

• Respect for private information. Everything that happens during a consultation should stay there (except in cases where the teenager is a risk to himself or herself or others).
• Give the teen an intimate and safe space where he or she can freely ask questions and express doubts.
• Provide information on health resources and services available to them.
• Pay attention and show interest and respect for what they say to promote a therapeutic alliance.
• Tell about their development and achievements, both for them and for their parents; promote the teenager’s responsibility for the care of his or her own health.

• Finally; create a collaboration with family and teachers to provide interdisciplinary care.

The family’s psychodrama treatment based on scenes

Stage-based psychodramatic family therapy (SB-PFT) is an innovative intervention that has begun to show positive results in anxious adolescents. Specifically, professionals use it to improve personal relationships between troubled young people and their parents. It is a type of therapy that integrates the principles of systemic family therapy and psychodrama through a group session with several families.

A study published in the journal Family Process developed by Barbara Lorence, a researcher at the University of Huelva, proved the effectiveness of this type of intervention.

One of the keys to this method is to see that the teenager’s thoughts and opinions are very important. In addition, different family systems are included in the sessions. So what do you process with this therapy? Basically the following two main themes:

• The conflict between parents and conflicting teenagers.
• Possible solutions to the conflicts.

Final reflection on rebellious teenagers

This article has only contributed some basic ideas on how to interact with rebellious teenagers from a perspective of empathy and understanding. However, the issue is often much more complex than it can be addressed by a few lines that we can establish. As you may already know, adolescence is a complicated stage in life. People are still learning how to deal with it, and behavioral disorders or changes, substance-related disorders (eg drugs), mood disorders, etc. can occur as a result of this and other factors.

Every disorder or problem requires special treatment. Being there for these individuals as parents or teachers is thus both a challenge and a necessity. So approach your teenager as a friend, as a helping hand and as a motivation to help them fly. It will be very helpful in this process. Do not forget that this important stage in life will define their future identity.