If you think taking care of babies and toddlers is hard, think again when they reach their adolescent stage (puberty or teen stage). This is the stage where they learn to socialize and want to be with their friends or group of same age level. Some trying to be independent and want to have their own space (like having their own bedroom).

So here are some of the changes that parents should know how to handle:

• Children are concrete thinkers, that is “to see is to believe“. Keep this fact in mind when disciplining pubescent children. For instance, to discourage smoking, tell them what could happen to them now – dark lips and gums, yellowish teeth and breath like exhaust car.
• Feeling of greatness – adolescent pass through the stage of psuedo-stupidity stage, that feeling of terribly important. Parents should never put them down because it will hurt their self-esteem. Instead, encourage them even if their ideas are seems so far out.
• Center Stage – Teeners also go through imaginary audience stage. It’s conviction that everyone is looking at them and eavesdropping on every word they are saying. And when you correlate this with the physical changes, you can imagine how a child must feel. Thus, a small pimple can seem to be as huge as a mountain, and girls will try to hide their budding breasts by hunching their back. Making endless chat on the phone in their room becomes a way to talk without anyone seeing them.
• Feeling of Invincibility – the conviction that bad things can happen to others but never to them. This belief puts adolescents into risky behavior. They feel like supermen or superwomen. They think they can drink and drive or engage in premarital sex without meeting an accident.

Through all these, parents must have a constant communication with the children. It’s not so much WHAT you communicate as HOW you communicate. Don’t be preachy or authoritative. Don’t be too permissive or too strict.

Your children still need your guidance at this time, but your parenting task will basically done when they were kids. Support your child but ” let him face the consequences of his actions”. You cannot save your child all the time.

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