How to help a troubled teen

Sibling alert

The brothers and sisters of the troubled teen may seem to show little interest in the problem, but you can be sure that they're upset. Explain to them what their sibling is going through. "Your brother has so much anger, he can't control it" might be explanation enough. If you don't have a solution for the crisis yet, don't pretend that you do. "Right now, we don't know how to help," you might begin, "but we're doing everything we can to find the best way to help your brother."

The teen with serious problems can easily, take over and unbalance the family. If this happens, siblings may lose themselves in a dream world or develop attention-getting behaviour. Although the crisis with your teen may demand a lot of your time and energy, continue to share activities with siblings and listen to them, too, in order to prevent future problems with them. If you just don't have the energy, ask for help. A good friend or family member may be willing to make sure that younger siblings pull through the crisis, too.

Some parents with one troubled child react by favouring their other children. If you find yourself saying something like "One of my children is very well-adjusted, but the other has caused me nothing but trouble," you know you're favouring one child and need to reassess your behaviour toward both your troubled child and his siblings.

Some teen problems may be embarrassing, but even if your son has been arrested for joy-riding, don't order your other children not to tell "the family business" to their friends. Kids need to work out what's happening, so don't deny them the opportunity to talk about it with their friends.

Bad timing

For the parents of a troubled teen, all sorts of emotions bubble into consciousness. If you are in your forties or fifties, you may be at a fragile life stage yourself. These decades are a time for introspection. You may be questioning what you've done with your life, or perhaps what you should have done. For some people, this is a time in their lives when they are prone to depression. As a parent, you may feel as if you're suffering from burnout, which some professionals define as situational depression. The crisis may have uncovered a red-hot anger you didn't know you were capable of. You may go from denying the problem to being consumed with guilt to being preoccupied with the troubled teen. On any one day, you may swing from feeling numb to being resentful, then ashamed. You may feel so vulnerable that you become distressed over the smallest well-meaning suggestion of a friend. At a time when you've lost your self-confidence, to make matters worse, your teen seems to be turning against you. You're the one on whom he vents his anger, because you're the person with whom he feels safest. He may criticize everything from your hair to how you handled his first day of kindergarten. Worse yet, he may blame you for the crisis: "If only you hadn't been so strict (or permissive, or busy, or too involved), I wouldn't have a problem today." Your teen's crisis may even raise unresolved issues from your own adolescence, and it may also add financial stress.

If your teen's crisis is coinciding with a personal crisis for you, acknowledge to him that you're under a great deal of stress, but don't burden him with your angst. You need someone to talk to, but choose a friend or a professional counsellor, not your teen, who has his own worries right now.