When your teen pulls away

Mood swings
In early adolescence, your teen's emotional system is still immature, although her ability to feel emotions has deepened. Her emotions may be extreme and variable. Small events might trigger elaborate reactions, whether it's a missed phone call or an innocent question from you about her new friend. Your teen may experience wild swings between elation and depression, shifting from emotional highs to lows in a matter of minutes. She may take a melodramatic approach to solving problems, viewing the possible solutions in terms of either black or white.

It's important for you to know your kids, to be able to read their moods. Not all adolescents experience wild mood swings, but some teens do mark their attempts to separate from parents with moodiness and irritability. A fifteen-year-old boy may need to create some emotional distance in order to find out who he is. He may quickly plunge into deep despair or even fury at what he perceives as a threat to his autonomy - when all you asked was that he baby-sit his brother for an hour. Your rather tricky job is to strike a balance between setting appropriate limits and increasing his freedom to choose and to act. At age seventeen or eighteen, your teen's emotions may become less volatile, and you may both be more confident about her taking independent action, especially if you established and maintained open communication from childhood through adolescence. If you talked through your conflicts without recrimination, you likely established a firm basis of respect for one another.

Feeling out of control
During the physical changes and surging hormones of puberty and early adolescence, teens feel that their bodies are out of control, which makes them feel even more confused and anxious. But as your teen grows more comfortable with her new body and as the physical changes stabilize, her mood swings become less extreme.

When they do occur, mood swings can be frightening even to your teenager. A fifteen-year-old may wonder why his feelings of sadness or anxiety are so intense - one minute he's excited about being elected student council representative, the next minute he's paralyzed by nervousness about his first speech. Listen to him and help him acknowledge his emotions. He may not be able to express what he feels, so you may have to try to read between the lines. Don't dismiss his feelings or you risk sending the message that you don't care.

Emotional support
To help your teenage daughter deal with her intense emotions in healthy ways, stay cool and calm and offer emotional support when she's upset. It's helpful for her to have someone acknowledge and help her describe what she's feeling. If she's devastated because a friend said something nasty about her behind her back, say, "Tell me about it. How do you feel about what she did?" Get her to tell you what happened and how she feels, and discuss what she might do about it. Let her know that you care and want to help.

She may have a variety of responses to her intense emotions. She may need to talk for an hour to her best friend, play sad songs at top volume, work off some steam at the gym, tell gross jokes and laugh hysterically with her brother, or pour it all out in her journal. Gradually, she'll learn to sort out her feelings and make emotional experiences a vital part of her true self and who she really is. Your teen will learn to share her intense, intimate feelings and experiences with friends, siblings, and sometimes her parents. Give teens some freedom to be moody and have their own space. When they seem receptive, take the opportunity to communicate in a low-key, non-intrusive way, but let them do most of the talking. Mastering moods is part of their process of developing emotional maturity. The emotional changes your teen goes through and the changes in your relationship will probably shake you up, too. If you're honest about your feelings and show your own vulnerability, your teens may be more open with you.

Escaping the pain
Sometimes, a teen's extreme moods or behavlours are really a cry for help. If her bleak mood persists, a teen may get trapped in a downward spiral. Just like adults, some teens become depressed or even suicidal. The following symptoms, if they persist for months, are signs of clinical depression: sadness, apathy, complete lethargy, inertia, carelessness about her appearance and well-being - especially if there is no sign of her bouncing back. Be alert for these signs, especially after a teen suffers a major loss - the breakup of a relationship, a death in the family, or a personal failure in school or sports activities or in her social life, and talk to your doctor. If your daughter hints at suicide or writes a despairing farewell letter, seek immediate help.

Some teens are so overwheImed by their mixed emotions that they try to escape from their feelings, and these may be destructive escapes. They may take dangerous risks with drugs, drinking, unprotected sex, or violence - these actions may be a sign that your teen wants your attention or may need professional intervention.

The teen years are the time when a genetic predisposition to certain illnesses such as depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, or alcoholism first appear. If your daughter shows uncharacteristic mood swings or disturbing behaviour for a prolonged period, find out what's causing it. If you don't understand what's happening to your son or how to help him, seek the advice of your doctor or other professionals. Objective professionals have experience in recognizing the severity of a teen's moods and turbulent emotions and assessing their implications.