Most families move through the teen years with some stretching of limits but safe within the boundaries that they and their teens continually negotiate. When one teen's behaviour becomes erratic or dangerous -- not coming home at night, abusing drugs, stealing, being promiscuous, or dropping out of school -- your pattern of gradually letting go of the strings may end in abrupt rupture. And it doesn't matter whether the crisis is about substance abuse or an unwanted pregnancy, there are specific steps you can take as a parent to mend the rupture.
When your teen is in crisis
Your first job is to assess whether, in fact, you are dealing with a serious crisis. All adolescents go through periods of experimentation and risk taking. But when the dangerous behaviour becomes frequent, your child may be in serious difficulty. Coming home drunk or stoned once or twice isn't a crisis; coming home drunk or stoned almost every night is. Also consider whether your daughter's erratic behaviour in one area of her life is interfering with other aspects of her life. Has her interest in attending dance clubs meant she has broken off contact with former friends and dropped out of activities she used to enjoy? Is your son's behaviour preventing him from moving forward with his life? Is he skipping so many classes that he's in danger of failing a grade and dropping out of school altogether?
The teen crisis quickly becomes the family crisis. As you deal with your teen's problems, the needs of your other children can get shoved aside, and everyday life clouds over with the constant dread that the teen's trouble may turn into tragedy.
Big kids can get into big problems
Gone are the days when the consequences of misbehaviour meant no more than a carefully worded note from the teacher or a request to pick up your child early from a birthday party. The problems that a teenager can get into may threaten not only his health and well-being but also his life opportunities from now on. You may even live in fear for his life, worrying whether your child will survive the crisis. If you are dealing with fears like these, you shouldn't hesitate to get immediate professional help; many families attempt to work through major crises on their own when they really need professional support. The first step may be as simple as talking with your family doctor who can help you assess the situation and counsel you directly or refer you to another professional.
Then there's the pressing question that all parents of troubled teens face: How did this happen? Kids are a barometer of family tension. Almost all troubled teens are reacting to some kind of stress at home. Hard as it may he to acknowledge, her life at home may have played a role in her current distress. But the flip side is that her family relationships can also play a role in helping her get back on track.
The task of adolescence is to establish a separate identity, which means establishing a few degrees of separation -- even from the people who are most important to him. Although separating from one's parents is a necessary step in a healthy adolescence, it soon becomes complicated if family relationships have gone wrong somewhere along the way. Is there an alcoholic in the family creating a climate of constant uncertainty? Is your troubled teen the child you never really connected with? It could be that difficulties in your child's early life are unresolved. An early trauma, such as the divorce of his parents, that seemed to have been easily dealt with may have been buried only to surface again in adolescence. Sometimes when a teen is acting out, the behaviour masks another problem in the family But as long as the teen is the one on whom you all focus, the deeper family problem remains untouched and unresolved.
