CONFLICT with your TEENAGERS can actually be a GOOD thing!

Posted on September 07, 2016 by Vasudha Jha, One of Thousands of Relationship Coaches on Noomii.

Conflict is a usual area to be navigating in when raising a teenager. Unexpectedly, more and more research now says that conflict with teenagers can be a good thing. It is the nature of how disagreements are handled at home which shapes the mental health of an adolescent along with the overall quality of the parent-teenager relationship. Experts have identified four distinct ways in which teenagers typically approach conflicts – attacking, withdrawing, complying and problem solving.

Teenagers most likely to become depressed or delinquent are those who adopt the first two styles of engaging in conflicts like aggravating fights or totally refusing to have a discussion. Teenagers who take the third route and comply with what is asked, have very high rates of mood related disorders; and the teenagers who find it unable to resolve fights at home often reflect this pattern with friends and later in their love lives.

In contrast, teenagers who use problem solving to address and solve conflicts with their parents show us a vastly diverse portrait. They are more inclined to enjoy the strongest psychological health and the happiest relationships overall in their lives – creating the two outcomes that tops every parent’s wishlist.

The question now is : How do we bring up teenagers who see disagreements as challenges to be resolved; and not battles to be WON?

Parents who are willing to walk around in their teenager’s mental shoes tend to raise teenagers who do the same. New and exciting research suggests that constructive conflict between parent and teenager pivots on the ability of the adolescent to see beyond his/her perspective. Good fights happen when both parents and teenagers are willing to consider arguments of both sides, bad fights are fought with a very limited, self-centred vision on both sides.

A teenager’s intellectual ability to consider multiple perspectives takes seed in the teenage years, while younger children lack the neurological ability to fully comprehend another’s point of view. Adolescence is the time that sparks rapid development in the parts of the brain associated with abstract reasoning, leading to vivid gains in the ability to regard situations from competing viewpoints. At this time, parents can make the most of their teenagers’ evolving neurobiology by being good role models and display ability to accept different points of view on any topic.

Research findings, however, rarely reflect the realities of day to day life in a family. Conflict comes with hot aggressive emotions, and we can only contemplate another person’s perspective with a cool heads. Imagine a situation where your adolescent announces his plan to spend Saturday night with a former friend known for serious notoriety. Any parent, however reasonable, will not give permission, triggering an eruption, retreat or gloomy compliance in a normal teenager.

However, in a different kind of interaction where first reactions can give way to second ones, the parent might ask his teenager to help him/her understand why they want to spend time with Mike when he’s not even liked by the teenager too much. Also to explain why the parent might be highly uncomfortable with the teen hanging out with Mike?

It may not always be possible to practically turn every discord into a dialogue, and sometimes these battles can get dirty! However, research strongly suggests that garden-variety disagreements offer the opportunity to help young people understand themselves and others better. This can build in them the lifelong skill of making space for mutual respect and understanding in the midst of conflict.

While friction with our teenagers is unavoidable and hurtful, it may be easier to manage when we see it as an opportunity and not a creation of a series of walled fences.