Help! A Teenager Has Moved into My Child’s Body!

Help! A Teenager Has Moved into My Child’s Body!

Parents, have you experienced the teenage time warp phenomenon yet? One minute you’re snuggling with your kindergarten-age child, who has crawled into your bed on a lazy Saturday morning, and the next minute you’re staring at a Keep Out sign on her bedroom door. Ohmigosh, what happened to that little girl I once knew?!?

Yes, it happens. Our children grow up and begin to reveal different dimensions of themselves. Cute may turn into confrontational. “I love you, Mommy” might be retired in favor of “Mom (drawn out to three syllables), not in front of my friends!” What’s a parent to do?

Well, first of all, relax. What you’re experiencing is all part of the developmental process, the growth from dependence to independence and, eventually, interdependence. Jonas Salk long ago defined good parents as those who give their children roots and wings, the former to provide the rituals and traditions of healthy family life and the latter to prepare the child for the time she will leave the nest. That teenager is not yet ready to leave the nest, but she’s beginning to test her wings. And that’s a very good thing, so we need to relax.