The Importance of Giving your Child Increasing Amounts of Freedom

As parents, our children are the joy of our lives. We go from watching every discovery they make as toddlers to gradually feeling more and more shut out of their lives as they become teens. Every family is different and every mother/child relationship is unique. Still, there are certain stages of development that every child will pass through. As a parent it is important to be aware of these stages and to have somewhat of a grasp on how to handle them when your child reaches puberty.

As a parent, it can be very easy at any stage of the child development process to think that things will always stay the same. When they are young, our children adore us, they need us and we are always there for them. It can actually become quite difficult to see how our own children are growing right in front of our eyes. It is very easy to miss the fact that they are maturing and that their needs are changing. Unfortunately, the first sign that many parents see of change is when their teenaged child storms out of a room for the first time, slamming the door behind them. Having said this, it is important to know that your relationship with your child does not have to fall apart when they reach the age of thirteen.

As our children move from children to teenagers, it is not just their physical bodies that grow and mature, they also grow mentally and emotionally too. Teenagers begin to mature in their ability to think and to reason. During childhood, children have what we call concrete or ‘black and white’ thinking. During their early teens, they mature in their ability to think abstractly, objectively, and to assess situations from varying angles. One sign that your child is entering this ‘mature thinking’ stage is that they begin to challenge your decisions in ways that they never have before. They may also begin to ask more ‘why’ questions. The immediate response for many parents is to think that the child is being rebellious. They are in fact just exercising a new found skill. Think back to when your child first learned to speak or crawl. You were excited. In the same way, the teen years can also be a very exciting period in the relationship with your child.

It is important for parents to gradually release the reigns on their children over time. In fact, this should begin even from the very earliest days of childhood. The younger that a child learns to reason for themselves and to think and learn how to make good decisions, the better they will be able to handle the challenges that life throws at them in adulthood. If from the earliest days of being a parent, you get into the habit of allowing your child some autonomy, you will already be well-rehearsed for dealing with relationship changes brought on by the teenaged years. Technology such as mobile phones and services such a Child Locate can help in this regard allowing you the ability to give your children more freedom but at the same time being able to contact them and locate them via their phone.

Just as you helped your child understand the world around them by answering their questions when they were a toddler, your teenager needs you to help them understand and manage their new ability to think abstractly, only in more subtle ways. You can’t dictate to them, you can only discuss. By answering their questions as straightforwardly as they ask them, you help your child develop a healthy perspective and a balanced outlook. More than anything else, this requires lots of talking. Not just you talking to your child but also allowing your child to talk to you. I have found that asking my daughter, “What do you think about this?” after I have corrected or even argued with her about something, helps her to release whatever feelings she may have planned to pent up in anger. Once she has expressed herself, we are both then able to leave the discussion on good terms.