• • Uninterested in participating in family events. 
  • Only wants to go out with friends.
  • Experimenting with drink and drugs.
  • Seems isolated and distant.
  • Doesn’t seem to be making the necessary steps to prepare for leaving school.
  • Depressed and has stopped attending school and other activities.
  • Other problems around contact and/or support.

• Are you unsure of how to guide or support the adolescent in your home?
• Are you missing the child that the adolescent once was?
• Are you concerned about one or more of the following behaviours?
  • Staying in their room all the time.
  • Dismissive about everything you say.
  • • Uninterested in participating in family events.
    • Only wants to go out with friends.
    • Experimenting with drink and drugs.
    • Seems isolated and distant.
    • Doesn’t seem to be making the necessary steps to prepare for leaving school.
    • Depressed and has stopped attending school and other activities.
    • Other problems around contact and/or support.

Growth and vulnerability during adolescence

Phases of development and the search for direction

Adolescence spans about 15 years of life. It begins around the age of 10 and generally continues until the age of 25. It is a time of searching for one’s own direction, identity and style. Depending on the stage of development, certain (internal) processes come into play. Some examples are:

Phases in puberty

12-14/15 year
Copying (parents of) friends, projecting characteristics which cannot yet be internally dealt with.

15-17/18 year
Learning to deal with strong emotions and impulses, finding poetry, prose and music to help you understand yourself better.

17/18-25 year
Finding your own way, perhaps living away from home. Studying or working. Maybe discovering you like different things than you thought you did. Uncertainty about having the “right” tools. 

This is a global summary of where the emphasis lies in each phase, and can give you an idea of what you and the adolescent can be confronted with.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of growing potential, but also vulnerability.

If you recognize that there are different phases during adolescence, you can take them into account as a parent. It can be very supportive to know that a 13 year old will, for example, complain about characteristics of others that he or she cannot yet tolerate in him or herself. How you deal with this as a parent is important.

Let it unfold

Direction, maturity, parenting style

Secondary school students are often asked what their plans are; what they want to study or where they want to work? Sometimes the adolescent feels like he or she should know the answers to these questions while often everything feels uncertain. Space and support to learn life lessons can make all the difference in how someone leaves home. Simply acknowledging the uncertainty inherent in this phase can also be supportive. Insight into your parenting style and the family dynamics can open up new possibilities and perspectives. What assumptions are there in your family, for example? These are often not as obvious to an adolescent as you may think.

Trust

An attuned relationship

You’d like to have more trust in your relationship, and for this it is important to have clarity about what is yours and what is the other person’s. Who is responsible for what? Boundaries can be unclear and as a parent you may notice that you’ve become stricter, for example, or you may notice that you are solving everything or even letting the adolescent do too much of his/her own thing. Perhaps you are unhappy with how you are responding, it doesn’t feel quite right, but you do not know how to proceed. Gestalt therapy can offer you support in this.

Therapy, a courageous step

It takes courage to go into therapy. You need the willingness to look at yourself and your relationships. Anyone who has ever had adolescents in the house has stories to tell about how these relationships went and what their own part in them was. You do not have to change as a person, nor does the adolescent. Therapy will involve taking time to explore everyone’s experience of the relationships. Each individual’s responsibility will become clearer, more autonomous. It can be an enriching experience for everyone. As adults, we have a task to support the maturation of our children. We also have experiences, both negative and positive that can inform us on this unknown path.