Ai FM: Why teens do not listen to their parents?

The founder and consultant psychologist of Azon, Ms. Lee Li Li, has been invited to share about "Why Teens Don't Listen to Their Parents? " on Ai FM on 15th September 2020 (Tuesday) at 10 a.m.

Parents often perceive obedient as listening and following the given instructions. For instance, the child must listen to instructions when you tell him/her to do something. If the above situation happens during the early childhood or schooling, especially at 10 years old and below, it is a normal child behaviour because the children do not understand the world and parents need to instil positive values to the children.

However, teens who are entering the adolescence have a stronger sense of their individuality and like to identify their own values. For instance, they may think of "why do I have responsibilities of completing homework and house chores?" Sometimes, teens do not feel comfortable to share their feelings with the parents as their voices are often not being heard. At this stage, the emerge of self-awareness usually leads the teens to relate themselves with the world. They are eager to explore and try the unknowns. The argument between parents and child starts to arise, especially when the parents do not put effort to understand the teens. However, some parents do allow their teens to have a short-term exploration under certain terms and conditions, which helps to fulfil their psychological needs to explore. Otherwise, the teens may be at the risk of experiencing confusion in their future career planning. For instance, introverted teens may simply follow instructions to be in line with expectations, in fact, they are lacking the opportunity to develop their "self".
As teens explore different activities and interests, they are exploring who they are in the world, what they have to offered and what is valued by the others. The journey into the unknown offers opportunities to find a direction and learn a skill in depth. If parents do not support or diminish the teens, their passions towards life and self-esteem will be negatively affected. Parents may find your teens struggle to progress in their studies and socialisation. Although parents may not understand teens or their interests don't make sense to us as adults, our supports are helping them to find their passions and build a life that make sense to them through exploring different aspects with different characters despite the fact that parents may worry about teens going down the wrong path. Therefore, parents have to acquire "listening" skill to understand the teens and ensure a safe journey in exploration.
Currently, teens are in the generation whose lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media. They are more capable to retrieve information in more contexts other than family, school and their social circle, such as the internet. Teens can come across content and contact risks when they are online. Therefore, It's important that parents need to help your teens through "supervision" by talking casually to understand their perspectives as a friend, instead of "control" or stop them. In some cases, teens will need professional assistance when they are addicted to online or video games and the parents can't pull them out of the addiction to explore the outside world. Teens who are addicted to "online world" often need their own space that hoping to pass time quickly and with more fun. However, they also desire to have a strong connection with families that couldn't be achieved in real life, thus they intend to make connection through the online world. Teens are often helpless when they are struggling with such addiction. If parents ignore their "SOS" and handle the situation with nagging, teens will be more vulnerable in recovery. When parents notice their teens have less expressions in the aspects of behaviour, emotional or cognitively, parents are advised to pay more attention to their teens by starting to "listen".


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Note: The above content is adopted from the AiFM live sharing session: " Why Teens Don't Listen to Their Parents? " on 15th September 2020 (Tuesday). For more information, kindly contact our office for more information and further assistance. Thank you.