You can help your child through this crucial period of great physical and emotional development. By Christina Viegas

Adolescents aren’t out to ‘get’ their parents (though yes, it may often seem that way!); they’re just trying to assert their own identity.

Take It In Your Stride
Adolescence is a good time for both children and parents to let go, while still understanding that they are there for each other. It is a little before this stage that children attain puberty.

“Parents have to realise that their attitude towards puberty will influence how their young children will experience it. Both parents and kids should realise that puberty is nothing to be scared of and should not be viewed with fear,” states Dr Madhavi Raiker, MD, Raiker Nursing Home, Goa.

She continues, “It is just another, but very important milestone in child development.”

Communication Is Crucial
Create an atmosphere of trust, which will be conducive to healthy communication. Disciplining techniques will have to change around this time. The rules that applied when your child was a precocious 10-year-old are certainly not likely to yield results now. Respect is the key word now.

Talking down to adolescents will not help. This is not to say backslapping will be received too well either — there’s nothing more embarrassing for a teenager than having a parent barge into a teen zone, pretending to be one too.

Somewhere in-between the two extremes will more likely work best. When parents are able to guide and befriend their adolescent children, they feel uninhibited in expressing their feelings and doubts. And this is just the environment conducive to building trust and dialogue.

Be Honest With Information
Both teenage girls and boys go through a period of physical and emotional awkwardness.
At this stage, girls need to have menstrual cycles, hair growth in the armpits and pubic area, the widening of their hips and the change in the pigmentation of the skin all explained to them.

Boys need to be spoken to about the changes in their voices, about nocturnal emissions, which they will know as ‘wet dreams’, and the rapid development of their sexual organs.

Get them a good book on sex education, which can be read in private. Back it up, if you can, with casual chats that do not appear to have been engineered. Deliver the information in small, well-spaced and timed discussions rather than in one big solemn lecture.

It is perfectly normal to feel uncomfortable about it all, but considering the options (sleazy films, cheap porno books, uninformed friends, and porn on the Internet) might help you quickly get over the discomfort. But if you just cannot bring yourself to do this, enlist the help of another adult — someone too young to be seen as a parent figure but old enough to know what to say. It is also absolutely necessary for youngsters to be made aware of the hazards of unprotected sex — pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases,including the dreaded AIDS.

Explain to your kids that delaying sexual relations till they are mature enough and sure of their feelings for their partner, is definitely a good idea and that it, in no way, undermines their sexual identity.

Maturity Counts
Dr Tosha, MD of Dr Tosha’s Clinic, Goa, advises, “Be prepared, during puberty and adolescence, for a spot of rebellion. Youngsters will want desperately to assert their individuality and what better way of doing this than by rebelling?

It’s now their turn to challenge the world, to fascinate the opposite sex, to be leaders. Take this jostle for power in your stride, even if you don’t feel too gracious about it.

That’s not to say that you should altogether relinquish your position of authority. A redefinition of the relationship, with respect as the focal point, will help you tackle most objectionable situations.”

On these pages: Your child needs your good sense and encouragement through puberty

GOT COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? E-MAIL US AT femina@timesgroup.com WITH ‘PARENTING — SURVIVING YOUR CHILD’S PUBERTY’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE