For Dummies: How to Deal with
Moping, screaming, cursing, the silent treatment, acting out, you name it! Teens are quite often referred to as a bother.By the age of 12, your son or daughter is sure to be unruly, a little hellish even. At times, nothing can shut up your adolescent nightmare.
What are parents supposed to do? Be supportive or be just as unruly? Yell at them? David Dobbs wrote Beautiful Brains, an article which talks about the teen’s brain and how it develops and operates. Paired along with the Forbes article by Susan Adams, Amy Chua’s controversial article and Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld’s letter to her mother, I’ll be figuring out what type of parent is most successful with teens. David Dobbs is the author of Beautiful Brains. The article talks about a teen’s brain and why it acts the way it does. Using studies from Beatriz Luna, a University of Pittsburgh professor, he describes why and how teens react to a flash on the screen. “Compared to adults, teens tended to make less use of the brain regions that monitor performance, spot errors, plan and stay focused–areas the adults seemed to bring online automatically.
This let the adults use a variety of brain resources and better resist temptation, while the teens used those areas less often and more readily gave in to the impulse to look at the flickering light–just as they are more likely to look away from the road to read a text message.” Dobbs, Beautiful brains One of these parts are known as the amygdala. The amygdala is where you experience emotion and gut reaction. Adults use the frontal lobe less, and therefore, think through the decisions and impacts of their choices. Teens do not. They only think of the present.
When teens think of the present, parents’ pleads wouldn’t matter. Being mopey and despondent at times due to a small misfortune, being insanely happy at being hugged by their crush, teens are still learning to operate their unique brain, and their amygdala is a part of it. Teens operate on a sense of emotion, not reason. If teens don’t listen to reason, what’s the best type of parent to be for these mysteries? Susan Adams, an author on Forbes, writes an article talking about 2 different scales and 8 types of different parenting. The first scale was academically founded.
” Authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and negligent” parents were described in her article. The second scale, founded by Su Yeong Kim, divided parents into harsh, supportive, easygoing or tiger parents. Using three hundred families, she ranged the parenting on four positive and four negative parenting attributes. “After all the categorizing, years of surveying and number crunching, to Kim’s surprise, the team found that the greatest number of Chinese-American families in the study turned out to have supportive parents whose children did well academically while not feeling oppressed by the pressure. Those kids also felt close to their families. Tiger families and easygoing families ranked second, with about the same number in each category.
Kids of easy going parents did the second-best after the kids of supportive parents when it came to academic achievement and emotional well-being. The tiger kids did worse academically and socially. Harsh families made up the smallest group and their kids had the worst academic performance and the highest levels of depression.” Adams, Forbes Tiger parents aren’t typically Chinese or even Asian! Surprisingly, the Chinese-American families that Kim studied were usually supportive parents. Earlier in the article, Adam describes supportive parents as the ones who are warm, gives a child enough space, but still keep track of their whereabouts and explain things with reason. The studies show that the children are still in touch with their families and had did well academically.
As discussed above, teens act on their emotions.Once their emotional rant is over, they’re more susceptible to parental influence. Supportive parenting types are the best for children going through adolescence. Amy Chua went out of her way to be thought of as different, however, being of Asian descent, was she the stereotypical mother described in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom or the supportive parenting type? Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld is the daughter of the controversial author, Amy Chua. In response to the people who charged her mom with child abuse, she wrote Why I love my strict Chinese mom.
“I remember walking on stage for a piano competition. I was so nervous, and you whispered, “Soso, you worked as hard as you could. It doesn’t matter how you do. … In junior year, I signed myself up for a military-history elective (yes, you let me take lots of classes besides math and physics). One of our assignments was to interview someone who had experienced war.
I knew I could get a good grade interviewing my grandparents, whose childhood stories about World War II I’d heard a thousand times. I mentioned it to you and you said, “Sophia, this is an opportunity to learn something new. You’re taking the easy way out.” You were right, Tiger Mom.” Chua-Rubenfeld, Why I love my strict Chinese mom Sophia describes her mom as a person who supported her, even when she was scared.
Even when being reprimanded, as a teen, Chua explained her reason for doing so. In her book, Chua takes pride in being a strict mom. Even as she uses Chinese to name the type of parents, she means not being able to go to parties, sleepovers, or any clubs. She begins one of her chapters using a whole list of things she would never allow her children to do. Even though Chua was strict, she exhibited warmth and she didn’t shame or put her child to discipline other than vocally. Amy Chua was a supportive parent, with two children who are defined as successful in our society.
Teens, operating on a sense of emotion, would listen to supportive parents. In turn, the children are more likely to be successful, as defined by our society. As a parent, you don’t have to be a perfect one, just be a supportive parent to your child, especially while in their teens. As a fourteen year old, I am definitely hellish for my mom. We fight about the randomest things.
But for as long as I can remember, she’s been warm and caring. She never tried to push me, and she allowed me to do what I wanted, as long as it’s reasonable. So what type of parent are you going to be?
