Teaching Teenagers How to Socialise
As a parent you play many roles, including a guide for helping your child build social skills. By assisting them with establishing their own moral direction, you can help them when faced with the many pressure of the social world of a teenager.
By Belinda Khor
Understanding Teenagers
Companionship from peers
Importance of friends to teenagers
Trends and peer pressure
Why the tendency to be materialistic?
What should parents do? How should parents react?
How to guide a teenager's social life
Guiding Principles
Understanding Teenagers
Teenagers like to be like their peers. If a teenager is rejected by his peers, his self-esteem will be damaged and he will feel that the world is coming to an end. They are vulnerable to peer pressure and need appropriate guidance from the adults in their lives. In most cases, parents have to strike a balance between being a friend and at the same time, a disciplinarian when handling their teens.
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Companionship from peers
Teenagers enjoy the company of their peers because they share common interests, feel comfortable exchanging ideas with their peers and are able to interact with their peers without feeling any constraints.
Parents must face reality and accept the fact that with a wider circle of friends and a significant age gap, their teenage children may prefer the company of their peers. Some parents make it difficult for their teens to get along with them and confide in them because they like to preach, find fault with their children, boast about their children, or criticise their children in the presence of others.
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Importance of friends to teenagers
Friends are the helping hands on the path to independence as they provide mutual support during difficult times, respect, and sense of security and loyalty and genuine friendship. Teenagers value friendship greatly because their friends respect them, accept them, care for them, admire them and listen to their ideas. Family members, however, tend to underestimate and scoff at their teenager’s friends. Parents do not realise how easily they can alienate their children by criticising their children’s friends.
Teenagers will make friends with those who share the same interests with them – a case of “birds of a feather flocking together”. It is therefore important for parents to teach their children good moral values whilst young and be good role models for them so that they will choose their friends wisely.
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Trends and Peer Pressure
Youngsters like to imitate
Youngsters like to imitate their friends’ way of speaking, and the way they dress and this is all done in the hope that they will be accepted and admired. This wish to be trendy is not necessarily a reflection of the personality of the person so do not judge a teen by his appearance.
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Why the tendency to be materialistic?
It is human nature to want to look attractive and to show off. However, if one engages in criminal and riotous behaviour, join gangs and steal, it would spell the fall of this person.
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What should parents do? How should parents react?
a) Parents should not kick up a fuss about how their children dress. If their children are merely following the current trends and their behaviour is not so very objectionable, parents should let them be; they should not force their children to conform to their own standards.
b) Some parents like to keep up with the trends too even though they may not be conscious of it. This is why they should try to understand that their children are growing up and need to acceptance and support of their peers.
c) Parents should spend more time talking to their children and provide advice patiently. Let the children know that inappropriate behaviour or clothes will give other people the impression that they are bad youths, and this will inadvertently tarnish their image. Parents should lay down rules for their children to abide by. For instance, children can pick out their choice of clothes but the cost and the style must conform to certain limits and standards.
d) Youngsters who understand the value of money, and who receive love, concern, praise and guidance from parents, are less likely to seek approval from others.
e) As the saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together” – humans will always find friends in people who are similar to themselves. Hence, it is vital to strengthen our children’s determination and enhance the teaching of moral values.
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How to Guide a Teenager's Social Life
Understanding how/what your teens feel
Teenagers feel they should have their own space and therefore, do not confide in their parents very much. They need others to treat them as adults. They dislike parents checking on them secretly as this makes them feel that they are not being trusted. If they find their parents snooping around, they will be more careful about their possessions and will deliberately conceal their whereabouts.
If they feel that their parents do not trust and respect them, they will feel hurt and will in turn, not trust and respect their parents too. Parents need to understand their children’s psychology by putting themselves in their children’s shoes. Their guidance will then be successful.
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Guiding Principles
a) Respect your child’s friends. Never make statements like, ‘where did you meet people of such dubious character”.
b) Teenagers value their friends very much. Any criticism directed at their friends is an insult to them. The best way is ask for their opinion regarding their friends. Most teenagers understand the behaviour of their friends.
c) If children are not quite sure if their friends’ behaviour is right or wrong, parents may use a question as a form of communication. For instance, ask them, “what do you think about his drinking habit?” or “do you know why his relationship with his teacher is so bad?”.
d) Encourage children to bring their friends home. This way, parents can observe their behaviour and educate them amiably.
Extracted from Families Today
Issue No 2/97a
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