[정신건강 줌인]What star are you? Understanding teenagers

Park Soo-bin, Director, National Center for Mental Health, Specialist in Pediatric Psychiatry

[박수빈 국립정신건강센터 연구소장/소아청소년정신과 전문의] “I think the boy will go crazy because he says ‘what should I do’ if I tell him something in an annoying tone every time he is about to enter puberty.”

“I think raising a child would be ten times easier without smartphones, games and social media.”

Since the beginning of humanity, the conflict between adolescent children and their parents has been a perpetually recurring theme. Isn’t there a saying in prehistoric rock paintings that young people these days are spoiled? That

It is true that even with rum, raising a child is an extreme environment these days. After industrialization, with the lengthening of the period of education, young people have long become dependent on their parents. The stress and pressure on children to study is getting worse. Fun things to entice children, things that stimulate peripheral nerves are everywhere with high accessibility. In this difficult time for both children and parents, how to overcome puberty for my child is the greatest task on earth for parents with children of this age. To understand capricious and picky teens, we must first understand the characteristics of puberty. The greatest feature of puberty is “capriciousness”. “I think my life would be ruined if I lived like this. “and then turn around, plunge into the game again and say,” I want to do it now, but how do I do it? “He is a teenage child. Parents are frustrated that they do not keep their word, but the child’s heart to study must being honest at the time. Next time you say something like that, why don’t you say “I don’t believe you anymore” and try to believe it again? Accepting that it might just be a day or a week.

Another feature of puberty is that the world revolves around the ego. Developmental psychologist David Elkind expressed the egotism of adolescence with the words “Personal Tale” and “Imaginary Audience”. A “personal tale” is the belief that I am special and that my feelings and experiences are fundamentally different from those of others. Teenagers believe that only they have true friendship and love, and that others will neither experience nor understand this. Thus, the love story of teenage children living with the words “Mom knows nothing” and “love of the century” despite parental opposition only burns (but the fire quickly goes out again). On the other hand, like the superhero in the film, he commits reckless actions with the groundless belief that he will avoid all dangers. No matter how much parents worry about the risk of personal information leaks and cyberbullying and warn them against cyber friendships and the use of abusive language, they protest by saying, “This has never happened before and there is no child. involved in such a thing in my class, so why just me? ‘. An “imaginary audience” is a misconception that one is the main character in a play and that everyone else is an audience that only sees me on stage. Due to the illusion that everyone in the world pays attention to themselves, young people are worried about even small mistakes that others may not notice, and when they feel that their prestige has been eroded in front of others, they are very angry with small comments.

What should I do with a teenage son who seems unable to control me, and I think when I grow up I will regret it if I leave him like this? What parents can do is wait. Be patient and understand that “the brain is rebooting under the influence of hormones and its head is about to explode”. “It’s not that kind of behavior against social norms!”, “How many years will you struggle to play for a few years?” If a child does not understand (perhaps pretending not to understand) something so obvious, it is because the child’s brain is not yet ready for it. To understand that studying hard now and getting good grades can broaden your options in the future, the areas of the brain responsible for planning, judgment, and impulse control need to be further developed. Parents want to remove obstacles in front of their children and let them follow a safe and good path, but children grow up through trial and error. When the time comes, puberty ends when most children realize that they are neither superheroes nor the protagonists of the show, and that others are also the protagonists of their own phases. At the end of the day, a child can take a step forward when there are parents to hold hands and maintain a good relationship.