How does the adolescent crisis become traumatic?

Life group – Zahra Saidi: I checked his appearance, he didn’t eat for more than seventeen years, his clothes were neat and clean and it was clear that he was from a wealthy family. He put his hand in his pocket and turned off his mobile phone. He started his conversation like this: “It’s been two years since I did things that I don’t even believe. Since school, my parents were always at work and I was either alone or at my grandmother’s house. For a long time, I had become friends with my mobile phone and laptop, I found friends that my family didn’t know about, but I knew that they were not happy with my friendship with this type of person.

For the first time last year, one of these so-called friends gave me a cigarette, and I smoked in order not to lose weight until now, when I couldn’t put it down anymore. At some parties, they offered me flowers and pills, I didn’t pass them up anymore. It was as if I didn’t see anyone, I was always in my own place, the money came from my father, I had nothing to do with their work, but I got tired of my work. My mother and father realized something, they are worried and I am ashamed of them, because they don’t know how serious my problems are and how much I sank into this quagmire. I feel abandoned, I don’t know what to do. Some time ago, my mother asked me to go to a psychologist, but I did not agree, I preferred to do it alone so that they would not find out.”

These are the conversations of a teenage client with a psychologist. The client who faced the crisis of adolescence and the neglect of his family in terms of interaction and communication, is drowned in problems from which it is not clear how to get out of it. Adolescent crisis and adolescent characteristics during puberty are important and harmful things that parents should pay serious attention to. Unfortunately, our families cause more problems for their children because they forget this period and instead of empathizing and helping their teenager, they constantly blame him and the situation becomes worse than before.

* The most important features of adolescence

After passing through childhood, all humans enter a period that is the boundary between childhood and youth, i.e. adolescence with all its own characteristics, which include many physical, hormonal, sexual, cognitive, developmental and emotional, social and moral changes. During this period, the teenager faces a lot of pressure from inside and outside, which if not understood by the parents, he will face many crises.

Dr. Ali Sahibi, a psychologist, lecturer and translator of psychology books, says about this: “During adolescence, thinking or knowledge becomes abstract and inferential in terms of evolution. Great visualizations create special conditions for the adolescent’s mind, and along with it, a hormonal revolution also occurs in the adolescent’s body. That is, all the previous stability leads to instability, all this makes the teenager’s relationship with himself and the world around him difficult.”

In addition to these issues, teenagers face competition from their peers in school, and the anxiety of studying from kindergarten to school, interviews, exams, and Hazarkhan grades is what he has to overcome. Therefore, it is natural for a teenager with all these issues to come to himself one day and say what is the meaning of his life? Why should he endure all this?

He says, “Parents who put this child in kindergarten and worked by themselves, then the child went to school and still did not have a strong intellectual and mental connection with his parents, are making the conditions of their child’s adolescence very difficult.”

* Correct understanding of adolescence is the key to solving challenges

Irrespective of what challenges parents are facing in this period to raise their teenage children, in this report we will deal with the challenges of the teenager himself, that is, the difficult conditions he himself experiences. Dr. Sahibi says: “I have seen many teenagers who are drawn to drugs, cigarettes, and other things like alcohol, and I understand them. They do these behaviors to escape excessive pressure from family, society, or other things. They show themselves. We ourselves have gone through adolescence, so we understand, but unfortunately, parents forget about the turbulent times they had and how much this identity, self-esteem, mental image or intellectual difficulties had. are

Today, our teenagers are facing many emerging phenomena that were not seen in the past and of course it is difficult to face them, these are fundamental challenges that parents should be aware of and know what kind of mentality their teenager has. . What are the salient features of his age and provide the right platform for his healthy growth in the first step.”

The first step is for parents to understand the period of adolescence, if they forget, learn it so that they can have a proper relationship with the teenager. Parents who see a cigarette in their child’s purse or pocket for the first time should think about where they went wrong when their child made the wrong friends and turned to drugs, and then help them after taking it. Communication, teenagers can get out of challenges.

Dr. Sahibi says in this regard: “If parents cannot get a proper understanding of today’s teenagers, it is quite natural that teenagers turn to drugs, computer games, wrong relationships to calm themselves down and eliminate their worries and anxieties. Go with friends or the opposite sex. Therefore, these injuries are not natural phenomena, but complications caused by a phenomenon. If there is a proper healthy atmosphere in our homes for communication with teenagers, teenagers will not go towards these injuries.”

Child psychologist “Piaget” says that all the wealth of a country is the creativity of its youth. If we can flourish it, this country will have a place in the world in the future, but if we cannot, our natural, material and spiritual wealth will be destroyed. will go Because the next generation of our teenagers has not been identified, they don’t have emotional regulation and communication skills, they don’t know the limits of conflicts and they can’t plan for their future properly, this teenager will later become an adult who is not qualified to run the country in any way.

Dr. Sahibi criticizes parents who work from morning to night and don’t have time to communicate with their children, saying: “Now all parents try and want their children to be happy so that they can be proud of their children in middle age and old age. do If these same parents cannot establish a proper relationship with their children at a young age, their relationship will suffer. Adolescents turn to smoking and other negative shortcuts when they do not have a communication channel with their parents. “The first shortcut may be drugs, and the next ones are unhealthy relationships, alcohol and other issues.”

“William Glaser”, a psychologist in this field, believes that when the relationship between parents and teenagers is interrupted, the communication channel is weakened and the children’s love and sense of belonging are strained. This teenager becomes a shortcut to drugs and then alcohol and early relationships with the opposite sex. That’s why it is necessary to be a child with our child, become a teenager with our teenager and grow with him.

Even if parents see a good program on TV, which is educational, they should encourage their children to watch it instead of watching dull series and movies. If we talk to most of the parents whose children’s work has resulted in big or small injuries, there is no mention of money, they definitely had work and did not leave time for education, they went from one meeting to another and there is no more interaction between themselves and their children. It has not been established and the teenager here has faced many challenges and crises.

Dr. Sahibi emphasizes that in order to have a good interaction between parents and children, you must spend quality time together. He says: “Going to a restaurant and watching TV, even going to the cinema is not a quality time. Quality time is the time when two parents talk to their child, interact with each other about their concerns or issues they face. At home, cooking, talking and interacting about school issues is quality time.

* The importance of empathy with teenagers

Dr. Mehdi Eskandari, a psychologist and family consultant, also says about the importance of better understanding of the conditions of adolescence: “At the present time, due to the many concerns of adolescence, parents should gain a better understanding of their children. I see the void of this relationship between parents and children, we have a lost space between me, mother and father, and the teenager, and this relationship is not well formed, and the gap between the two becomes a voice of protest from the teenager. Therefore, the deeper we have a center of connection, the safer our family will be.

Currently, the main challenges faced by parents and teenagers are that they do not know how to talk to teenagers, understand them and listen to them. We see a lot of things in the clinics, how much parents argue with and confront the teenager instead of educating him. Then, when there is a problem, the parents say, “This is not going to happen at all!” He lives in another place and space!” But they don’t come back to themselves to see how far they are from their youth and they can’t establish a proper relationship with their child. Many times, teenagers and families who go to a psychologist are surprised when they hear what concerns their children have. They tell the counselor that they never imagined that their child would have such a problem. This is due to a lack of correct understanding.

The next key point is to empathize with a teenager who is experiencing anxiety and crisis. It is very important but rare that we can empathize with him instead of arguing and giving advice, understand him and his mental and physical conditions and help our teenager to overcome their problems easily.”

Finally, parents who establish a friendly, fair and reasonable relationship with their teenage children, they definitely do not tend towards the traumas of adolescence. Children who have the right interaction with their parents do their activities together, from going to school, different classes to housework and recreation, so they will never turn to drugs, wrong relationships, alcohol and other issues that harm them.

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