HELPING TEENS STAY BALANCED
Helping Your Teen Make Informed Choices
HELPING TEENS STAY BALANCED
Helping Your Teen Make Informed Choices
Approved by Geneviève Woods, mental health counsellor and trainer, mother of 4
Our everyday lives are marked by events that require decision-making. For your teen, whose brain is developing at a very rapid rate, making choices comes with its share of challenges.
Teens are faced with many decisions: choosing lifestyle habits and friends, balancing recreational activities and schoolwork, choosing an academic stream, using social media, being exposed to and experimenting with substances.
As a parent, how can you guide your child and help them make informed choices? Read on for our advice!
WHY DO TEENS MAKE CHOICES THAT SOMETIMES SEEM CARELESS OR IMPULSIVE?
It’s important to keep in mind that your child’s ability to reason is different from that of an adult, and that’s quite normal. From your teenage years up to the age of 25, the brain is in a dynamic state, constantly growing. This can explain some of your teen’s behaviours, such as impulsiveness or the fact that emotions often prevail over reason.
In fact, the emotional centre (the limbic system) develops well ahead of the cognitive centre (the prefrontal cortex), which is the last to fully develop. The latter helps us consider the consequences of our actions and control our emotions, reactions and behaviour.
Therefore, when it comes time to make choices, as an adult, we usually tend to take time to reflect, whereas a teen’s brain is at a developmental stage that works in the now!
Over time, young people also gain maturity and learn to make more carefully considered decisions, weigh all sides of a situation before acting and avoid taking unnecessary risks.
To find out more about the role of the brain in your teen’s decision-making process, click here. You can also have your teen watch this video🧠.
The good news is that you can help your child develop this decision-making ability, which is essential for their well-being and the future adult they will become👨💼👩💼.
WHAT DOES 'MAKING AN INFORMED CHOICE' MEAN?
Making an informed choice doesn’t necessarily mean “the right decision.”
It means exercising good judgment and taking into consideration the full range of possibilities open to you, while being aware of their consequences on yourself and other people in the present moment as well as in the short, medium and long term.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP YOUR CHILD MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS
Helping your teen know themselves better and maintaining a relationship of trust with them are two basic avenues you can explore.
✔ Helping your teen take stock of what matters to them
Understanding their personality, strengths, values, needs, bounderies and responses to challenges are essential elements that your child benefits from developing to make choices that resonate with who they are.
By being mindful of their aspirations and goals, your child will be able to better visualize themselves in the near or distant future, and thus make choices that will help them move closer to that vision.
👉 To help your child better clarify their values, you can suggest that they complete this list.
👉 Helping your teen become more familiar with their personal strengths will also help them better understand what tools and limitations exist when dealing with challenges, and preserve their self-esteem. You can suggest that your child do this exercise to help them identify their individual strengths: download the “My Personal Strengths” student sheet.
👉 Being able to identify and express their limits is also a strength that will help improve their capacity for self-affirmation and self-respect, as well as their respect for others. To find out more, click here.
Here’s a video that shows how identifying our own limits allows us to focus on our strengths and accept who we are.
👉 To help your teen (re)connect with themselves and pay special attention to how they are in the present, you can introduce them to mindfulness.
Mindfulness will improve your child’s ability to plan their actions (and their consequences) and will help them be less impulsive and make better decisions. As an adult, you will also benefit by practising it!
🧘♀️ Download our mini-guide and round up the family for a mindfulness lesson!
✔Cultivate a positive relationship with your teen every day
As a parent, you influence your teen’s behaviour and their decision-making, which is why it is so important to maintain a relationship of trust and open communication with them.
To help your child make informed choices, it is crucial that you support them as they develop their independence while respecting their choices. To do so, it is important that you learn to intervene wisely and sensitively.
Here are a few ingredients for being a positive, constructive force:
🌎 Avoid being overprotective and believe in your child’s potential: allow and encourage them to have new experiences.
🙆♂️ Leave room for mistakes. Explore with them how mistakes help them better assess risk-taking and contribute to their growth and development.
🚁 Avoid “helicopter parenting,” which could cause your child to put themselves in risky situations in an attempt to push the limits that they hadn’t previously had a chance to explore when under your supervision.
💙 Adopt an attitude that welcomes discussion and is open-minded, allowing your child to express their viewpoints: by allowing them be listened to without judging or lecturing them, there’s a better chance your child will confide in you again. Remind your teen that you’re always there for them. Use key sentences such as “I’m here for you” or “When you feel ready, come see me.”
But be careful—gaining independence doesn’t mean no limits or supervision! Quite the contrary! 👉 Find more advice about supporting your child in their need for autonomy and about helping them manage risk-taking here.
WHEN YOU DISAGREE WITH YOUR CHILD’S CHOICES
It’s altogether normal for you and your child to have differences of opinion and different ways of perceiving and analyzing things. Even though your rules and supervision exist to protect them, none of it seems to make any sense to your child, who, instead, tends to get their back up. So how can you get through these confrontations while maintaining the quality of your relationship with your teen?
This link gives you 6 tips for resolving conflicts effectively. 👉 Handling conflicts effectively
👉 In this video, families share testimonials and valuable advice to smooth over your relationship.
Lastly, trust yourself. The climate that you create contributes to your child’s ability to make the most informed decisions and helps maintain a healthy relationship. 😉
NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE EXPERIENCING WITH YOUR TEEN?
Contact Ligne Parents for free, 24/7 professional support