Miah Smith

U5 Essay

Question:
How can parents help their teenagers deal with the conflicts of adolescence?

Answer:

Parents need to understand how hard it is to be in the adolescence stage of human

development. Remember when you were between the ages of 10 to 19, you always cared
about what people thought of you and how they saw you. You didn’t want your peers or society
to judge you, you would do anything to fit in. I feel like once parents are out of the adolescence
stage and they have kids they sort of forget how hard it was trying to be perfect and to not be
judged. In society you must have the perfect body, perfect skin, pretty/handsome face, etc.
Parents, make sure to go easy on your kids, because its already hard enough with them judging
themselves and their peers judging them, they don’t need their own parents judging them too
on top of that.

Parents aren’t in with the fashion trends/trends in general of adolescents and always
judge what they’re wearing or doing. For example, my stepmom always judges what I wear and
always has something to say about it. She always says, “Why are you buying secondhand
clothes?”, “None of your clothes fit you, why do you buy oversized stuff?”, and other things like
that. It’s annoying hearing my stepmom say stuff like that because she doesn’t understand
what is trendy, and it hurts my feelings and makes me mad. Then it makes me feel self-
conscious and question myself on whether I look good or not.

Some of the conflicts in the stage of adolescence is depression (other mental health
issues), bullying, eating disorders, etc. From experience of these conflicts, I know that these all
develop mostly because of society. In the textbook it says “more than 10,00 13- to 17- year-olds
in the United States found that 23 percent had a psychological disorder in the past month
(Kessler et al., 2012) (Berger, 2019, p. 365). Out of all my friends all of us have at least one
psychological disorder. A lot of girls in the adolescence stage have an eating disorder, because
in society/on social media it shows us girls that in order to be pretty you have to be skinny. This
takes a big toll on girls’ self-esteem and mental health. For example, I don’t have a terrible
body, but I see social media posts and I don’t feel like my body is good enough. I want to be
skinny, skinny and have no fat and have an hourglass figure.

My advice to parents so they can help their teenagers deal with these conflicts is to
show them that you are there for them and that they can open up to you about anything
without you freaking out at them. Listen to them and don’t turn their conversation into a
lecture because no kid wants to open up to their parents when they know they’re just going to
turn it into a lecture. Also, don’t judge them for the things they like and wear because most
likely those things are what is trendy and make you “cool” or “popular”. So, in conclusion be
nice and understanding with your teenagers.
Reference:
Berger, K. S. (2019). Invitation to the life span (4th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers .