The teen years of one’s life are extremely important. In fact, they form a crucial phase of one’s life that can either make or break the future of a person. A teen undergoes various emotional, biological as well as hormonal changes that occur in one’s body. Assisting a teenager in facing such emotional, hormonal changes becomes a big challenge for parents.
Often, a teenager likes to defy any order, be it from his family or teachers. Standing long hours in front of the mirror, consuming too much time in dressing up, and disobeying the advice of parents are some of the common tendencies of a teenager. Parenting a teenager is not an easy task at all. It requires love, affection, protection, patience and, most of all, the wisdom to understand the basic science of grooming a personality.
Often, parents vent their emotions on their teenagers as they feel their children are not growing up as per their expectations. Some parents even use abusive language without really realising that the words they use around their kids are shaping their personality and thinking. If you keep on saying to someone that they are not good, that person will eventually start feeling that they are indeed not good. Proper encouragement is always a better approach to help someone do something.
Continuous discouragement results in lowering down of one’s self-esteem. It is often the antithesis of self-confidence. If a teacher keeps on rebuking a student, they would never be able to perform well in class. A teenager is nothing but an image created by his surroundings for, a mirror reflects nothing but the replica of an object standing in front of it. Similarly, the personality of a teenager, and resultantly an adult, is nothing but a consolidated projection of the perceived notion of them by everyone around them. The opinion of society about a person matters a lot.
There is a famous story about the Mahabharata battle. When Karna and Arjuna were ready to face each other for the final war, the charioteer of Karna, Shalya (maternal uncle of Pandava), kept on using harsh language against Karna in order to lower down his self-confidence. And the result was as expected — Karna was defeated.
A person is the outcome of the investment made by their parent, school, colleagues and their surroundings. The continuous input of opinion about a person often makes them of that kind. Therefore, it is important to understand that a person is just like a mirror who mirrors the kind of perceived notion about them imposed upon them by their surroundings. One should be calculative in using words against or in favour of anybody, especially in the case of a child whose mind is always susceptible to the opinions of others.
Here, the role of parents, especially mothers, becomes crucial as a mother is regarded as the first teacher of a kid. This is the reason why Subhash Chandra Bose, the famous Indian freedom fighter, once said, “You give me a good mother and I shall give you a strong nation in return.”
A teenager is required to be handled with care. The key to shaping the future of a teenager is patience and understanding. These are the two basic requirements essential for parents to inculcate. You pour the water of patience, trust on teenagers, and they will blossom into the flower, you wish.