A teenager is a young person whose age falls within the range 13-19. They are called teenagers because their age number ends with TEEN. This stage is also referred to as adolescence stage. The period of transition from childhood to adulthood. In the past teenagers used to be those sets of people who believe that nobody understands them.
Teenagers used to be those people who always have problems with their parents and the society at large, those set of people who live in a world of their own having ideas which seem crazy and unattainable to their parents. These set of people who know more than you think they know. Well that is what it still is today, if any change can be said to have occurred it is the fact that more evolutions have occurred and all of these characteristics teenagers possess has skyrocketed.
No more house rules or curfews because the
y never work, you are not even allowed to meet all of their friends or know about what is happening in school or their relationships with the opposite sexes. The complexity of our world today has also not helped matters at all. The influx of single parents, unwanted pregnancy situations, weekend parents, extremely strict parents in the society has been a contributing factor to all of the fact that teenagers today have become wilder and more vulnerable to vices. Lets discuss each category of teenagers based on this.THE SINGLE PARENT RAISED TEEN
These are teenagers raised by a single parent. Either by just the father or just the mother. Single parenting is tough but single parents of teenagers have a lot more to deal with. Independence, trust and honesty are even greater challenges in a single parent - teen relationship.
Biola is fourteen, her mother died when she was ten. She has a younger sister who is nine, they have since been living with her father who seemed to prefer remaining single to another marriage. Biola has reasons to believe her father is sleeping with women but she chooses to ignore that fact, her father leaves home a awful lot of time he claims to have different business meetings. Most times Biola and her younger sister have to sleep in their neighbor’s home. Biola started her menstrual period and she had no one to run to but the neighbors, several other needs and that of her sister’s that should have been met by her parents was kept hidden from her father. Because the neighbors started complaining Biola started relying more on her friends in school, she started getting solace from friends. This left her father in the dark and kept him annoyed. To worsen the case, he would beat her up whenever he was angry at her or whenever she lied which she did often. Biola’s father is on the verge of losing his teenage daughter but he doesn’t know it yet…
Boye is fifteen; he lives alone with his mother. His father had never been around all his life, he only sent him clothes, shoes, random gifts and money once in a while. This was the only constant awareness of his father he had. He and his mother are never on good terms, to Boye she simply doesn’t understand him. To his mother, she would never leave him alone to turn out irresponsible , she didn’t want anyone to have any reason to say her son didn’t do well because he was raised only by his mother. But she unconsciously put pressure on her son, sending him to find solace in
the society and from peers rather than in her as his mother. She was also sowing the seed of pain, hostility and hard heartedness in him but she didn’t know it.
Single parents seem to have a lot on their hands more than any other. To deal rightly with your teenager as a single parent you have to be ready to ask for help.
Engage any support network, friends or family you may have, ask sisters, brothers and grandparents to call and check in on your child if he or she is home alone.
Talk to your child about the fact that you can’t be there all the time and let him/her know what you expect.
Give your child the opportunity to be free, to find his/her own way, to make money or earn favours, to go out with friends. More importantly know your child’s friends, listen and pay attention to your teenager, give independence but still talk to your teenager. Above all make time to talk to your child and do things together when you are home. Single parents have tendency to over parent or on the contrary under parent. This should be avoided, never grow away from the child at the same time never get in the child’s way.
To be continued...
