Adolescence is the period when young people undergo radical changes in physiology, attitudes, and social relationships as they grow from childhood to adulthood. Adolescence begins when puberty sets in and ends in the early twenties when the person is reasonably independent from his parents.

        Adolescence is primarily limited to industrially advanced societies, because these societies require highly specialized patterns of behavior and skills not required in less advanced societies. In these advanced societies, marriage and economic independence are usually delayed. The complex preparation required for adulthood leads to much of the adolescent turmoil observed in industrial nations. However, the belief in Western societies that conflicts between parents and children automatically intensify during adolescence has been greatly exaggerated. Family ties remain strong during adolescence, and most adolescents adopt, rather than reject, their parents' values.

        For the adolescent, much is happening all at once. Physically, he has a period of accelerated growth second only to the first two years of life. Physical development brings changes in self-concept. Psychologically, he embarks on the challenge of becoming independent and of establishing his own identity. He also learns many of his capabilities and limitations.

        While trying to answer the questions of who and what he is, the adolescent must learn to establish close relationships with others, particularly those of the opposite sex outside his family. This should be a gradual process so that he can understand his new emotions. This is one reason the Church encourages teenagers to wait until they are sixteen to date. By that time, they are more mature in the way they manage their feelings.

        The changing emotions of adolescents is associated with rapid changes in their physiology. Heightened emotionality may be marked by a low tolerance for frustration, or by quarrelsomeness. Knowing this, adults should not overreact to teenage ''moods," which can range from hysteria at a basketball game to total depression right afterward because a "special someone" did not notice them.

        Adolescents sometimes withhold information from those in authority to protect themselves. That is why, if you want personal information from them, you have to ask for it. They will seldom reveal themselves. They sense that the more adults know about how they think and feel, the more influence adults can have over them. For example, the more adults know how strongly teenagers want to drive, the more the adults may be tempted to use driving privileges to manipulate teens into doing what the adults want. Parents need to understand this reluctance to talk. It is not from lack of love and esteem.

        Adolescents are often susceptible to the influences of peers and of people they idealize, people who can interpret their feelings for them or interpret what is happening to them. Music frequently expresses feelings they can't understand or otherwise explain. Adolescents often use information from peers to help them create an identity that differentiates them from their parents. As they explore various roles and life-styles, they become aware of and sensitive to others who give them responses about their behavior.

        The adolescent's self-concept, his perception of his body, attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and behavior, is fluctuating. New expectations, sexual feelings, and behavioral challenges are used by young people to redefine their self-concepts, modify their attitudes, and test previously held values in light of their changed circumstances.

        With maturity, the adolescent's need to identify with others diminishes, and his own ideas and values provide the framework for his identity. Since self-esteem or feelings of worth partially stem from daily social experiences, adolescents need encouragement, support, and approval. Although our culture promotes the idea that peer pressures and family commitments are opposing forces, the family can actually provide a foundation for a teenager's success in the world outside the family.

        The teenager may see his parents' help as interference, their genuine concern as babying, and their advice as bossing. Parents may find themselves puzzled about how to help when their guidance is resented and rejected. The natural course when an adolescent rebels or deviates from the rules is to increase parental control. But such control usually promotes further resistance. By imposing more control, parents may create—or at least encourage—the very behavior they don't want. The result is a power struggle over who is going to control whom. If parents mistakenly think that the issue is really control, then the power struggle will continue.

        What should parents do? I'm convinced that having a change of heart toward our teens is infinitely more important than learning techniques and skills. This means, first of all, that parents must give up their controlling attitudes, and secondly, that they see themselves as teachers. Often, our attitudes toward teenagers represent an unfair accusation of them. We already accuse them of behaviors or attitudes they do not have. When we try to control them, we have accused them of being the kind of kids who cannot be responsible—they can only be "controlled."

        Seeing teenagers as capable of taking responsibility is an attitude that suggests we can teach them responsible living. When parents teach, they are taking responsibility. When parents blame teenagers or circumstances for problems, their attitudes—their hearts—are not right. When their hearts are right and they perceive others compassionately, parents can influence their teens for good and create a better life for all their family members.

        So a parent is to be compassionate and teach. What are they to teach? The gospel teaches that even though our environments have powerful influences on us, we are still free to choose whether or not we will allow external forces to control our behavior. Our behavior is not so much a product of what happens to us as it is a product of what we do with what happens. How we perceive or interpret events suggests our actions. Teenagers deserve to be taught that they are not pushed around by forces beyond their control. Responsible living is possible. Parents who are compassionate teachers do not indulge or excuse teens, but act however love requires, whether firmly or forgivingly.

        In one family I was counseling, a sixteen-year-old boy was crude, irresponsible, and unresponsive to parents. He continually provoked his brothers and sisters because he thought they deserved what he did to them.

        One Saturday morning he brought a girlfriend home. His mother, being more concerned about the curlers in her hair than her son or the girl, greeted the girl tersely and then quickly excused herself because she felt embarrassed about her appearance. After the son took the girl home, he came back and verbally attacked his mother for being so rude and insensitive to his girlfriend. As the mother listened to her son, she did not try to justify or defend herself. She realized he was right. When he finished, she said, "You're right, son. I was insensitive. I'll bet your girlfriend thought I didn't approve of her by the way I acted. I'm sorry for acting this way. I was just thinking of myself rather than being concerned about your feelings." Her honest response softened his heart and he began to confide in her.

        This example allows us to see that we, by our attitudes, promote a certain amount of adolescent resistance. Rebellion is not necessarily the fault of the parents, nor should parents passively tolerate it. But compassion is essential if teenage belligerence is to be met successfully. Compassionate parents can bring their children back to them.

        The following patterns tend to show up in families where there is little compassion and where family members see each other as irritants: the parent will not take the adolescent's views and opinions into account; he will frequently interrupt the adolescent; he will not follow the adolescent's suggestions; and he will interrogate the adolescent. Seeing such patterns, the adolescent often concludes that he isn't worth much. He may feel extreme anger and rage, which can lead to deviant behavior.

        As an adolescent begins to provoke others and to strike out, his parents' negative feelings toward their child are confirmed. This is collusion, mutual blaming between parent and child. The seeds of adolescent problems are often sown in the elementary years—before actual conflicts begin—because parents and children have been harboring negative attitudes toward each other. Parents get what they give. They reap what they sow.

        It is self-deception to believe that our negative feelings and behavior are caused by others or by our circumstances. Our children may behave unseemly, but when we are angry with them, we are behaving just as unseemly. If we perceive them as the reason we can't help our feelings, we are blind to the truth, and the truth cannot be in us. (See 1 John 1:6-10.) Specifically, you as a counselor could

1. Help both parents and children to see the need to take responsibility for their own behavior. Help both to be honest about their own problems and to stop worrying about what is wrong with the other person. If you can help them see each other honestly and compassionately, their hearts will soften and they will automatically begin to communicate more cooperatively and effectively.

2. Teach parents about the nature of adolescence. They need to understand what adolescents face in developing mature thoughts, feelings, and actions.

3. Establish a relationship with the adolescent by spending time alone with him. Without this, you may be perceived as another authority figure who is siding with the parents.

        In your own words, reflect back to the adolescent his feelings and opinions as he expresses them. In this way he can know you understand how he feels. This does not mean you necessarily agree with him, but that you understand how he feels.

4. Help parents gradually give more responsibility to the adolescent. In the early years of marriage, parents naturally have control of their children, but adolescents want to be treated as equals and want to negotiate for "control." Parents and children can never be complete equals in all areas. But there are certain responsibilities in which everyone must share and cooperate, and there are rules about how people should treat each other that apply to everyone in the family, including parents.

        It is also important to remember that adolescents want to be governed more by implicit rules than explicit ones. Small children want explicit rules like "Please cut the lawn right now," while adolescents want to hear "Please get the lawn cut today." The latter allows the budding adult to decide when and how the lawn will get cut and makes him feel responsible, capable, and free to decide.

5. Avoid a negative triangle. Two parents and an adolescent form a triangle, and that triangle often ends up with two parents in a coalition against the child. To have a healthy triangle, each person must work on his relationship with the other two individually and then help the other two have a good relationship as well. In a healthy triangle, communication is open and decisions are made mutually. Family gossip, in which the sins of a child are rehearsed in the child's absence, can be a way of seeing the child uncompassionately. We should confront directly those we love.

6. Encourage tolerance for differences of opinion. If adolescents can't achieve separateness by having opinions of their own, they sometimes take the wrong road to separateness by rejecting their parents and turning to self-destructive behavior such as drugs, alcohol, sex, and deviant behavior to hurt or destroy their parents. What they don't understand is that when they reject the values of their parents, they reject their own internal system as well. Most teens identify so strongly with their parents that when they act in antisocial ways they actually hurt themselves more than they hurt their parents. In healthy families, children can be themselves without being rejected or ridiculed. Being tolerant of differences of opinion is not the same as "giving in."

7. Teach parents to be true to themselves. If parents are true to themselves, the adolescent will probably feel good about them and respect them. Parents should allow the adolescent to be true to himself without provoking him to feel ashamed for disagreeing or feeling differently. The key is to be honest without accusing.

        Parents might try statements like this: "I really want you to serve a mission, and so does the Lord. But the decision is up to you. I will love you no matter what you do." Such an approach gives the adolescent the firm guidance he needs but also allows him room to make his own choices. But parents must not use such a statement to manipulate their child. Sincerity is essential. Adolescents easily detect phoniness.

8. Foster high levels of trust, cohesion, and openness. Trust comes from being able to predict that others in the family will usually act in a warm, caring way. If the child puts his arm around his parent, he trusts his parent; he's not afraid of him. Cohesion comes from sharing feelings and experiences. Openness is the freedom to express feelings about things. Family activities and traditions help create cohesion and openness. Adolescents frequently have a hard time expressing emotions. But in families that lack freedom of expression, it is particularly difficult.

9. Avoid siding with the parents against the child or vice versa. Help both sides to be open, honest, just, and unaccusing, and to seek the Spirit as their greatest aid in changing their hearts and attitudes. This will help them create a healthy relationship and avoid turning each other into enemies.

10. Help the parents and the adolescent to see that it is not so much what they need to begin doing that will bring about the improvements they desire, but what they need to undo or stop doing. The Lord said to say nothing but repentance unto this generation (D&C 11:9), and repentance means to stop doing things that are wrong. The parents and teenager need to stop perceiving accusingly, to stop provoking and becoming provoked by taking offense, and to stop shifting the responsibility for their feelings onto each other or their circumstances.

11. Teach parents to let their adolescents express themselves. Adolescents are struggling to move from being externally controlled to being self-directed. As parents help them identify what they want to do or want the parents to do, adolescents learn to take responsibility for their actions and don't simply react against "shoulds" and "oughts." Questions like "What do you think about . . . ?" "How do you feel about . . .?" and "How do you want to handle that?" help them share in the control and, at the same time, help them learn to make responsible decisions.

12. Teach parents to give legitimate praise. Because adolescents sometimes feel awkward, rejected, or confused, they suffer from what might be termed "approval anxiety." Teenagers, like younger children, need all of the support and legitimate praise we can give. They may act as if they don't need approval or affection from adults. Sometimes they might feel that parents are using their love to control them. But they will accept affection if the total relationship is good.

        It is important to be sensitive in praising a teenager. Praise can imply judgment of personality and character if it isn't genuine and couched in descriptive terms. For example, if a daughter cleans the kitchen well, her mother might say, "Thank you very much for cleaning the kitchen. It really made my day." That is honest praise that describes what was done.

13. Teach parents how to encourage their teenagers appropriately. Parents need to be willing to remind and encourage without being offensive. If an adolescent repeatedly forgets or simply fails to follow through on his responsibilities, parents must be willing to remind him with considerateness and courtesy. This process may seem endless and unrewarding, but it is often normal and necessary. Parents can do it effectively only when they perceive their adolescents realistically and compassionately. Little wonder the scriptures mention patience and long-suffering so frequently!

14. Encourage parents to take time to talk to their adolescents. It can be very meaningful to adolescents for parents to give him their time and attention without his having to ask for it. At such times they may want to share with him what they experienced when they were teenagers, what is happening to them in the present, how they feel, or what they like and don't like.

        Unfortunately, parents tend to interact less and less with their children as they get older. Just the opposite should be true. Adolescents thrive on self-disclosure by their parents as long as it doesn't degenerate into moralizing about the good old days or to telling them how they should feel.

        This is also the most important time for parents to talk about physical development and to disclose their own concerns about the moral code as they grew up. If they don't teach their children the world will. Parents must teach them the sacredness of their sexual capacities as an alternative to the carnality the world is promoting.

15. Teach parents how to express unconditional love. No behavior technique can take the place of communicating unconditional love to children. Conditional love tells them they are loved only if and when they do certain things that please the parents. But unconditional love means loving them as they are, with no strings attached.

        Two LDS boys became addicted to drugs and decided to leave home to be on their own. The parents of one said, "If you move out, don't ever come back until you quit your filthy habit." The other boy's parents said, ''You may move out if you wish, but you may return at any time. We love you, and there's nothing you can do to destroy that love. Remember, you'll always be welcome in our home."

        Even such unconditional love does not always ensure that the problem will be solved, but in this instance the second boy eventually served a mission because of the influence of his parents' unconditional love. Maintaining their relationship with their son was more important to them than proving that they had control over him.

16. Teach parents to be a step ahead of adolescent problems by trying new things. Hiking, taking trips, and doing things to expand the teenager's awareness help build the parent-child relationship. That is what adolescents are after during this transition time of their life. This should be done over again with every adolescent in the family.

        Consider the following quotation from Amiel's Journal. It was actually written in 1853, more than a century ago:

        Self-government with tenderness—there you have the condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us his natural superiors, and he will attach a special value on our kindness, because he will respect it. The child who can rouse in us anger, or impatience, or excitement, feels himself stronger than we, and a child only respects strength. . . . This is why the first principle of education is: train yourself, and the first rule to follow if you wish to possess yourself of a child's will is: master your own.

Suggested Readings

A. Bandura, "The Stormy Decade: Fact or Fiction?" Psychology in the Schools. 1 (1964):224-31 .

Haim G. Ginott, Between Parent and Teenager (New York: Avon Books, 1971).

Robert E. Grindler, Adolescence (New York: John Wiley, 1973).

M. Powell, The Psychology of Adolescence, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971 ).

About the Author

Dr. C. Richard Chidester received his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah, followed by master's and Ph.D. degrees from Brigham Young University. Presently he works in the Church Education System as associate area director for the Davis County (Utah) seminaries. He is also a licensed practicing marriage and family counselor. He has taught at BYU and at the LDS institutes of religion at the University of Utah and Weber State College.

Dr. Chidester is a popular and inspirational speaker. He is widely known throughout the Church for his contributions to BYU Campus Education Week and other Continuing Education programs.

Dr. Chidester has served as a member of an instructional development committee of the Church. He has also served as a bishop, a counselor in a bishopric, and a high councilor.

He and his wife, Kathryn, are the parents of seven children.