Teens and Social Development
Barbara Hendrix, LCSW - Child and Family Therapist
I am old and experienced. The wisdom I can impart on my teenage children and clients is vast and will help them eliminate years of pain and confusion. They want nothing to do with it. Information I have provided at least a hundred times (it seems) is ignored. Then their friend suggests something similar and they respond as if it is a revelation.
Study after study has shown teenagers’ development requires intense reliance on friendships. As parents and caregivers, we sometimes perceive our children’s attachment to other teenagers negatively. One researcher noted that as adults, we see these friendships more as a nuisance and a distraction than as necessary.
But these friendships are vitally important. Now, more than ever, we must help them connect.
One of the most detrimental side effects of Covid-19 restrictions has been teenagers’ inability to connect with peers and friends. Again, studies have shown, along with the flush of first love, teenage friendships mimic the intensity and attachment babies develop with their primary caregivers.
It is so powerful that research indicates without friendships, preteens and teens are at a higher risk of anxiety depression and low self-esteem. This is because for adolescents, parent’s comfort and reasoning is no longer effective in reducing the brain’s stress response, therefore reducing a parent’s ability to serve as a “social buffer.” Teens now rely on their friends to provide the emotional feedback which will negate the effects of negative experiences.
Covid-19 and all the restrictions related to it has been particularly hard on teenagers. Separation from their parents and caregivers is also a necessity. Being forced to remain in close proximity to parents for long periods of time runs counter to the teenagers’ wiring and interferes with the biological imperative to become autonomous.
As parents, caregivers and providers, it is important to understand the profound importance of these relationships. We must:
Recognize our teenager’s unreasonable desire to be with their friends at all times, is, in fact, reasonable.
Encourage our teens to engage in any safe and responsible social interaction, such as organized sports, online gaming and get togethers via video conferencing;
Coordinate with a close friend who can commit to staying safe and develop friendship “pods;”
Since teenagers have an increased ability for abstract thinking, provide them with specific information, statistics, graphs supporting our current need to be safe and responsible
Understand it is their job to attempt autonomy. In the best of times, adolescents are not sophisticated in their attempts to leave us. Being stuck with us for months, will only make the attempts at separation more primal. Forgive them. They are only doing their job.
References
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/friendship-crucial-adolescent-brain/605638/
