5 keys to establish limits to adolescents
The adolescence It is a controversial time. When the children reach adolescence it seems as if the family structure changes and both the parents and the adolescent children themselves find it difficult to relate to each other. According to an analysis carried out by Coaching Club, there are 5 recurrent themes that families consult and that have a common denominator: how to set limits to adolescents.
Among the families that attend sessions and therapies, one of the pending subjects that each family with minor children and adolescents has is to establish coherent and reasonable limits to access new technologies and leisure in general. Task that for many parents It involves a wear and a continuous focus of stress, arguments and confrontations.
Apart from the limits, the crisis of family authority, excessive consumerism, the crisis of adolescence and the democracy of discipline in the family are the other 5 recurring themes that families with teenage children consult
The limits: how to establish them in adolescence
The main issue addressed in family coaching therapies is the definition of limits as something not negative but as the rules that rationally order the consumption of the wide range of technology, content and leisure.
"The limits are very far from behaving exclusively, the sanction and the limitation, they suppose essentially guiding, protecting, preventing or advising", explains Verónica Rodríguez Orellana, therapist of the Coaching Club.
The crisis of authority in the family
The authoritarian character of the parents, so traditional and consubstantial to the Spanish family for centuries, has been replaced by more flexible models at present.
"The head of the family that imposes severe and unbreakable rules of behavior and determines who gets the reward or punishment, is not only in crisis, but is disappearing. It was a style of education that poorly promoted participation and cooperation, transmitting a type of oppressive leadership that eliminated individual and group creativity ", explains the therapist Verónica Rodríguez Orellana.
With this change of mentality in educational matters within the family, parents have not found an infallible formula so that the children take center stage that the new forms demand them and that they comply with minimum standards of behavior and responsibility without having to resort to imposition or sanction.
"This fact produces a certain confusion in the children because they have the feeling that they are out of control of the situation and can not find a way to resume it," he concludes.
The worst enemy of the limits is consumerism
The most powerful enemy when it comes to establishing limits and rules of behavior is consumerism. There are many parents who silence or mitigate the demands and excesses of children with gifts and gifts.
"To this effect is called mercantilism in parenting: parents who start the daily task of the discipline with phrases such as" if you pick up the room, I buy a game, "" if you behave well in school, you I take to the movies "," if you approve everything, I'll buy you the play ", explains Verónica Rodríguez Orellana.
Through this artificial resource of putting a price on any obligation, one falls into a permanent negotiation dynamic in which the child becomes strong and will not do anything out of conviction, but for the compensation that he receives.
Mark reasoned limits in adolescence
The increase in drug consumption, the indiscriminate use of alcohol as a leisure procedure, the exercise of violence in its different forms, ranging from street aggression to bullying in schools, reveal that there are reasons to worry about the behavior of adolescents outside the family.
"Today parents have the obligation and the moral commitment to strive to recover part of the authority that previous generations had, but with the rationality, analysis and dialogue necessary not to cross the border of authoritarianism and not to meddle in the personal destiny and in the freedom of choice of the children ", affirms the director of Coaching Club.
Towards a more democratic management of discipline in the home.
The crisis of the models that have persisted from generation to generation are good and healthy provided that you have the strength to face them and the intelligence to solve them. They are good because they lead us to analyze what no longer works and they are healthy because the non-violent resolutions of conflicts enrich family relationships.
"A more democratic and diplomatic management of family discipline does not imply an absence, or even a decrease, of the norms that regulate coexistence, it is about reaching conviction in its application and not the bad one, because it is inoperative, praxis of the imposition ", explains Verónica Rodríguez Orellana.
If responsibilities and norms are discussed and children and adolescents are involved in their enunciation and establishment, they will feel co-responsible and important, so that their application will be easier.
Verónica Rodríguez Orellana, Coaching Club therapist.
