Adolescence: mothers in the background
With adolescence, bartering takes place in roles between father and mother that had been brewing during the previous years. Now it is dad who has to take a more active stance, especially with the sons and mom who stays in the background.
The psychic and physical changes that accompany adolescence they imply a greater understanding of things; that is to say, that the rules that until now were not questioned are in question, the intellectual, physical and moral supremacy of the parents is no longer credible and the order of reality no longer has the secure basis of before.
The physiological changes that occur in adolescent children are profound and unknown to them. The flow of hormones causes impulses and desires with a force hitherto unknown. The body grows and acquires new forms at breakneck speed. Things that were previously unimportant are now vital: clothing, appearances, relationships with partners of the opposite sex, etc.
Contradictory role of parents in adolescence
These characteristics, typical of age and hormones, lead them (especially males) to distance oneself from the feminine that the mother represents and to approach the masculine of the father, especially to features that identify more with him: security, authority, firm support.
In this chaos of rebellion and apparent security, the adolescent, boy or girl, needs the benevolent tutelage of his father, who delimits the world and teaches with his words and his way of being the path towards adulthood. The adolescent, boy or girl, needs the reassuring presence of his father, but also needs him to have someone to rebel against, someone who is able to resist his attacks and to stand firm against the odds. This is a definitive learning that will surely mark his way of relating to others and the world.
Mothers ask themselves: have I done something wrong?
This does not mean that the mother does things wrong at this stage. As all mothers with teenage children know, in reality they are still protagonists at home, but in a different way.
The mother is still the framework of the family, who can alleviate the tensions of this stage, she has a lot of left hand to conciliate. It is time to go, more than ever, with the husband and let him take care of certain issues. The adolescence overflows conflicting issues that require many turns, much talk between the spouses and much act in the same line the two.
If you are a mother ...
1. Do not think that your role is no longer important and you have to unravel. On the contrary, your help as a mother is as necessary or more than ever, but you have to play it in another way: the same sensitivity, intuition and interest, but giving the protagonism to your husband.
2. Even if your sons do not pay as much attention to you as before, With girls, this does not happen in such a radical way. Above them you will continue to have a lot of ascendancy.
3. Extends love and understanding, Even if the children do not tell you everything, as before, they do not pay so much attention to you. It is better to act so yell to be heard more.
Ignacio Iturbe
