Teenage mood swings are legendary; everything feels as though it is life or death. When you reflect on your own teen years, it is really easy to see why your parents struggled with your behaviour as much as they did. Every teen has said to themselves that when they’re a parent, they’ll do better because they’ll ‘get it’, but by the time it rolls around, you don’t anymore. Dealing with your teen’s mood swings can be frustrating and infuriating, but taking the right approach is important to ensure that you don’t push your teen away and widen the chasm between you. Let’s get into it.
Patience Really is a Virtue
Teenagers are notoriously unreasonable, they don’t listen, and they don’t care about what you have to say. Trying to talk to them can often feel like an uphill battle, and it is really easy to find yourself losing your rag with them. However, as the saying goes: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you jump straight into discipline, they are never going to listen. Do your best to be patient with them. Try to model the behaviours that you want to see from them, like patience and serenity; if you are calm when dealing with your teen, they are much more likely to reflect that back to you.
Encouraging Open & Honest Communication
The teen years are full of big feelings, and first times, you want your kid to feel comfortable discussing these things with you. Teenagers that feel the need to hide these things are often the ones that find themselves in trouble. You need your teen to feel confident that you are going to listen and help without judgement or exploding at them. Their feelings are valid, after all. Their safety should be your priority. For example, when they decide to have sex for the first time, it is up to you to educate them, and you should provide them with access to the things that they might need, like condoms or STI tests, which can be found at www.oxfordonlinepharmacy.co.uk.
Modelling Coping Skills
The coping skills learnt in childhood and adolescence are often the ones that we take with us into adulthood as we grow up. This isn’t to say that you can’t learn new ones, but these often become the default setting. As your teen grows up, you want them to be able to handle their emotions; you don’t want them to be *that*person. One of the best ways to teach coping skills is to model them. How do you handle your emotions? Upon reflection, you might realise that you don’t have very many good ones yourself – in which case, this is a perfect opportunity for you to learn and grow yourself. Maybe you should think about embracing mindfulness techniques.
Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle
A healthy lifestyle is obviously good for your teen’s physical health, but it can also be good for their mental health too. When they eat a lot of bad food and spend a lot of times indoors not really doing much, they are more likely to feel sluggish and irritable. Conversely, eating healthy foods, exercising and spending time outdoors can help to release more dopamine and endorphins as well as ensure they get more vitamin D from the sunshine. This all encourages them to feel better and makes their moods more stable. However, this doesn’t mean that you should continually push them into eating healthily or exercising because they’re likely to get a little ornery, and a treat every so often isn’t going to do them any harm.
Pulling them Out of a Spiral
When your teen is in a bad mood spiral, it can seem like there is no end in sight, and a black cloud descends over the entire household. Their mood does often affect everyone else in the house; this is why you need to try and think about ways in which you can pull them out of the bad mood spiral. These bad moods do get worse when you sit in them and dwell on them. Truthfully, the best thing you can do for anyone in a bad mood is to try and pull them out of it and distract them with something else. What does your teen enjoy doing? Do they have any passions, interests or hobbies? If so, can you lean into them in order to distract your teen? If they don’t, is there anything that you can get them interested in? You just might spark a brand-new lifelong hobby for them.
Final Thoughts
The teen years do seem to go on forever, but try not to lose hope! It’s only eight short years, after all… When your child passes through their teen years, they often come out of it on the other side as a really great person, and your relationship will likely improve tenfold. Don’t be afraid to give them some space; sometimes, stepping back is the best thing that you can do.