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BPA helps 'de-mystify' teen years

Mark Twain suggested that parents should put their children in a wooden barrel and feed them through a knothole. And when they become teenagers, board up the knothole.

He offers a satirical view of a period that many parents find difficult to survive – their children’s teen years. Business Psychology Associates, the state’s employee assistance program provider, offers simple advice for parents coping with the adolescent and young adult stages of their offspring.

“Parents struggle with children between the ages of 12 and 20 more than at any other time in a young person's life,” according to a BPA report this month. “Whether you think of it as a time filled with perilous ‘phases’ or a time in which teens seem to think they ‘know it all,’ like no other developmental stage, adolescence is both very demanding and very rewarding.

“One of the best ways to ensure you survive the demands long enough to enjoy the rewards is to take the mystery – and the unknown – out of your relationship with these young people who seem to be boarders in your home.”

Parents often assume they can continue "forming" and "molding" a child indefinitely.

Teenagers, however, are developing into adults and are no longer quite the same person they were as a child. The ensuing battles between parents and teenagers are often a result of a clash between parental attitudes and teenage development.

Starting at about the age of 13, humans go through the following developments: