What’s the Hardest Stage of Parenting?
During the toddler years, parents have do deal with an opinionated little person who is simultaneously trying to figure out the world and run it.
In the school years, the concern for these years is how to introduce proper academic and social challenges. Parents have to figure out how to support and guide kids while also setting sensible limits.
For a teenager, the main concerns are all about their academic and social challenges that may intensify and, the parents face the job of staying connected with their kids as their kids increasingly focus beyond the family.
But which stage is hardest for parents?
Which stage of parenting is most challenging?
The answer varies a lot for different parents with different kids and various circumstances. On average, mothers of middle schoolers (12- to 14-year olds) generally feel worse than parents of infants, preschoolers, elementary school children, high school children, and adult children.
Moms of middle schoolers report more stress, emptiness, loneliness, life dissatisfaction, and lack of fulfillment, and they viewed their middle school children’s behavior in less positive ways. The differences between adjacent ages on these more fine-grained variables were not necessarily dramatic or statistically significant.
The study also found that the low parenting satisfaction of middle school moms is not entirely due to their kids having adjustment problems or behaving in rude or hurtful ways. Something more is going.
Why are the early adolescent years so hard for parents?
Not every child is challenging in the tween and early teen years. Some kids sail through this stage. They’re also facing hormonal changes related to puberty. Many middle schoolers also have to learn to navigate bigger, more impersonal schools with complicated social hierarchies and greater academic demands.
How can parents cope with the middle school years?
The challenges of being the parent of a middle schooler mean that this is an essential importance time for parents to take care of themselves as well as caring for their children. Here are some possibilities:
1. Develop your non-parent self.
The fact that your middle schooler is moving toward greater independence makes room for you to do the same.
2. Seek support.
Everyone needs a confidante. Hearing that your close friend is struggling with similar parenting issues can be reassuring and comforting.
3. Minimize power struggles.
Everyone loses when parents and teens get into head-to-head battles. Keep your rules few. Try to provide a rationale that makes sense to your teen. Be open to polite negotiation and genuinely work to see things from your teen’s point of view.
Nagging irritates teens. If you have a decision point to make, compress it down to one sentence, say it, and then get out of the room.
4. Hang on.
Remind yourself, “It’s a stage.” The chances are highly satisfied that if you might hang on and try to stay connected to your middle schooler, your relationship will start improving when they reach the age 0f 15
5. Develop amnesia.
Don’t bring up your teen’s past failings. For most of the young kids, changing is rapid that they had done the past months was done entirely by a different person. Try to start every day with a clean slate for your child. The most loving thing that parents can do is to develop amnesia for the wrongdoings that our kids had done in the past. These give them room to grow, instead of anchoring them to the past, and helps us be open to embracing their new people they are becoming.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
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