by Norma Budden

Created on: November 27, 2008   Last Updated: May 04, 2009

Raising teens doesn't come with an instruction manual. Last I heard, there was no such book called, Parenting Teenagers for Dummies; whether that's changed, I couldn't say but I know many parents would be interested in buying a copy of their very own.

Dealing with teen-aged children can seem like treacherous territory especially for parents who feel insecure about their roles in the lives of their teens. After all, teens are no longer toddlers whom parents can swing around in the air or take for a piggy back ride at a moment's notice.

Challenging changes

Parents of teens will soon discover that their teens want to become more independent from them. To begin, they want to select their own styles of clothing, jewelry, hair coloring, and make-up. Later, they want to choose their own friends, have later curfews and want to stay up later at night while desiring to sleep through much of the day.

As everything else changes over time, the relationships between parents and their children (as they become teenagers) will be no exception. Whereas a parent may have been a playmate and friend before, their roles must change; when parenting a teen, parents need to be sure they are providing the guidance and supervision their older children require in order to keep them safe from harm and alarm. In other words, their teens' safety and well-being on all levels should be of utmost importance.

Social changes

One of the most important social changes that parents of teens must accept is that friends become more important to their teens as they grow more independent from their parents. This can be a great thing, considering that teens must grow up and move on in life anyway. However, an important factor to consider is that teens can easily become a mirror image of the friends they hang around with. As such, it is imperative for teens' parents to know the friends their teens are associating with and parents should approve of said friends.

Meanwhile, parents need to consider that sometimes teens need privacy to hang out with friends even when their parents are home. They should be allowed to go into a teens' bedroom behind closed doors to discuss whatever they need to discuss. Too often parents forget what it was like to grow up as a teenager; they forget the fears and concerns they used to have regarding all the changes taking place in their lives and bodies.

A great opportunity when parenting teens is to befriend teens' friends, as long as they always show respect for others and possess

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