Taming the unruly teenager

While parents condemn the use of alcohol, cigarettes and pornographic materials, the youth are curious to know just what makes these things so terrible. JOHN MUTURI shares on how to manage this kind of child

There is probably no greater feeling in life than being young. Teenagers fall under this category and their motto is to live life to the fullest.

However, their version of this is different from the adults’. When they hop from one crazy entertainment spot to another, doing wild things all in one night, they are living their life to the fullest!

Anything they deem enticing, they savour — be it alcohol, cigarettes, hard drugs, pornographic magazines or obscene materials from the Internet.

One child expert, Suzie Hayman, says because all these vices are condemned in the strongest terms by adults, the youth are curious to know just what makes these things so terrible. To satisfy their curiosity, they go ahead and try them.

Just being stylish

It becomes more complicated when parents make the all too common mistake — telling their growing children that something is bad for them without explaining exactly why it is not good for them. How many parents tell their children that taking alcohol is bad yet they continue drinking in the presence of the same children?

The children are expected to understand that alcohol is bad for them, yet it is good for their parents!

Hence they go out to try and find out only to realise there is a good feeling when one drinks. For instance, even if the teenager is timid, they find that alcohol makes them carefree.

So the teenager tells herself that as long as her parents are in the dark about her newfound habit, then she is safe. She is not mature enough to understand that the danger is not her parents finding out but the alcohol she is consuming!

At the same time, the teenager wrongly feels that she is a grown-up and is therefore entitled to experience what grown-ups do. She wrongly believes therefore that taking alcohol and smoking a cigarette is just being stylish. While some parents will dismiss this stage as a passing cloud, more often than not it is not the case and they end up with an alcoholic child.

Many parents especially fear their child experimenting with hard drugs, but child experts say alcohol abuse is more destructive to a teenager’s life than any other form of illegal drug use.

Hayman explains: "A cigarette and a bottle of beer not only have symbolic power, they both also relax you physically and many of us enjoy the effects. If adults feel this way, then no doubt, teenagers are bound to feel it too."

It is never a guarantee that children of a parent who doesn’t drink or is a light drinker will not drink or smoke. Others try to protect their youngsters from the possible dangers of smoking or drinking by bribing them, or threatening them against experimenting.

However, both methods have their drawbacks. Forbidding an activity instantly makes it doubly glamorous and enticing. For instance, parents often stress to their children that they should not be out late until they are adults or the age of 18. In so doing, they are setting up a desirable goal for their teenager.

It is common to find intelligent, sensible young people who go through extensive health education at school and understand about the dangers of tobacco still going ahead and indulging smoking and taking alcohol.

Discuss openly

This proves that just talking about the dangers of abusing substances cannot in itself prepare teenagers from dealing with the pressure. The only way to do that is to discuss the pressures as well, to acknowledge how they affect us and to work out ways of avoiding and resisting them.

Temporary high

As a parent or teacher, don’t just tell the youth that drugs will harm them, destroy them, impoverish and degrade them. Tell them that one reason people use drugs is because they make them feel good temporarily but suffer dire consequences later. If you leave out this aspect and the teenager is enticed to alcohol and feel good temporarily, they argue that since you did not say it would feel so good, you obviously did not know what you were talking about, and nothing you have said is worth remembering.

Teenagers turn to drugs for many reasons. Majority use drugs to ease emotional problems like feeling unloved, lonely, bored and anxious. Some turn to drugs when they feel inadequate, insecure, and rejected or when they lack reassurance and approval. They also turn to drugs as a result of peer pressure and family breakdown — where there is divorce or where parents are self-centred and often ignore the children. So remember that drug use can crop up in the best of homes or in leafy neighbourhoods.