How to deal with your sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour

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Are you feeling exasperated about your sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour? At the end of a long hard day, the last thing we want is to be met with sassy tweenager or teenager attitude. But what if we could flip the script and instead of seeing their attitude as being defiant behaviour, reframe and see it as something else altogether?

I recently held an online workshop with parenting coach Dominic Chapman of Parent By Design all about understanding and managing your tweenager/teenagers’s behaviour and let me tell you it was illuminating!

If you are wondering how not to get triggered or stressed out by your so-called sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour then let me tell you, you will definitely want to watch it on playback down below.

During the video he’ll share tips on how to:

  • Empathise with and manage that behavior
  • How to see attitude and disrespect differently
  • How not to take their attitude and behaviour personally
  • What you can do instead

Key insights from Parent By Design to help you deal with your sassy tweenager/teenager’s behaviour

The key to managing your kids’ behaviour is to actually understand what’s going on, because once you know what the problem is, then you can actually do something to resolve it.

Hormones vs brain remodelling

There are four things that are going on with teens and tweens. Obviously, there’s a hormonal thing which everyone sort of says, oh yeah, it’s their hormones. And that is true, but they’re not actually the key drivers. Essentially your kids’ brains are going through a huge remodeling process. They’re getting rid of neuro connections they don’t need and building ones that they do.

It’s also happening in their prefrontal cortex – which is the bit that regulates decision-making emotions and planning, all that kind of stuff that we take for granted as adults that doesn’t finish developing until around about 25 years old.

From a neurological perspective, your kids are fighting for brain capacity to regulate their behaviour, their emotions, etc.

The push for independence

Then, of course, we’ve got the push for independence. The bottom line is your kids are preparing to eventually leave you. It sounds very sad, but part of that is engaging in challenging behaviours, setting their own boundaries, and discovering the person that they are. And all of this is going on.

And particularly as a tweenager or teenager, the relationship that you have with your child certainly changes and what that really means, is that a different relationship with you child is required. That starts with understanding, and a big part of that is not taking your sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour personally.

How not to take your sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour personally

In essence, your child’s behaviour is really just the outward manifestation of what’s going on inside of them. So there’s always a reason for behaviour. When you think about what’s actually going on inside – brand new modelling, a push for independence and changing hormones – their behaviour has got nothing to do with you.

It says nothing about you. It’s not a reflection on who you are as a human being – it’s what they’ve got going on inside of them. Don’t take it personally because actually, it has got absolutely nothing to do with you.

Watch our video all about how to understand and deal with your sassy tweenager or teenager’s behaviour below:

You can also grab a downloadable hints and tips sheet on the topic to help you stay on track when understanding your sassy tween and teen’s behaviour here. Perfect for printing out and putting on the fridge for when you need that reminder not to take it personally and instead, take a breathe and meet them where they are:

Download the tips sheet here

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