Teen Angst Goes Long Ways in Teaching and Growing

John yelled at his mother when she opened the door to his room unannounced. He told her off, telling her how rude it was of her to invade his privacy. Despite the way John was acting, he felt bad because he knew that his mother didn’t do anything wrong, he was just upset and took it out on her. John’s actions were a result of teen angst.

 Teen angst is generally caused by stress that is kept within because the teen no longer feels comfortable talking to their parents about their problems as they search for outside influences such as friends, celebrities and motives. In the “Confronting Teen Stress, Meeting the Challenge of Baltimore City” study, it was revealed that 48% of teenage boys and 33% of teenage girls decided to either hide from and refuse to deal with their stress or distract themselves from it

  

It seemed like John and his mother’s relationship was trending downwards. He was feeling angst and he took his anger and stress out on his mother even though she wasn’t responsible for his negative state.

The major stressors affecting these teens were schoolwork, parents, friend’s problems and romantic relationships. Personally I find it worrisome that parents are one of the major stressors for teens as parents should be an important part of a teen’s support system, not part of their stress. That also tells me that teens feel the need to hide their problems from their parents as they feel that telling their parents would only worsen the problem.

John’s rude and negative attitude towards his family continued to worsen over the course of his teenage years. John was nervous about his piling assignments, his efforts to try and ‘score a girl’ at school and keeping up with what his friends are doing and what people thought of him. He would not have ever thought of seeking help from his parents to deal with these problems, as their involvement in his life was part of his stress.

Parents need to take a look in the mirror when trying to figure out why their teen is stressed and afraid to discuss the problems they’re facing with them. Teen angst is hard to avoid when going to school and it’s likely going to create challenges. It seems like it’s something that just about every teenager has to go through but don’t be mistaken to think that it’s always a bad thing. Teen angst can serve as an important part of teaching a teen to deal with problems, getting through inevitable hardships, managing time and making conscious decisions as they mature and become more independent.

Learning is an essential part of the coming of age processas learning comes through challenges and experience, which requires a strongsupport system to get through. Parents need to be apart of that support system.