which makes it very hard to know what to do. The defiance, aggression and hostility plus the angry outbursts and the slamming of doors makes you wonder whether your home will ever be a quiet peaceful one again. If we never get round to asking our angry teenager just what is the problem, we are never going to make the progress we need to make. We have to find out and the best way to do is to TALK to them rather than trying to figure out by spying on them
There may be issues over the actual house rules and there may be peer pressure too to rebel against these and go with the crowd.
Here are some quick guidelines :-
1. Make sure you are giving support and that your comments are never seen as criticism of his or her lifestyle/choice of friends and so on.
2. Talk about how you yourself react to anger/frustration/dislike and boredom and how you control your anger.
3. Talk about limits and the law. Talk about issues of safety and health.
4. Talk about how physical aggression/hostility and defiance rarely works in the adult world.
5. Discuss how resorting to alcohol and drugs may give temporary relief but brings a whole host of other problems and is neither a valid nor permanent solution.
6. We can discuss how using time management and how taking time out and counting to ten are all ways that we can control our anger.
7. Discuss ways of physically getting rid of the anger without doing damage to people or property. Sport and physical exercise are great ways and enhance good mood as well.
These are just a few of the techniques I learnt from a behavior modification program which was a great help in dealing with behavior problems in my angry teenager. There are a lot more which deal with dealing with defiance, aggressiveness and also how to talk to your teen and get through to him when there seems to be an unbreakable wall.