Parents of pre-teen children should look away now. The sleepless nights may be over, the toddler’s tantrums just a distant memory but, be assured, the worst is yet to come. An increasing body of research suggests that for most parents it is the teenage years that are the most difficult. Just as their child enters the emotional maelstrom of adolescence, the parents’ support networks begin to crumble away. The result can leave parents feeling isolated and under siege.
In a recent survey carried out by the Institute for Public Policy Research, 75 per cent of more than 1,000 parents asked said that they found their child’s teenage years the most difficult to cope with. More than half were worried that they were not doing a good enough job.
The findings have led IPPR researcher Laura Edwards to call for a service similar to Sure Start to be offered to the parents of older children. "We need to be matching the sort of commitment offered to parents of young children through things like Sure Start with a similar commitment to parents of teenagers," she says. "If we don’t then a lot of the improvement we’ve seen in younger children will not be sustained."
The IPPR survey matches the experience at parent support charity Parentline Plus where around 50 per cent of calls to the helpline are from parents of teenagers.
"A lot of parents are unprepared for the challenges they face as their child enters their teens and they can become very isolated," says the charity’s director of external relations Jan Fry.
"It’s a time when the child is trying to find his or her own space, become more independent and develop their own value base. Often they do this by challenging their parents. They may also be breaking away physically, so parents start to see less of their children. Then there may be issues around experimentation with sex, alcohol or drugs. All of this comes together at a time when the informal networks that develop during the child’s time in primary school suddenly aren’t there any more."
Like Edwards, Fry would like to see a more structured provision of services for the parents of teenagers.
"If the government is serious about having a parenting continuum then there needs to be a lot more support for parents of teenagers," she says. "In particular there needs to be support aimed at those parents who find it difficult to ask for help. There is a stigma attached to asking for help that we need to break through. That means doing a lot more outreach work in much the same way as is done for new parents and for parents of young children. Of course this all takes resources."
Fry uses the example of parenting orders within the youth justice system as evidence for how supporting parents of teenagers can achieve huge success.
"The trouble is that in order to get the support you need, your child has to break the law," she says.
Diane Brown, a healthy communities worker for North Tyneside Primary Care Trust, has been running a support group for parents and carers of teenagers since February. Run in partnership with local Norham Community College the scheme encourages parents having problems with their teenage children to share their experiences, discuss their main concerns and provide mutual support.
"It’s about getting the parents together in a confidential setting, encouraging them to support each other and to decide what further support they need," she says.
The group invites experts to talk on specific issues such as drugs, youth justice, sex education and so on. Parents with more serious issues can also be referred on to specialist services dealing with issues such as anger management and domestic violence.
For many the group offers the chance to rebuild their confidence as parents, says Brown. "There’s a lot of media focus on youth disorder and parents are affected by that negative image," she says. "There’s also a lot of blame attached to the parents which makes it difficult to ask for support. It’s quite easy to go to a mother and toddler group and say: ‘I’m having problems with potty training’. It’s a lot more difficult to come here and say: ‘I think my son is using drugs or stealing or lying’."
Brown admits that in the early days of the group there was a degree of suspicion among the parents as to what was on offer. This has now been overcome, she says.
"It was difficult to start with. People were saying ‘nobody’s going to tell me how to be a parent’, and it took a lot of work to encourage people to come along. There was a degree of stigma. I made the deliberate decision to hold the groups away from the school as a lot of the parents went there themselves and are still known to the teachers."
In fact the decision to hold the meetings in a nearby community centre has had an unforeseen benefit in encouraging the parents to become more involved in their local community.
"Its been a fantastic springboard," says Brown. "Every single parent has now joined at least one other community group."
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Source: Parentline Plus www.parentlineplus.org.uk
