Parenting Defiant Teens

Do you have an angry teengager? Some teens seem to walk around assuming that their parents are in a fight with them. The king-sized chip on the kid�s shoulder invites the older folks to try to knock it off. The kid then feels justified in fighting back because Mom or Dad �started it.� Unaware that, in fact, he (or she) started it by being so cranky and uncompromising, these teens are always upset with the people around them. And they are always upsetting to parents who desperately want to have friendly relationships with the adolescents they love.

If you have an angry teenager, chances are that you feel bewildered, hurt, and angry. In many cases angry teens see their parents� hurt as manipulative and their anger as pressure. Parents see the teen�s hostility as unfair and their demands as unreasonable. Pleasant time together may become very rare. Conversations are often punctuated by threats from both sides. Teens may threaten to leave. Parents threaten to kick the kids out. Both are just plain scared.

Believe it or not, the intensity of feelings can be a hopeful sign. People who fight with each other still care what the other person thinks and still want to have impact and influence on each other. Families that are the most difficult to pull back from disaster are those in which people have given up on each other and no longer care. Where there are fights, there is some room to salvage the relationships.

Programs that Can Help Defiant Teens

Programs that help treat defiant teens include boarding schools, residential treatment centers, wilderness programs, and boot camps. Anger is not foreign to the parent child relationship. Programs can help treat your teens anger by helping discover what the root behind all of that anger really is. The other great thing that treatment does for angry teens, is to help them learn how to communicate in a more positive and effective way than acting out in anger.