Recently I was talking with a Mum, Taylor* who was despairing about the rudeness of her 15 year old daughter, Jess.  Jess was seeing us for support in managing her anxiety disorder and perfectionism, and I was talking with Taylor about how she was going with supporting her.  Taylor raised the problem of Jess’ rude behaviour at home.  She said Jess was polite and friendly to her teachers, teachers and friends, but as this ended as soon as she walked in the door at home.  According to Taylor, Jess would often rudely make demands, grunt when she was asked questions or sometimes just ignore her.  Taylor knew Jess was dealing with difficult emotions – but she felt unappreciated, resentful – and worried about how this would affect her and her daughter in the future.

If you have a teen (or pre-teen), you may be nodding along – it’s not uncommon for teens to be surly, rude and disrespectful with parents at home, while holding it together and being polite elsewhere.    And this is especially true for teens or preteens who are dealing with difficult life situation, emotional or mental health challenges.  Let’s look at the main causes of rude behaviour in these teens.

If you ask parents what they most want for their child, many will say something like this:  “I just want my child to be happy”.  Whilst most of us know, at a logical level, that we can’t make this happen, seeing our children frequently or deeply sad, is very confronting.

Observing sadness in our children often feels different to parents than it does to observe them experience other emotions.  When we see our child anxious, frustrated or even disappointed it feels to us that these are normal, temporary and resolvable.  We also feel like there is a role for us to teach and support our children through these emotions. 

But seeing our children experience frequent or strong sadness – and not being able to make them feel better – is much more painful.  It can make parents feel helpless, frustrated, worried – and like a failure at some very deep level.   It feels “wrong” in some subconscious way.

However, the truth is - it is not uncommon for children to experience times of sadness.   Although only about 2-3% of prepubertal children will experience the type and extent of sadness psychologists will diagnose as a formal depressive disorder, many more children experience slightly less severe – but still persistent and frequent – sadness at some point during their childhood.

As parents, it is important for us to help our children/teens get enough sleep.  Part of this involves us teaching young people about sleep issues; why sleep is important and how to get enough.  But other than "you need to get enough sleep" - what exactly should we be telling them?  What do they need to know?

Here are the 12 most important sleep concepts I think children and teens should know about, and the words you can use to teach them about these concepts.

1. "Some people need more sleep, and some need less.  The best way to know if you haven’t got enough sleep is whether you are sleepy the next day."  

Young people (and sometimes adults too) can get fixated on how many "numbers" of hours of sleep they need. Unfortunately it's not this simple.  There have been more than one hundred different sets of guidelines published by many different health bodies over the last hundred years.  Also, some young people need more sleep than average, and some need less. 

Homework is often a stressful experience for both young people and their parents.  Research has shown homework is a significant source of family stress and conflict.  The more homework a young person has and the less confident a parent feels in their ability to help their young person - the more likely families are to report high stress levels.

This is not an insignificant problem in our society.  Some studies have even found that parents’ daily level of anxiety/depression is higher on days when they spend more time helping their child with homework.

Cross community research suggests about 15% of young people are identified by their teacher as having some kind of extra learning needs – and for them, homework is particularly likely to be the cause of significant family stress.

How much and what type of homework young people should do is still being debated among teachers, academics and parents – and there are a range of homework policies and practices which occur in different schools.  

In the meantime, parents still have to figure out how what to say to young people who feel they are not “smart enough” or lack confidence in their abilty to complete homework tasks, and who say “I can’t do it” or “this is too hard” regularly.

One of the great joys of parenting is watching children play happily together.  There’s nothing quite like the magic of seeing children laugh and have fun together, or watching children use their imagination, come up with a creative game and act it out.

Of course, in the real world (goodbye Johnson and Johnson moment) it doesn’t always happen that way.  Instead, we often hear yelling and tears:  “that’s not fair!”, “who said you were the boss??” and screaming and storming off sometimes ensues!

At this point, it’s much less delightful, it must be said. :) 

While some kids will often eventually resolve the conflict themselves, some (think kids with big feelings, strong independent streaks or difficulties with flexibility just to name a few) find it harder.  And for ALL children, sometimes play just gets hard. 

It can be helpful for us as adults to proactively provide a few tips, coach and help children learn to play games kindly and fairly with each other.

Generally it’s better to do this kind of coaching before the problems begin, and to also ask children to think about specific games they play rather than “playing” in general.   Here are a few specifics in coaching children to play kindly and fairly.