Is Your Teen Getting
The Guidance They Need?
Have you ever had your child come to you for
help or to ask you a question, and you have said ‘not now I’m busy’? I’m sure
we have all been guilty of it at some time. In this day and age our lives seem
to be extremely busy and often we don’t have the time to take time out to talk
to our children when they need it.
It is very important with any child to spend
that time with them.
Children
need guidance and although sometimes we think they are getting older they
don’t need our guidance as much, they do. Teenagers are very vulnerable and
even just a few minutes of your time when they need it can make a remarkable
difference to them.
Learning to take the time to stop what
you’re doing when your child wants to talk to you may be difficult at first, as
our natural instinct when we are busy is to tell them you’ll talk later when you
have time. However, making the effort to stop for a few minutes will pay off in
the long run and will give you a much healthier
relationship with your teen.
Look at it from a different perspective.
You own your own business and have several employees working for you. You have
worked hard to make your business successful and build a good name for yourself.
You are busy doing some ‘management’ aspects
of your business when one of your employees interrupts you to ask a question.
Do you tell him you’re busy and you’ll talk later? Probably not. You know that
your employee needs your guidance so that they can succeed in their job which
will ultimately help your business continue to grow strongly.
You know that if you don’t take the time out
to help your employee, he may go ahead and try to solve the problem on his own
and could possibly get it wrong. This could reflect badly on your business and
therefore on you. Your employees may also stop coming to you with questions if
you never seem to have time for them which could end up causing you chaos in
your business.
You cannot ignore your employees and
likewise you cannot ignore your teenager. Your children are the most important
people in the world and they deserve the guidance and recognition from you that
you would give an employee or even a friend.
If you tell your teenager that you are busy
and don’t have time to talk right now, he will probably walk away and say “ok”.
You will go back to what you are doing and think no more of the situation.
However, your teenager will think more of
the situation. They will walk away feeling like you don’t have time for him. He
may feel like he is not important enough to you for you to take that time out
for him. He will try to deal with the issue by himself without the helpful
advice from his parents.
Your teenager needs to feel important. He
needs to know that you love and care for him more than anything else. He needs
to feel that he is more important than cleaning the bathroom or baking a cake.
For your teenager to have that feeling of
importance can make a huge difference to his life. By taking the time to talk
to him and offer him guidance, you will make him feel secure, important and
loved. He will gain confidence in himself when facing future decisions
Your teenager needs your guidance and
support to succeed in life and stay out of trouble.
Teenagers
can face a lot of peer pressures and life can seem quite hard for them at
this age, your teenager needs your guidance and support to resist and cope with
the pressures of teenage life.
