Several parental roles provoke conflict with out of control teens. As managers of family life, parents give directions, make rules, demand obedience, and apply consequences. Children may take offense to any or all of these. Because children sometimes resent parental authority, a child may resist: “Why should I have to do what you want?” As messengers of bad tidings, parents give opinions, advice, and evaluation, which children may find irritating or overly critical.
When the parental point of view is unwelcome, the child may protest: “I don’t want to hear what you’re saying!” As mediators of disputes, parents arbitrate disagreements between siblings. Because it’s nearly impossible to come up with a solution that both children consider equitable and just, one child may feel mistreated and object: “You’re being unfair!”
Conflict is built into parenthood in other ways as well. When a young child pushes parents for more freedom, parents must restrain that push for independence out of concern for the child’s safety. The child protests this parental restraint, creating ongoing conflicts of interest. The frequency and intensity of conflict typically increase during adolescence, when obtaining social freedom becomes an urgent need for the teenager and when allowing social freedom can feel more problematic to parents. In addition, parenting is always a process of playing catch-up.
The child develops in unanticipated ways, venturing into uncharted experiences, leaving parents operating under a set of old expectations that do not fit the child’s new reality. Conflict results when parents cannot understand and accept that their child is growing older. No matter how much parent and child love each other, not everything about each other is always going to please, harmoniously match, or mesh.
Intermittent conflict between parent and child is simply part of family life, usually taking participants out of their emotional comfort zone with each other until settlement is reached and normalcy is restored. In caring relationships, the emotional discomfort aroused by the disharmony of conflict can be a motivation for avoiding or resolving it.
Although conflict with children is inevitable, parents have significant control over how that conflict is managed. They can let it divide and estrange them from the child, or they can treat each conflict as a valuable opportunity. Conflict becomes a creative process when, through open discussion, two different ways of looking at a disagreement generate a third view that increases the understanding of both parties, producing a resolution that neither party conceived of before.
When well conducted, conflict between parent and child can increase intimacy and unity between them. Intimacy is increased when parent and child can discuss a troublesome issue and come to a better understanding of each other. Unity is increased when both parent and child can bridge their disagreement with an arrangement each is willing to accept and honor. Of course, this is often not easy to do.Talking out and working out disagreements can be difficult because of the tension and frustration involved in family conflict and because the resolution is often based on an agreement that is imperfect for both parties.