As a parent of a teenager, it may seem like your child tends to shut down emotionally during certain periods of their lives. However, teenagers will always have conflicting emotions going on that may not be present on the surface. While it can be frustrating as a parent to feel like you're being shut out of their lives at times, it is important to understand the emotional and physical changes occurring with their body and inside their brain. With the numerous changes that a teenager goes through, they have many thoughts and emotions that do not yet make sense to their developing brain and often have difficulty releasing those emotions.
Coming to Grips with Moving On
As the parent of a teenager, it may appear at times that your teen has little emotion toward things that used to give them pleasure. However, teenagers are often going through changes that may feel like a rollercoaster, where they are trying to juggle who they are as a person, their purpose in life and their need to distance themselves from their parents to build their own relationships. During this time, it may feel uncomfortable for a teenager to show their emotions to their parents, especially when it revolves around such sensitive and individual subjects, including puberty and the growth of their sexual interests.
Teenage Emotions
Reed Larson, Ph.D., of the New York University Child Study Center, found that an adolescents' mood depends on who they spend the most time with. Friends and family evoke the most positive moods while solitude evokes the most negative moods in teenagers, says Larson. During the transition from childhood to adolescence, children tend to spend more time in solitude, which partly explains many of an adolescent's negative mood swings. For example, children will start spending more time alone in their room during this time in their life instead of joining family activities that were a normal part of their routine before puberty.
Coping With Stress
Larson also found that teenagers are more susceptible to stress, which can manifest through other disorders and emotions. Changes in social and romantic relationships often leads to a teenager questioning their own wants and desires, along with their sexual identity, which can raise stress levels. Increased stress can often lead to heightened levels of anxiety, depression and anger, which can change the way teenagers display their emotions. For example, a teenager's emotional expressions can often come in short bursts of rage or yelling.
Teenage Depression
If you are a parent whose teenager does not display emotions, you may want to look into getting some therapeutic help for your child to see if they have signs of depression. With the high stress levels and tumultuous hormonal changes going on during teenage years, depression is common among teens. If your teenager appears to be lethargic or displays a sense of hopelessness in their expressions and mannerisms, they may be suffering from depressive symptoms. In addition, undue bursts of anger may be a manifestation of a much more serious emotional problem in teenagers.
