The consulting psychologist, Ms. Lee Li Li had recently appeared on Ai FM 89.3/106.7 on 3rd July 2018 (Tuesday), aired at 10 a.m. to discuss the topic of “Passionate Life for Teens”.We have been taught from a young age that we should sacrifice our own needs to satisfy other people’s needs. When there are contradictions between the teenagers’ acts of protecting themselves and the arguments from other people, they feel conflicted about what they should do. When there are such contradictions, how do the teenagers deal with the contradictions and love and take care of themselves?
Finding Balance Between Contributing and Loving Oneself
Teenagers have to find balance between the act of contributing and the act of loving oneself. Let’s look at a case of a 16-year-old girl to illustrate this point. This girl loves her family and she would work during holidays to earn money for her family. Due to the financial difficulty in her family, she gave all of her salary to her family. Although she would like to pursue her study, she chose to continue working because she thought that her family still needed her to provide financial help. 10 years later, she is not feeling happy even though she has been contributing so much to her family. All sorts of worries, such as the need to provide financial support for her brother’s marriage and for her family’s expenses; the fear of not being loved if she does not contribute to the family, cause her to keep contributing to her family. She has lost her sense of identity and she has taken over the role of a saviour for her family.
How to Love and Take Care of Oneself
Many teenagers conceptualise “a good child” as a person who focuses on their study and contribute to the family by providing financial support to their family. However, they do not think of what they can do for themselves. Thus, it is important to find balance between the act of contributing and the act of loving oneself. How do the teenagers love and take care of their bodies? Many teenagers take care of their bodies in a wrong way which they pay more attention to their physical appearances such as having a slimmer body. Taking care of the physical appearances is not equivalent to taking care of the body because changes in the physical appearances do not help to improve the health of the body.
Incorrect point of view that they possess, for example, they think that if they enhance their physical appearances and attractiveness, they will be able to have more income and therefore live a better life, causes them to take care of their bodies in the wrong way by taking care of their physical appearances. The correct way of taking care of the health of their bodies is by taking care of their diet and having adequate amount of sleep. In addition to taking care of the body’s health, body’s safety also needs to be taken care of. Here are some examples of taking care of the body’s safety: not letting oneself to wander around at an alley at night; not letting oneself to stay at an unsafe night club; not having self-harming or suicidal thoughts when they face adversities. Taking care of the body’s health and safety is the correct way of loving and taking care of one’s body.
How Can Parents Guide Children to Understand Themselves
Apart from loving and taking care of their body’s health and safety, teenagers have to take care of their mental health. How do the teenagers take care of their mental health? They can do so by learning to understand themselves and to get to know what they really want. Parents can also guide their children on how to understand themselves better. There are three steps in the process of understanding.
The first step is to get to know and understand what kind of experiences that the teenagers had when they were growing up. For example, how did they deal with the problems that they were facing or how did they deal with happy moments. Did they adopt their family’s way of dealing with those events? For example, when there is something that is worth feeling happy happening in a family, but the family members do not feel happy about it, the child learns that those events are no longer able to make them feel happy. When there is such a deviation from how people would normally respond to those events, parents should take note of this.
Secondly, were the parents by their children’s side when the children were facing challenges? Also, what kind of help did the parents provide to their children? These two ways, such as telling them to solve the problems by themselves or helping them to solve the problems, are not appropriate because the teenagers are not able to learn and gain values that should be learnt when they face adversities.
The third step is to understand how did the teenagers deal with emotional problems. For example, how did they react when they were feeling sad or scared? The way that the teenagers deal with emotional problems needs to be taken note of by the parents.
These three steps help parents and teenagers to understand teenagers themselves and teenagers’ mental health. If the teenager has been found to experience depression, parents need to seek help from professional psychologists. Arguments between the parents and their children will arise if the parents guide their children from the parents’ point of view without understanding their children’s way of dealing with problems.
Communication between parents and their children is an important key to solving problems. Parents can talk about their negligence and mistakes that they had made in the past. It is not advisable to start talking about the children’s mistakes that they had made. Instead, parents can talk about mistakes that they had made in the past and how they can correct those mistakes. Also, parents need to listen to their children’s point of view rather than utterances such as “I am wrong” or “I apologise”.
If communication is not commonly practised among parents and children, instead of rushing into starting a conversation, parents can carry out some activities that they can spend time with their children such as going for a cycle ride together or going to a cafe together and then they can gradually start talking to their children regarding matters that they would like to talk about. Parents do not need to rush to talk about issues all at once, instead parents can talk about one topic at a time.
Parents can ask for their children’s opinion during the conversation. Let’s look at a scenario, a child was not allowed by their parents to go out for a picnic with their friends. And now the parents are talking to the child regarding this matter. They could ask “We know that you feel unhappy about us restricting you, can you tell us what is your thought on this matter?”. This kind of conversation helps parents and children to achieve better understandings of each other. As a result of better understanding, teenagers feel loved by their parents. If they do not feel loved, it will be difficult for the parents to teach them important moral values. Once teenagers feel the love, only can they proceed to the next step which is to accept themselves. Teenagers have to accept their strengths and weaknesses, enhance their strengths and reduce their weaknesses. Once they have accepted themselves for who they are, they are able to understand themselves better, be more open to talking to people about matters they want to talk about, and be comfortable with their sense of self. The proper way of teenagers loving themselves is by accepting themselves for who they are, by allowing themselves to do things that they are interested in, and to adapt their emotions. Parents could seek help from professional psychologists if the problem is more complicated or parents are not sure of what to do.
Note: The above shared information is adopted from Ai FM 89.3/106.7’s program - “Passionate Life for Teens” on 3rd July 2018. For more information, kindly contact our office and we are pleasured to offer our assistance, thank you.
Finding Balance Between Contributing and Loving Oneself
Teenagers have to find balance between the act of contributing and the act of loving oneself. Let’s look at a case of a 16-year-old girl to illustrate this point. This girl loves her family and she would work during holidays to earn money for her family. Due to the financial difficulty in her family, she gave all of her salary to her family. Although she would like to pursue her study, she chose to continue working because she thought that her family still needed her to provide financial help. 10 years later, she is not feeling happy even though she has been contributing so much to her family. All sorts of worries, such as the need to provide financial support for her brother’s marriage and for her family’s expenses; the fear of not being loved if she does not contribute to the family, cause her to keep contributing to her family. She has lost her sense of identity and she has taken over the role of a saviour for her family.
How to Love and Take Care of Oneself Many teenagers conceptualise “a good child” as a person who focuses on their study and contribute to the family by providing financial support to their family. However, they do not think of what they can do for themselves. Thus, it is important to find balance between the act of contributing and the act of loving oneself. How do the teenagers love and take care of their bodies? Many teenagers take care of their bodies in a wrong way which they pay more attention to their physical appearances such as having a slimmer body. Taking care of the physical appearances is not equivalent to taking care of the body because changes in the physical appearances do not help to improve the health of the body.
Incorrect point of view that they possess, for example, they think that if they enhance their physical appearances and attractiveness, they will be able to have more income and therefore live a better life, causes them to take care of their bodies in the wrong way by taking care of their physical appearances. The correct way of taking care of the health of their bodies is by taking care of their diet and having adequate amount of sleep. In addition to taking care of the body’s health, body’s safety also needs to be taken care of. Here are some examples of taking care of the body’s safety: not letting oneself to wander around at an alley at night; not letting oneself to stay at an unsafe night club; not having self-harming or suicidal thoughts when they face adversities. Taking care of the body’s health and safety is the correct way of loving and taking care of one’s body. How Can Parents Guide Children to Understand Themselves Apart from loving and taking care of their body’s health and safety, teenagers have to take care of their mental health. How do the teenagers take care of their mental health? They can do so by learning to understand themselves and to get to know what they really want. Parents can also guide their children on how to understand themselves better. There are three steps in the process of understanding.
The first step is to get to know and understand what kind of experiences that the teenagers had when they were growing up. For example, how did they deal with the problems that they were facing or how did they deal with happy moments. Did they adopt their family’s way of dealing with those events? For example, when there is something that is worth feeling happy happening in a family, but the family members do not feel happy about it, the child learns that those events are no longer able to make them feel happy. When there is such a deviation from how people would normally respond to those events, parents should take note of this.
Secondly, were the parents by their children’s side when the children were facing challenges? Also, what kind of help did the parents provide to their children? These two ways, such as telling them to solve the problems by themselves or helping them to solve the problems, are not appropriate because the teenagers are not able to learn and gain values that should be learnt when they face adversities.
The third step is to understand how did the teenagers deal with emotional problems. For example, how did they react when they were feeling sad or scared? The way that the teenagers deal with emotional problems needs to be taken note of by the parents.
These three steps help parents and teenagers to understand teenagers themselves and teenagers’ mental health. If the teenager has been found to experience depression, parents need to seek help from professional psychologists. Arguments between the parents and their children will arise if the parents guide their children from the parents’ point of view without understanding their children’s way of dealing with problems.
Communication between parents and their children is an important key to solving problems. Parents can talk about their negligence and mistakes that they had made in the past. It is not advisable to start talking about the children’s mistakes that they had made. Instead, parents can talk about mistakes that they had made in the past and how they can correct those mistakes. Also, parents need to listen to their children’s point of view rather than utterances such as “I am wrong” or “I apologise”.
If communication is not commonly practised among parents and children, instead of rushing into starting a conversation, parents can carry out some activities that they can spend time with their children such as going for a cycle ride together or going to a cafe together and then they can gradually start talking to their children regarding matters that they would like to talk about. Parents do not need to rush to talk about issues all at once, instead parents can talk about one topic at a time.
Parents can ask for their children’s opinion during the conversation. Let’s look at a scenario, a child was not allowed by their parents to go out for a picnic with their friends. And now the parents are talking to the child regarding this matter. They could ask “We know that you feel unhappy about us restricting you, can you tell us what is your thought on this matter?”. This kind of conversation helps parents and children to achieve better understandings of each other. As a result of better understanding, teenagers feel loved by their parents. If they do not feel loved, it will be difficult for the parents to teach them important moral values. Once teenagers feel the love, only can they proceed to the next step which is to accept themselves. Teenagers have to accept their strengths and weaknesses, enhance their strengths and reduce their weaknesses. Once they have accepted themselves for who they are, they are able to understand themselves better, be more open to talking to people about matters they want to talk about, and be comfortable with their sense of self. The proper way of teenagers loving themselves is by accepting themselves for who they are, by allowing themselves to do things that they are interested in, and to adapt their emotions. Parents could seek help from professional psychologists if the problem is more complicated or parents are not sure of what to do.
Note: The above shared information is adopted from Ai FM 89.3/106.7’s program - “Passionate Life for Teens” on 3rd July 2018. For more information, kindly contact our office and we are pleasured to offer our assistance, thank you.
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