The consulting psychologist, Ms. Lee Li Li, had recently appeared on Ai FM 89.3/106.7 on 10th July 2018 (Tuesday), aired at 10 a.m. to discuss the topic of “Value Orientation of Teens”.

What kind of value orientations do teenagers possess nowadays?

How to guide teenagers to have positive value orientations?

The Importance of Family Structure and Communication Within the Family

During teenage years, teenagers will have their own thoughts and opinions. If they have a good relationship with their family, they might talk to their parents about their thoughts. But if the teenager does not talk to their parents often or if there is an obstacle in the communication between the parents and their children, it is hard for the parents to start a conversation even though they want to talk to their children. Given the reason that some families may face such problems, it is hoped that the children are implanted with positive value orientations since young.

Teenagers’ performances and their value orientations, either positive or negative, reflect on the kinds of education and teaching provided by the parents.

What should parents do when their children are not implanted with positive value orientations by the time they become teenagers? We can start by fulfilling two important conditions which are the family structure and communication within the family. According to Minuchin, the founder of structural family therapy, position of a child in the family is important.

For example, there are three children in a family. The parents treat all three of their children equally. They provide care, attention and encouragement according to the children’s interests. Therefore, these three children have the same position or status within the family. What should we do when there is an inequality in the positions of the children within the family? If such inequality exists, the affected child will feel that their parents do not care much about them or do not provide enough love to them.

There are parents who are aware of the importance of family structure and they do provide equal amount of love and care, but still their children do not feel that they are given enough love and care. Their children have become not willing to listen to what their parents say and become rebellious. What is causing the child feeling that way despite the parents have tried their best to provide equal amount of love and care? Here comes the second factor which is way of communication within the family. Let’s look at this family of three children, the parents communicate with all three of their children in the same way. However, one of the children feels that this kind of communication does not work for them and feels that this is not the optimal way of communicating with each other. Therefore, the child does not feel the love from their parents. Once the child’s position in the family has been secured, the way of how parents communicate with them needs to be taken note of. The quality of communication determines the relationship within the family.

Establishing Intimate Relationship Between Parents and Children

Parents face many challenges, such as knowing how to treat each of their children equally, to provide same amount of love and care, to modify ways of communication to suit each child’s ideal and comfortable way of communication, but parents should do their best to achieve those conditions. Nowadays, children are exposed to many different kinds of information on the internet and there is a potential that they will be influenced by those information. Therefore, parents should use different ways to teach their children instead of teaching them in an authoritative manner. The safest way to teach children starts from the family, however, sometimes it is also ironically the most dangerous way.

To illustrate the point stated above, let’s look at the following. There is a teenager who gets bailed out by their parents every time they get caught. At the beginning, they felt happy because they did not have to be responsible for what they had done wrong. As a result, they continued their actions and later on they did not feel happy anymore. They said “I feel down. Although I look at my parents in disdain when I see my parents and I look happy when I am with my friends, I do not feel happy.”. What causes the cold attitudes from the parents towards their child? This is due to the reason that the parents feel sad and angry about those incidences and therefore they speak out with negative emotion charged utterances to their child. As a result, problems arise in the communication between parents and their child, causing the child feeling lost and unhappy.

Although teenagers crave for privacy, freedom and adventures, they crave for love, care and reasonable amount of restraints from their parents too. Therefore, it is important for parents to communicate with their children according to the children’s specific characteristics and traits. Some parents might think that it is their rights to say whatever they want to their children and there is no need to cooperate with them. But we have to bear in mind that parents play a huge role in educating their children. If parents want to implant their children with positive value orientations, they have to modify their ways of communicating with their children according to their children’s characteristics. It will be difficult for the child to improve the relationship within the family if parents as grown ups do not make the effort to improve the relationship. The attitude of the children will change when parents try their best to change the way that they communicate with their children that suits their children’s characteristics. Parents and children will face many challenges, such as the child showing cold attitude towards their parents, during the process of improving the family structure and communication within the family, but improvements will be seen if efforts are being made. Why do the children act in this way to make their parents angry during the process? This is because that they feel the attention from their parents and this is what they crave for. This explains the phenomenon that the child keeps showing the cold attitude towards their parents even though their parents have tried to cooperate with them.

Establishing a Good Way of Communication

Here is an example to illustrate the point of establishing a good way of communication. There is a lady who is in her thirties and likes her job but does not feel happy when she comes back home from work. She lives with her family, but her family does not provide her with the feeling of warmth. She does not talk to her parents, she does not know what else to provide for her family other than the income that she earns from working. When she was small, her father was very hard working at work and her mother took care of the family and sometimes did some jobs to earn some extra incomes. When she did something wrong, regardless of the seriousness of the mistake, all she got from her parents was hurtful utterances. She does not recall any utterances that are filled with love from her parents. Although she had wanted to leave her parents, she learnt that she needs to take care of her parents. By taking care of her parents’ financial needs, she does not know what else she can provide for her parents. She wants a family that gives her warmth but she does not know how do that and how to communicate with her parents. Due to the reason that she was lack of love and respect when she was growing up and she had to listen to everything told by her parents, she does not know how to love and respect.

Some parents may think that their children should be considerate towards them and not the vice versa. If parents are not considerate towards their children and only communicate with them by scolding them, there will be a gap in between the parents and their children. They will act differently when they are with their parents and when their parents are not around. For example, when their parents are around, they will do things that their parents allow; when their parents are not around, they will do things that they like.

Therefore, parents have to be good role models so that children can learn from them. Every child has their own preference for how they would like to communicate with other people. It is not considered to be spoiling the children if parents communicate with them in a way that they prefer as parents can implant them with positive value orientations and the ability to judge right or wrong during the process of communicating with their children. Once a good way of communication has been established in the family, only can then the parents implant their children with positive value orientations.

Note: The above shared information is adopted from Ai FM 89.3/106.7’s program - “Value Orientation of Teens” on 10th July 2018.
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