When Sasha Brown’s 17-year-old daughter, Ashley, began to consistently stay out past her curfew, she was perplexed. Since birth, Ashley had always been an obedient child. She was the type to put herself on punishment if she received a bad grade. She’d burst into tears at the mere thought of disappointing her parents. Parenting her had been a breeze – until the summer of her senior year, that is.
“It’s as if someone had flipped a switch,” Sasha recalled. “Seemingly out of the blue, she began to transform into a child that I didn’t recognize.”
Though Ashley wasn’t blatantly disrespecting her mother to her face, she was constantly sneaking around and breaking the rules behind her back.
“Due to the fact that this behavior was so out of character for her, initially, I just tried to talk to Ashley about what was happening, but after a few conversations, I realized that nothing was penetrating,” her mom shared. “She wasn’t merely staying out an hour or two past her curfew, she was coming home at 3 o’clock and 4 o’clock in the morning.”
In addition to keeping extremely late hours, Ashley was hanging out in notoriously dangerous areas with a boy she swore up and down she was in love with, and running in circles Sasha knew would result in nothing but trouble.
As odd as it sounds, Sasha’s story isn’t unique. Most parents will notice some rebellious tendencies and behaviors at some point in their child’s life. In fact, according to Grand Canyon University Professor Dr. Crystal Morris-Newsom, it’s a natural part of their development.
“The word rebel, by definition, means resistance and usually against a higher authority. In the case of teenagers, we as parents are considered an authority figure that is viewed as unfair or dictatorial,” the wife and mom explained. “When children are small, they idolize their parents and are somewhat blind to our deficits. However, as they mature into tweens and teens, our flaws become apparent and they start to question our knowledge and advice.”
Natural as it may be, this rocky transition puts both parents and teens on an emotional roller coaster. From a parental standpoint, it can appear that the adolescent has completely lost her mind and forgotten everything her parents taught her. Thankfully, parents need not fret because, according to Dr. Morris-Newsom, author of How To Get Your Grown Woman On: A Guide Through Preteen and Teenage Adolescence, this isn’t actually the case.
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