Adolescence is often a more emotionally charged time in the parent/child relationship as the young person changes on two developmental fronts: becoming increasingly individual and independent.

As the girl or boy become more assertive in both ways, adolescence starts wearing down the old closeness and compatibility of childhood to which parent and child were long accustomed, creating more youthful freedom to develop.

Adolescence is honorably abrasive as the young person pushes against and pulls away from parental authority, socially detaches and differentiates from childhood, forms a second family of friends, and experiments with acting older. All of these dynamics alter the old parent/child relationship.

Thus does adolescence increasingly grow parent and child apart, which it is meant to do. Now increasing separation creates more distance and diversity between them. Now there can be more times of frustration, irritation, opposition, and anger for them both when growing up sometimes makes it often harder to easily get along. As the adolescent increasingly wants to assert her or his own ruling authority, it is easier to become angry when she or he cannot, when freedom is denied.

No love is usually lost as this developmental change unfolds, but maintaining traditional closeness usually becomes harder to do. In the words of one parent who sadly and sincerely missed how things used to be: “Goodbye to childhood!” Thus, adolescence begins with loss and letting go.

It can be tempting for parents to feel offended by their more........

© Psychology Today