Preteens & Power Struggles

From Denise Witmer, Your Guide to Parenting of Adolescents. FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Understand Them

So, let me put your mind at ease. This is normal behavior! For you and your child, these are normal feelings. When someone is angry at you, it is normal to be angry back at them. It does not matter if you understand adolescents development inside and out, or if you use every parenting skill given on this site. You will at times have angry and hurt feelings. The trick is to learn what to do in power struggle situations, whether you have these angry & hurt feelings or not.

Understand Their Development

There are many reasons that you will begin to see an increase in power struggles with a preteen. Here are the main three:

1. Hormones! Generally this starts as much as two years earlier in girls then boys. Puberty is starting it's tap dance on our children. Therefore, our kids may not even realize why they are arguing about an issue this week that didn't bother them last week.
2. Critical thinking skills are beginning to develop. Children in the preteen stage are now able to think in the gray areas. No longer is everything black and white. Combine this with the fact that they still want to hang on to childhood fantasies and you will begin to understand just how many shades of gray there are in the color spectrum.
3. They begin to see parents as fallible human beings. [OUCH!] Not only can they see why things are right and wrong, they've learned to project it onto you. Of course since you are the stable figure in their lives, you are their first target and the one that will be aimed at the most.
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