I get excited whenever I get to introduce people to teenitude. The attitude of a teenager is different from any other kind of attitude. It’s a wonderful stage in which pre-teens and teens begin to exhibit their own ideas, personalities, opinions, and identities. The key to understanding the changes in your teenager is to identify your personality style and that of your teen and learn how to work together to strengthen each of your personalities.
Up to this point, parents have had little shadows who have been happy trailing them, doing whatever it took to make them happy. Instead of taking a “what does mom or dad think” attitude about everything, they now consider “what do I think.” It seems pretty self-centered, and it is. But at this stage in life, it has to be. It is at this stage that teenitude becomes attitude if their identity is not respected, and far too often, attitude turns into rebellion.
We often see adults today who don’t know how to act like adults. A lot of this is because they were never given the opportunity to be a teenager. They had to jump from being a child to being an adult overnight. They never had a chance to develop their own identity and learn that others have individual identities too. Unfortunately, they are spending this time as adults in that stage they should have gone through when they were teenagers – figuring out who they are and what they stand for but not knowing yet how to deal with people who disagree with them, or whose personalities differ from theirs.
This encompasses a lot of what I do right now–I help parents and teachers understand the difference between attitude and teenitude. When I learned about personality and how it affects a teenager, I learned I had to deal with all teenagers in a totally different way. I became a teacher and started teaching high school late in life, almost at 40 years old. I learned that it’s all about understanding and recognizing teenagers’ individual personalities and styles. When we understand and accept each other’s personalities, we can bring our styles to work together and become strong. We can teach our kids how to self-lead.
That is the beginning of acceptance and thinking of others outside of ourselves. When you realize you have a unique personality, you also recognize that others have a unique personality. You start to think “I can accept who I am. I can also accept who you are.” When you know yourself, you are now ready to start thinking of others and understanding the world around us.
This leads to understanding the family that you live with, understanding the community that you are a part of, and understanding the world that you live in—the big picture. Because you know who you are and because you understand that you have something to give, you can now understand the big picture, and you can build something together.
