Original URL: http://life.familyeducation.com/teen/puberty/42924.html

Teens: Changing Bodies, Changing Connections

When your teenager was an infant and a toddler, you carefully monitored his physical growth. At each appointment with the pediatrician, she probably updated you on where his weight and height were in relation to the norm for that age. You also became a great observer of your child and how these growth spurts affected his behavior. Most parents intuitively recognize the signs of a growth spurt in their child: irritability, clumsiness, increased appetite, sleeplessness, and often tears. Just before the big growth spurt, which can measure as much as one centimeter, or three-eighths of an inch, in one twenty-four-hour period, the body seems to implode on itself. After the spurt, your child probably returned to his more normal behavior and perhaps slept a bit more than usual.

Well, guess what? Your teenager is still going through these same spurts, but you're just not tuned into them the way you used to be. When you spotted the growth spurt in your infant, you allowed for the irritability and all the rest. In fact, you probably put your arm around your spouse and together said something along the lines of, "Ah, a growth spurt. Isn't it remarkable?"

Fast forward thirteen years:

You've just had a barbed interchange with your teenage daughter as you cleared the plates from dinner. You each got in a couple of good shots before she stormed out of the kitchen and up to her room. In the meantime, after your deep breathing exercises have failed, you've taken the dishes out of the dishwasher to wash by hand—a strategy you learned in a recent stress management class. Now imagine, really imagine, how you would feel and respond if minutes later your daughter came back down to the kitchen, stood next to you with her arm around you and said, "I'm sorry for what I said, Mom. It's just that I'm in the midst of a growth spurt and it's making me crazy!" In all likelihood, you would sympathize with her; indeed, you would offer to get her some ice and aspirin to help with the inevitable joint and bone pain associated with growth spurts.

Sometimes his moodiness is as simple as a growth spurt, and you can use this information to further your connection with him. Take a moment to consider how a growth spurt affects your teenager's basic sense of coordination. During a spurt, or just thereafter, he needs to readjust to this new body of his. Nothing is quite as it was before, most noticeably his hands and his feet, the parts of his body most out of his awareness. For proof of this, take a second look at your teenager the next time he spills his glass at the dinner table—you probably won't have to wait too long. Rather than immediately picking up the glass and cleaning up after himself (as you would do and as you wish he would do), he'll stare off into space for a while. Actually, it's a specific type of staring. First at the spilled glass, then at his hand, and then up and away, off into the distance. It's as if he were corroborating for himself that it was his hand that knocked over the glass; but he is also going further than that, because in the last look—up and away—he is actually updating the mental image he carries of his body.

If your eyes are open, this is magic in action. Growing one centimeter over the course of a single day makes anyone clumsy; for most of us, that lack of coordination plays out mainly in our hands and our feet, where a miscalculated centimeter is the difference between bumping into the coffee table or not; between tripping on the step or not; and yes, between spilling the glass or not. In short, intermittent bouts of clumsiness and uncoordinated movement are normal for teenagers.

I'm not saying that this explains every instance of knocked-over milk in your teenager's life, far from it. Sometimes their miscalculations are caused by inattentiveness, sometimes by fatigue, sometimes by boredom. But more than a fair share of their awkward crashes with the dining room chairs are a result of their changing bodies, which gives you a golden opportunity to connect. Pause for a moment to imagine how these inevitable periods of clumsiness interact with the typical teenager's heightened sense of self-consciousness. It's quite the one-two combination. It's especially lethal in the train of thoughts and conclusions it can lead your teenager to make: that she's a spaz, that he's uncoordinated, and much worse, as I'm sure you can imagine. Your job is to save them from themselves by severing these conclusions. You do this by accepting these moments as normal and, when he lets you, even explaining them to your teenager.

I was attending a middle school dance with a friend of mine who was the vice principal of that school. Towards the end of the evening, the disc jockey had all the kids up and dancing, and they all had huge grins plastered on their faces. My friend was subtlety pointing out various kids to me. One in particular stood out: He's the social climber. Doesn't have a group that he hangs with and is desperately trying to crack into the echelon of the "cool" kids. At this point, he was trying to impress the cool kids with his wild dancing, and I could tell that there was a disconnect between his mind and his body, which meant he was on the verge of going out of control. Seconds later, he jumped into the air and landed on the back of his left heel, catching the cuff of his pants underneath, at which point he lost all traction and slammed to the floor on his rear end. The music continued to blast, but all the dancing had stopped and you could have heard a pin hit the gym floor. My friend didn't miss a beat. She handed me her glass of punch and raced over to the boy on the floor. About twenty feet from the student she did a slide on her knees, ending up three feet from the boy on the floor as she made like a baseball umpire yelling Safe! at the top of her lungs as her arms made the safe signal. Within seconds everyone was laughing and the boy was up on his feet dancing once again.

"Wow, that was quick thinking. Good work."

"Thanks."

"You know you just saved that guy from some heavy humiliation—probably years of therapy, too."

She smiled at this. "You're probably right. Think I should send the parents a bill?"

The more you can normalize or minimize the bumps and bruises that come from their growth spurts and other physical changes, the stronger the connection. Remind yourself of when they were in kindergarten and you used to explain away the bumps, bruises, and scrapes that covered their knees and legs: It's all a part of being a kid. You wouldn't be a normal kid if you didn't get banged up some. And from the looks of those knees, I would say you're doing better than average as a kid. Now imagine how you can translate this same sentiment to that same child now that he's fifteen instead of five.