Growing Up Is a Moving Target

Creating a safe space for the person who keeps changing

One of the great certainties of raising a child is this:

Just when you think you’ve figured out who they are, they change.

The cuddly baby becomes the fiercely independent toddler. The toddler becomes the child with questions about absolutely everything. The child becomes the preteen who suddenly has opinions about clothes, music, privacy, friends — and, occasionally, the astonishing incompetence of every adult in the house.

And then come the teen years.

Puberty gets a lot of attention because the changes are so visible. Skin becomes oilier. Hair appears in new places. Bodies change shape. Voices shift. Hormones surge. A face that was familiar yesterday may suddenly have a pimple sitting squarely in the middle of it this morning.

But the body is only part of what is changing.

The teenager is also beginning the enormous task of figuring out

"Who they are apart from the people who raised them."

That can make adolescence look rather contradictory from the outside.

A teen may want complete independence — right up until something goes wrong.

They may insist they don’t care what anyone thinks while caring very deeply indeed.

They may want to be completely unique while also wanting desperately to fit in.

They can sound remarkably grown-up at 2:00 and need a reassuring hug by 2:15.

That isn’t necessarily moodiness, defiance, or inconsistency.

It is development.

Growing up has always involved a gradual movement away from dependence and toward becoming a separate person. Puberty simply turns up the volume

Hormones influence the skin, body, sleep, emotions, and energy. The brain is still developing too, particularly the areas involved in judgement, planning, and impulse control. At the same time, friendships become increasingly important, social awareness grows, and young people begin experimenting with values, appearance, opinions, and identity.

In other words, there is an awful lot going on inside that bedroom with the closed door.

And perhaps that gives us a different way to look at adolescence.

Instead of asking only, “How do we get them through this stage?”

we might ask:

“How do we give them room to become?”

Not unlimited freedom. Not the absence of boundaries. Teenagers still need adults to be adults.

But they also need a place where changing their mind is allowed.

Where trying on a new style, interest, or opinion doesn’t immediately become a permanent label.

Where mistakes are not treated as proof of character.

Where questions can be asked without embarrassment.

Where the person they were at twelve is not expected to be exactly the same person at fifteen.

And perhaps most importantly, where they know that growing more independent does not mean losing their place in the family.

Because this process doesn’t actually begin with puberty—and it certainly doesn’t end there.

We change from baby to child, child to teenager, teenager to adult, and then continue changing throughout our lives. New relationships, new responsibilities, losses, discoveries, and experiences continue shaping us.

Becoming is not a teenage phase. It is a lifelong one.

We change our views, our circumstances, and our preferences throughout our lives.  In our relationships, there are times when we are so close we seem bonded into one—and other times when we just don’t click!

The gift we can give a young person, then, may be the same one we offer for every age in all our dealings with others. It isn’t a manual on how to think and behave.

Perhaps it is simply a safe place in which to grow, change, question, discover—and become who we are now in a surround of acceptance and understanding.