The Teenage Years

This course is appropriate for parents, grandparents, teachers, sports coaches, youth workers.

With the coming of the teenage years, a young person starts to move out from the earlier, narrower world of childhood (home) into the wider worlds of education, friendship, community and, possibly, work. This move into wider worlds brings with it many new challenges and possible threats, for example, the challenges of creating friendship relationships with same and opposite gender peers, and the exploration and development of intimacy with another person.

Adolescence is also the time when the person has the possibility of starting the process of independence and self-reliance. Becoming self-reliant does not happen simply with the passing of years; indeed, there are many adults who are not in a solid place of self-reliance and realness.

Given the enormity of the challenges involved, it is no wonder that many teenagers create protective behaviour – such as rebellion or withdrawal, school drop-out, addictions, bullying.
The Course provides the opportunity for adults to examine their own lives and find inner safe holding so that they may be able to provide a safe holding for the young person who presents troubled and troubling behaviour.
The Parent and Relationship Mentor will adapt this Course to the needs of an individual or group, facilitated as a four/eight-week Course or a one to two-hour talk on a key topic, e.g. bullying. This course can be facilitated as a half day or full-day workshop on central course themes.

Themes include:

• A vision for the Teenage Years
• The Challenge of Teenagers finding Independence
• Understanding the World of Teenagers
• Teenagers illusion that Adults know nothing
• Being one’s real Self – a Challenge in the Teenage Years
• The importance of Boundaries in the Parent/Teenager Relationship
• Educating Teenagers
• Teenagers who are troubled and troublesome