Parents who don’t understand you?

   Okay, so when we become adolescents and we become older and we become more independent, chances are, the relationship, the emotional bond between you and your parents may decrease. We may have seen a lot of cases of teenagers who argue with their parents and that results in children moving out and stuff like that. And of course, I do understand you: when you become older, there can be a lot of misunderstandings, and personally, I would say that children and adults, they have different values, they have different interests, and sometimes, these things just don't match each other. Therefore, the question here is: how can we deal with parents who don't understand you and who have different interests from you?

   First of all, generational tension is typical and reasonable. As I have mentioned above, we are teenagers, we have different interests, we have different values compared to our parents; and sometimes these just clash with one another. For example, there can be arguments about things like sexual orientation or about curfew: teenagers, they want more freedom, they want more independence, and they may say that “I would like to go home at around 12:00 a.m. midnight”; however, chances are your parents may still treat you like a little kid, and they may still want to hold more authority over you, so they may have different limits. For example, “you have to go home before 9:00 p.m”, or “you can't like a person who has the same gender as you”. With such different perspectives, we can't find a common ground: our values and our interests are so different, are so opposite to one another, so it's completely fine that these interests are not the same. The question here is how can we deal with these problems, and how can we ensure that these different misunderstandings and differences don't escalate into something bigger that can restrain the relationship between you and your parents. 

   Personally, it is completely fine that you don't really share all things that you know to your parents, because sometimes you may not just feel uncomfortable talking to them. For example, you are very sad and depressed, and then your parents just say things like you're not depressed, you're just lazy and dumb and have no motivation for life.” In that case, you can seek for adults for help - for example, your sister, your brother, your older ones: they may have still be able to understand you, but because they're older, they have more experience so they can give you good insights into how should you deal with different things in life and how to balance your academic and social life. A counselor is also a good option if you feel like the conflict between you and your parents is becoming too intense. But remember, always talk to someone who you fully trust, because some people may have bad intentions and may turn the thing you say against you.

   I've said this a lot of times before, but I would like to talk about this again: if you feel like it, please note down your feelings on the piece of paper or some other diaries left you have. Whenever you have things in your head, if you don't release them out, it will just become bottled up, and certainly it's not going to be good for you if you try to hide things away from everyone. Instead, if you don't feel comfortable talking to people, just release them, release all your raw emotions into your journal. By doing so, first of all, you are having a space where you can release all of your thoughts or your feelings, and then things will be less overwhelmed. But also secondly, by writing things down and “matching things together” you can be able to understand what's happening to you and how you should deal with it. At the end of the day, we all want our parents to understand us; however, this is not always the case. So instead of trying to argue with them and trying to exert independence and power, seek for help from other sources, but please still be respectful with them, because remember, they are not bad people; it's just that different people have different values, and sometimes they clash one another and then conflicts happen - of course we don't want that to happen, right?