When teenagers bully their parents

There are some parents going through hell with their teenagers; actually terrified of them and spending sleepless nights worrying about what their teenager will do next. It may have started as a stroppy small child, getting angry when they did not get their way, and the parents giving in to appease their child. The, "anything for a quiet life" approach to parenting rarely works, and can do long term damage to the parent child relationship.

As the child gets older they come to expect their needs to be met without question and their needs become more and more as they approach their teenage years. A parent who never says no will be pushed to the limits by a child testing the boundaries of the relationship. Children grow up needing rules, if there are none they will set them themselves, but it will make them anxious doing so, and they will become more and more frustrated by the lack of guidance from the parent.

Eventually, the child becomes the family tyrant, ruling the house through their anger, with the parent always trying to please them. This happens more often in single parent families as the one parent is trying so hard to compensate for the missing parent they give in to their child's demands once too often. The power base has shifted and the parent is helpless, existing in the shadow of the teenagers' dominance. Physically the teenager is bigger and stronger and sometimes this bullying becomes violent.

If the situation deteriorates this far, the only solution at this stage is for the teenager to be removed from the house, sent to boot camp or a residential facility, equipped to retrain them and teach them about boundaries. No parent should have to endure physical violence from their child, even if they are partially responsible for it. No teenager should be allowed to continue with this behavior as society does not need any more angry violent adults.

If your teenager has become a bully but still listens to some of your instructions then you may still be able to deal with this yourself. Sometimes the bullying behavior is as a result of a temporary weakening of adult authority, for example, during a divorce or when one adult is ill and becomes unable to assert any discipline. The first step is to start saying no, not to everything, all at once, that is likely to lead to open warfare! Start with the most unreasonable requests and work towards a rebalancing of the authority within the household. Allow your teenager to make decisions that have little effect on you, they need to have some control over their lives, just not total control over yours!