You’ve had it. This is the umpteenth time you’ve told your teenager to clean their room, come home in good time, stop using drugs, do their assignment…the list is endless.
You are at your wit’s end and wonder what you did wrong to deserve the long days you have with your teenager.
Is this it? Is this the life I am bound to have for the next seven years?
The questions keep going through your mind, and you feel helpless because you sense that you have lost control of your teenager.
Knowing the teen rebellion causes is a start at finding a lasting solution to the challenges you currently face.
ParenTeen Kenya offers parenting classes that deal with this topic in detail, and our teen workshop helps your teenager see your point of view.
Today, we’ll look at five reasons why your teenager rejects everything you say. But first, is your teen rebellious, or are they showing normal behavioral traits of a teenager.
Rebellious Teenager Vs. Normal Teen Behavior
Innumerable parents label their teenagers as rebellious, yet they show normal teen behavior that comes with the adolescent stage.
The adolescence stage causes your teenager’s brain to change how they think and question what they have believed in since childhood. This process helps them to transition to adulthood.
The phases your teen goes through that could lead to a rebellious teenager if not well handled include:
- The need for independence
- The desire to have a separate and unique identity
- Testing set boundaries
- Questioning authority
Let’s look at examples of teenage rebellion and those of typical teen behavior.
| Area of Concern | Typical Teen Behavior | Signs of a Rebellious Teenager |
| Appearance | – Try out new/different fashion. – Explore attention-seeking dressing, dying hair, tattooing, and ear piercing for boys. | – All the typical teen changes mentioned plus, – Signs of self-harm like cutting, eating disorders, and risky behavior. |
| Relating | – Starts arguments every chance they get. | – Arguments escalate to violence in the home and school or run-in with police. |
| Mood Swings | – Periods of emotional outbursts and sadness. – Increased irritability and struggle to manage these feelings | – A drastic change in overall personality – Rude and mean attitude. – May threaten suicide if they don’t get their way. |
| Experimenting | – Has tried alcohol, smoking, or bhang—without further progression. | – The experimenting has turned habitual and causes problems at home and school. |
| Influence | – They mostly listen to their peers but still know certain boundaries cannot be crossed. | – A sudden change of friends to those that have damaging behavior. – They refuse to listen to even simple rules. – Habitually lie for the sake of their friends. |
ParenTeen Kenya’s teen workshop takes your teenager through training that helps the typical teenager understand why they experience the above changes and how to vet and choose the right action.
 5 Reasons Why You are Parenting a Rebellious Teenager
Parenting becomes more challenging when you have to raise a teen that isn’t cooperative—the effects of teen rebellion spill over to affect everyone in the home.
You desire your teenager to enjoy being home, but your actions and their response produce the opposite effect.
You have tried to figure out how to deal with a rebellious teenager before you both lose your mind. But you’re stuck at why your teenager rebels against you.
Here are five areas you can reflect on and take actionable steps to deal with the consequences of teen rebellion and help mend the relationship.
Reason #1. “I am the Almighty Boss” Attitude
It’s a fact you are the boss, and you run the show in your house. Your teen knows it, and they would prefer not to be reminded daily.
The changing behavioral traits of a teenager dictate that they are at the age where they desire to feel they are in charge of their lives.
Your teen’s prefrontal cortex leads them to think about their identity, purpose, and the route their life will take. As a result, they have a burning desire to start making decisions for themselves.
Your mindset needs to change and realize that you are raising a future adult and not a child.
You become a helicopter parent when you want to manage every detail of your teenager’s life and require them to follow all your rules. This parenting style is one of the causes of teen rebellion.
You intend to offer the best direction to your teenager but overdoing it causes them to feel like you don’t think they can manage their lives. So, they deliberately choose to do the opposite even when they know your suggestion would benefit them.
As you approach the adolescent years, you need to start releasing some responsibilities to your teenager, which lets them know you trust them to handle their issues.
The gradual process of release helps them feel they, too, are the boss of their life. Only then will your teen be willing to listen to you and implement your guidance.
Reason #2. Your Teen Formed an Emotional Bond With Someone Else
Psychologist John Bowlby believed that humans form long-term psychological bonds with individuals available to meet their immediate needs.
Bowlby found that providing the basic needs only did not meet this requirement. The caregiver needed to be available, friendly, caring and responded to the child’s emotional needs. This approach gave the child security and triggered normal psychological development.
When your teen was a child, did you invest in forming an emotional bond with them? Were you there for them when they were sad, happy, worried, or frustrated? Did you help them deal with their emotions and give them a shoulder to lean on?
When teenagers miss this need in the home, they will look for someone who will assist them process what they are going through. Teens form an attachment with friends or adults who can offer a solution, even if it’s a bad one because their parents are unavailable.
Your teen then becomes loyal to these individuals who cater to their psychological needs and will reject your instructions to follow theirs.
You could start a new page with your teen by informing them of your mistakes and that you desire to rectify them and avail yourself.
Related: 3 Vital Parenting Tips New Parents of Teens Should Adopt
Reason #3. It’s Payback Time for Your Teen by being a Rebellious Teenager
A teenage girl and her dad were in a counselor’s office to work on their relationship. The teenage girl was openly rebellious and didn’t want anything to do with her dad.
Her father had been an absent dad for most of her childhood. She told the counselor of a time she lost her doll in camp. When her dad came to pick her, she told him she couldn’t find Shelby, and he went looking for a person thinking it was one of her friends. She had owned the doll most of her childhood, and the dad never knew its name or that she took it everywhere.
Now that she was a teenager, her father wanted to spend time with her, but she resisted all attempts. He was hoping the counselor would help her “rebellious teenager.”
The Bobo doll experiment (Albert Bandura, 1961) confirmed that children watch, store, and immediately, or in the future, imitate the observed behavior — termed as observational learning.
Your teenager copies your past and present behavior knowingly or subconsciously.
Do you look at your teenager or your gadgets when they talk to you? Do you follow through with their simple requests, or you postpone them repeatedly? Were you listening to your teenager while they were a child? Were you available?
The answers to these questions give you an indication that imitation is one of the teen rebellion causes you could be experiencing. This revelation means you need to adopt new practices that your teenager can imitate.
Reason #4. Your teenager’s World Revolves around Themselves — The Me-Factor
Teenagers’ problems can stem from personal fable phenomena that teens experience as their prefrontal cortex develops.
Personal fable is when a teenager thinks they are unique and special and can participate in any risky behavior and nothing terrible will happen to them.
They look at the consequences of teen rebellion and difficulties others go through and somehow believe they are better than them, and the negative outcomes won’t happen to them.
Most parents affirm that this describes their rebellious teenage daughter or son.
Psychological egoism states that all human beings are motivated by selfishness and self-interest. A rebellious teenager exceeds the acceptable threshold and rarely cares about the effects of their actions on others. They will deliberately refuse to do what you request just because they don’t feel like it.
Sometimes the self-centeredness stemmed from years of having their way when they were toddlers until their preteen years.
Dealing with a rebellious teenager at this point can be draining, but their brain is still developing, and they can learn and unlearn these long-standing behaviors.
Reason #5. The Intent of All Men is to Do Evil (Including Your Teenager)
The human race inherited from Adam a heart and mind that desires to live by their standards without conforming to any rule of law—unless they have to.
Your rebellious teenager, like everyone else, confirms what God says in Genesis 8:21,
…and the Lord said to Himself, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.
Pray for your rebellious teenager that they will believe in Christ, who changes the hearts of men from intending to do evil to desiring to live for God and follow his word — which includes honoring and obeying their parents.
Ezekiel 36:26 puts it well when God said, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
Keep praying for your teenager as you also parent them according to God’s standards given to you in the Bible.
Related: Top 7 Challenges Faced by Teenagers Today in Kenya
Allow Parenteen to Help You Handle Your Rebellious Teenager
Parenting a rebellious teenager is a challenging task as you also have to deal with the effects of teen rebellion your teenager has brought into the home.
Parenting has never been an easy job. You will fall but still get up in the hope of a better tomorrow and that your relationship will thrive past the teenhood age.
Implement what you can and pray that your teenager will also change their ways. In the long run, they will choose which way their life will go.
ParenTeen Kenya is here to assist you in this journey. We offer parenting classes and teen workshops that address:
- Teen rebellion causes
- Examples of teenage rebellion and how to navigate them
- Effects of teen rebellion
- How to handle rebellious teenagers
Get in touch with us today and book your spot. Let us work together in strengthening the bond with your teen.
Images source: Unsplash
Jane Kariuki is a devout Christian, Clinician, Psychologist, and founder of ParenTeen Kenya. She authored an exceptional training manual used in her teens’ workshop and an instructional guidebook for her parenting classes. If she is not training, blogging, or counseling, Jane loves to spend time with her sweet husband and three children.
This is great Jane.
Thank you Ruth, glad you enjoyed it.