children cant choose their parents mangao

CHILDREN CANT CHOOSE THEIR PARENTS MANGAO PROFESSIONAL

So where did their relationship break down? When did it get to the point that these children no longer felt comfortable talking to their parents about their deepest fears, their hurts and their pain? When did their problems get so big that they felt the only person they could trust to talk to about them was their school teacher? In every case, I queried, “Is there someone you can talk to about this at home?” and almost always the answer was a resounding, “No!” With rationales like, “They just wouldn’t understand” or “They would be so disappointed in me!” coming flooding out with the tears that fell uncontrollably, it often seemed that this realisation itself was to them sometimes more painful than the life event they were dealing with. So, why don’t teenagers talk to their parents? But many times these children simply needed a shoulder cry on someone to hear them and to understand.

CHILDREN CANT CHOOSE THEIR PARENTS MANGAO PROFESSIONAL

There were, of course, times where I was legally obliged to report their stories to my superiors and from there the children had access to the professional support they needed. From friendship issues to relationship concerns, pregnancy scares and drug experiences, these students spoke of their fears, their regrets and their inability to find their way past it. I have since lost count of the number of students that, burdened with what must have felt like the weight of the world, broke down during a conversation after class and confided in me. I know that if these were my children in the future, I would want them to feel they could come to me when times got tough. But, now that I am a parent and have had a chance to reflect upon these scenarios with a different perspective, I realise that the trials of the teenage years are life-shaping to many. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about the fact that I can be a confidante for these students during some pretty harrowing years, in fact, I feel touched and grateful that they were able to find the confidence to open up at all. Of course, teaching these students was my primary role and I really enjoyed that aspect of my job, but what if I told you that each of the students in the scenarios above chose not to talk to their parents? What if I told you that in each of the cases, the only person they felt they could talk to was me – their teacher? In my time as a health and physical education teacher I have been privileged to teach, mentor and guide students through their teen years in many differing ways and in a number of roles. I have taught in schools on both sides of the world and at both ends of the economic spectrum. I’ve been a secondary school teacher for more than a decade now.

We would all like to pray and hope that our children will never find themselves in these situations but we would be naive to think that our children are completely immune from the perils of adolescence.

Would you want to have the opportunity to talk to him about it? How about if your daughter was struggling with her peers pressuring her to take drugs, would you want to know? If your daughter fell pregnant and was frightened about the huge choices she would soon be making, would you want her to be able to come to you for help? If she chose to abort the child, I know you’d want to know about that! Responding to these questions is confronting and uncomfortable. Imagine then if he were to say nothing to you about it but instead went straight to his room.

Imagine if your son came home from school after spending the day coping with peers calling him names and throwing his back pack on the toilet block roof. If we are not empathetic and understanding of the ‘little things’ they face in their early years (which are actually big things to them) then chances are they will have a hard time opening up about the big things when they grow older. The way we interact with our young children, the words we use, the intonation in our voice and even our body language can have a huge impact on whether they will feel comfortable talking to us about the big issues they will inevitably face as teens. Just as they are figuring out who they are, we, as parents, struggle to understand the child we once thought we knew inside out.īut the thing is, that is what they need from us most of all to understand. Toddlers and teens alike experience significant body and mind development that can have them behaving in ways you have never seen. Both stages of life are a time of significant developmental change. I once read that the teenage years can be likened to the toddler years. Why teenagers don’t talk to their parents…

Children cant choose their parents mangao