Privacy from Parents: Where do you draw the line?

The parent-child conflict is no new thing. We all have been there. It is frustrating; especially at the adolescent stage.   It can feel like your parents cannot understand what you are going through.  But they can. How: Because they have already been through the same stage.

It is uncanny how someone we could not stay without a second in our younger days can feel like a completely different person. The expectations, the rules, the dos and don’ts, the questions; it seems to take half of our life. How did we go on to feel more comfortable to share things with our friends more than our parents?

The parent is the first teacher to a child; their first friend. So how does this first friend go on to become someone you hide from: Maybe because somewhere the parent-child relationship comes in between. Funny thing to hear: parent-child relationship coming between a parent and child. But the pressure is equal on both the sides. The parent feels obvious responsibility toward the child. Besides this responsibility, is the worry: the worry that the child might get involved in wrongful activities, the worry that the child is getting off track, the worry that the child might get hurt. So the parent might try to impose rules, the need to know what the child is doing, the need to be certain. This is where one can feel frustration.

As they say, the grass always looks greener on the other side. It might seem like the parent does not understand what the child is going through to the child and only tries to get control. To the parents, it can seem like the child is not trying to take responsibility or is going off track or socializing with people who have bad habits. The key of course, is communication. Share about what is going on in your life with your parents; try to understand from their perspective; be friends with your parents again.