How can puberty be mastered together?

Just wait until puberty comes!" The transition from childhood to adulthood is considered to be crisis-prone, conflict-ridden and stressful. Parents are therefore generally advised to arm themselves for this developmental phase of their children. Against emotional outbursts, contradictions and unreasonableness, against chaos, borderline behaviour and the deaf ears they will encounter.

My children? They have mutated into marmots.

Christof, father of Nora and Jarno

Even if the scenarios presented are sometimes exaggerated, they don't leave mums and dads in the dark about the fact that something might be coming their way. This doesn't make their job any easier, as youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann knows : «It's not just the physical and psychological changes in their own child that parents have to take note of with amazement and irritation. It is also the relationship with them that changes fundamentally.»

Between doubt and alienation

«They have mutated into marmots,» answers Christof, 52, when asked how he experienced this change in his teenagers. «They spend most of their time in their den, which they leave every now and then to nibble on something. Then it's back to their own territory.» On the one hand, says the father of Nora and Jarno, it is liberating to no longer be constantly in demand as a parent, but on the other hand, this development causes him trouble.

«You might think: It's great when the children are on their own, then we have time for ourselves. But I often have doubts when they sit in their rooms for hours on end: are they really OK? Would they let me know otherwise? Fortunately, teenagers are also in the mood for a chat from time to time - but their withdrawal into their private lives is increasing.»

Meanwhile, Tamara*, 44, remembers her son Renato*, 18, going through puberty as a real alienation. «His answer to my question about how he was doing was always the same: «Fine,»» she says, «even when it became clear that there were problems. The more we did to get through to him, the more he shut down.»

Renato's school performance plummeted in secondary school and his new friends didn't sit well with his mother: «I knew that they were smoking pot and I was worried that Renato was also using other things.» Party pills in her son's room proved her right. The attempt to bring Renato to his senses through dialogue or agreements failed: he came home at the agreed time in the evening - and climbed out of the window afterwards. «If I were you,» Renato says to his mother today, «I would have had a crisis too.»

Puberty has many faces

The course of puberty is as varied as the adolescents themselves. Some teenagers are content to find their parents embarrassing and keep their distance, others throw the rules to the wind, provoke with cheekiness and go on strike at home. And many of them switch so quickly between euphoria and irritability, zest for action and a no-go mood that it's dizzying.

The good news is that only a few adolescents experience crises that require treatment during this rollercoaster ride, says Oskar Jenni, Co-Head of Developmental Paediatrics at Zurich Children's Hospital: «A good eight out of ten adolescents get through puberty without any major problems.»

From an evolutionary point of view, the joys and sorrows of puberty make a lot of sense.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, evolutionary biologist

But why all the fuss? This dossier also raises the question that occasionally concerns mothers and fathers of adolescents - in an endeavour to shed light on the changes that a parent-child relationship undergoes during puberty.

When the child grows over your head

We want to find out from experts in adolescent research and medicine, biology and psychology what this change is all about, how we can live together more peacefully and what young people need from their parents in this phase of life. And we want an explanation for typical puberty phenomena that sometimes give parents the feeling that their child is outgrowing them. Let's start with an insight from evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz: «The joys, the suffering, the tragedies and the meaning of it all can certainly be explained: In evolutionary terms, they make perfect sense.»

When children mature into young adults, they are confronted with major physical changes and their brains undergo a complete reorganisation. «All of this is unsettling and requires a great deal of adjustment,» says development expert Oskar Jenni.

However, puberty also marks the beginning of a new phase of life for parents, as the child's view of them changes. «For a child, the parents are the greatest, regardless of how they bring them up,» says Jenni. «Children listen to their parents because they don't want to lose their affection. They love their parents unconditionally because they are emotionally dependent on them.»

No detachment without bonding

This love is rooted in the attachment behaviour that humans share with mammals. This ensures that a child remains close to the people who ensure its survival, as the development specialist Remo Largo, who died in 2020, explains in his standard work «Jugendjahre» (Adolescence): «Without a caregiver, the child would not be able to survive and develop. There must be a very strong mutual bond for this to happen.»

The purpose of this bond is to ensure that the child can develop, that it survives until the time when it can take care of itself. «This point,» says Largo, «is reached at puberty. Now the young adult must become emotionally independent so that they can enter into a couple relationship and start their own family in the longer term.»

Breaking away from their parents, as paediatrician Jenni knows, is one of the four central developmental tasks that adolescents have to master during puberty - and the basis for the success of the other three: finding a place among their peers and ultimately in society, developing their own identity and ultimately being able to provide for their own existence.

Striving for autonomy

As teenagers prepare for independence, mums and dads are forced to give up what has been part of their identity as parents for many years: being strongly orientated towards their own child. «That hurts,» says Jenni, «and causes conflict because the child's emotional dependence on its parents is largely eliminated: a teenager comes home late without fearing that her parents will turn their backs on her. She can put up with them being angry.» Accepting that the child is increasingly withdrawing from parental influence often leads to helplessness and worry - «but you can't avoid it».

«Parents can only deal appropriately with their child's attempts at autonomy if they don't want to turn back the clock,» says youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann. «Because now they are commented on, scrutinised critically and kept at a distance.»

Why belonging is so important during puberty

«As a child, I deliberately cried really loudly when I was sad so that my parents could comfort me quickly,» says 14-year-old Tobi. «As a teenager, you cry extra quietly so that doesn't happen.» Why? The schoolgirl shrugs her shoulders with a smile: «Because they overdo it with comforting. And I don't really like talking about some feelings. If I do, it's more with friends.»

Teenagers are now increasingly seeking emotional closeness with their peers. It is important to belong, sometimes at any cost. While mums and dads now often talk to a wall, the word of friends carries even more weight. Whether it's their taste in music, the times they go out or their style of dress: what their parents think is of secondary importance, it's the opinion of their peers that counts.

Teenagers learn from their peers, no longer from their parents. They are usually no longer interested in their role as advisors.

Why is that? Teenagers are not only receptive to the opinions of others, says development specialist Oskar Jenni, they are dependent on them. «The development of one's own identity», in short, finding answers to the question «Who am I?», says Jenni, "takes place in the confrontation with the environment.

In this context, peers play a special role because they are at the same stage of development." And in no hierarchical relationship, as is the case with parents, says Monika Czernin, educationalist and publicist, who wrote «Jugendjahre» and other books together with Remo Largo.

Puberty: the antechamber of society

Because no matter how egalitarian parents' parenting is, they have all the experience ahead of their offspring and are in the role of counsellor. «In the peer group, on the other hand, young people educate each other,» says Czernin. "They negotiate among themselves who is in charge, what values apply and what behaviour is tolerable.

Puberty and adolescence are the antechamber to society in which young people prepare themselves for its challenges." This practice run requires a place in the group. Securing this place is crucial for young people, says paediatrician Jenni: «It explains their need, and sometimes the pressure, to conform to the social norms and expectations of their peers.»

What a look at the animal kingdom teaches us

Whether wildebeest, salmon or rat: medical doctor and evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz has studied the behaviour of adolescent wild animals - the astonishing parallels to human «pubescents» are documented in her book «Junge Wilde - Was uns der Blick in die Tierwelt über das Erwachsenwerden lehrt», which is well worth reading. «History teaches us two things,» writes Natterson-Horowitz: "Firstly, in order to live safely, an animal must be able to face danger. Secondly, as an adolescent, you should not be alone.

Peers can help each other build self-confidence. They awaken in each other the life-saving ability to work as a team. They give each other the opportunity to practise this skill. No matter how safe adolescent animals feel living alone, without peers they can't learn the protective techniques they need to function in the real world."

This realisation also applies to the human species. According to Natterson-Horowitz, adolescents differ significantly from children and adults in their social behaviour. Not only are they more sociable, they also build more complex, hierarchical relationships with each other and react more sensitively to rejection.

Neuroscientists believe the reason for this lies in the remodelling of the adolescent brain, which only allows adolescents to think rationally to a limited extent and makes them susceptible to rewards. Their behaviour reveals many parallels with the animal world, suggesting that adolescent behaviour is strongly influenced by our evolutionary past.

During puberty, you don't want to stand out at any price

Accordingly, the deviance effect, an ancient animal instinct to avoid the attention of predators, could play a role in the eagerness to conform with peers, surmises researcher Natterson-Horowitz: «During adolescence, bullying often occurs towards classmates who look or behave differently from the majority of the group. Although there is no danger of the group being attacked by a predator, a conspicuously different-looking individual could draw unwanted attention to the group or jeopardise the group's status.» The scientist is not trying to legitimise bullying - rather, she is explaining what makes teenagers particularly susceptible to it.

Blending in, not standing out, ducking to look smaller, avoiding eye contact: «These are all methods that people, especially adolescents, use to hide in their group. In this way, they try to avoid becoming a target. If you know that, as a parent you might have a little more understanding when the ninth-grader begs for shoes, jeans or shirts from trendy brands that everyone else has.»

«They just can't help themselves»

Against this backdrop, the adolescent urge to belong appears in a different light. The same goes for the fact that it is much more difficult for teenagers if they are excluded, for example if they are not invited to a party. «Or are not allowed to stay there any longer,» says «Jugendjahre» co-author Monika Czernin. «Then they'd rather be late and get into trouble with their parents than miss out on something in the group.»

Parents should not take their teenagers' quirks personally.

Monika Czernin, pedagogue

In the same way, many teenagers are heartbroken when there are arguments with friends or in class. Czernin knows that parents' gentle persuasion usually comes to nothing or is not wanted. And it is not uncommon for conflicts that erupt at home and that parents blame on themselves to have their actual cause in tensions between peers. «Don't take it personally,» is therefore Czernin's most common advice when adolescent behaviour causes friction: «Knowing that teenagers often can't help themselves helps parents to feel less offended or provoked.»

Slowly hand over responsibility

It is often said that puberty is the end of parenting. «Parenting is not an appropriate term for any stage of development,» says paediatrician Jenni. «It suggests that the relationship between parents and child is a one-way street through which parents influence the child without the child influencing them back. But that's not how it works when people are in a relationship with each other. And the older the child gets, the more it helps to shape this relationship.»

At some point, young people are not only literally on an equal footing with their parents, they also aspire to this position in a figurative sense, wanting to be treated as adults by their parents and no longer be their wards. Ideally, a caring relationship develops into a relationship in which everyone is on the same level: Little by little, the responsibility that the parents had for the children is transferred to the children themselves.

On the way there, those involved sometimes struggle with adjustment difficulties, Jenni knows: «Then the young people, who are not yet fully grown up, fall back into childish behaviour or the parents forget that handing over responsibility also means giving up control.»

Learning from excesses

The latter is a challenge, because more than in any other phase of life, people in puberty tend to be daredevils and experiment, sometimes with a downright desire for excess. The fact that there are explainable reasons for this - once again, it's the brain undergoing remodelling - is little consolation for parents when their daughter hangs over the toilet bowl after getting drunk or their son lets himself be goaded into absurd tests of courage.

At the same time, looking back ourselves confirms what Karina Weichold says: «Exploring boundaries is part of being young. Sometimes young people have to cross them in order to recognise them at all.» Weichold is a psychologist specialising in puberty and addiction prevention.

For parents, puberty is a constant balancing act between excessive demands and paternalism.

Remo Largo (1943-2020), paediatrician

To a certain extent, she says, adolescent risk-taking and experimentation have a developmental function and are even necessary in order to be able to tackle the numerous challenges associated with this phase of life - leaving the family nest, making initial career decisions, getting involved in love. «A young person who comes home drunk may want to demonstrate their independence to their parents,» says Weichold, «and take a step forward in this developmental task.»

Learning a sensible approach to alcohol often involves the bitter experience of having gone overboard. «Teenagers who have suffered a hangover would rather avoid this experience at the next party,» says Weichold. «It's similar when experimenting with joints.»

Weichold clearly advises against cannabis use in adolescence - also because of the serious consequences for the developing brain - but can also reassure parents: «If you try it once, you won't automatically become a permanent pothead - other problematic circumstances have to be added.» In fact, studies have shown that among those young people who prove to be socially competent, psychologically robust and equally stable in terms of their self-esteem, there are particularly many who have experimented with marijuana but do not use it regularly.

Control and obedience are over

«Even for adolescents who are inherently responsible and not very risk-averse - who don't want to ride motorbikes, for example, or don't give in to every impulse to post on social media - it can be helpful to experience the real consequences of wrong behaviour because it reinforces their own aversion to it and confirms their safety behaviour,» says evolutionary biologist Natterson-Horowitz. For example, young starlings that had observed their peers fighting with an owl learnt to avoid them in future.

«Parents can't teach many of these lessons because they are simply too old. This and their sanity make it much less likely that they will snap and do something stupid, which in turn could have a chilling effect on their children.»

«Control and education that demand unconditional obedience are over,» wrote Remo Largo about puberty, «but that does not mean that parents should completely withdraw from responsibility, nor that they no longer have any options for action. It's about making it clear to children that they are responsible for their own lives and behaviour, which doesn't mean that they can always take responsibility. That's why it's a constant balancing act for parents between overburdening and paternalism.»

Largo's co-author Monika Czernin has some comforting news for all those who are now swallowing empty-handed: «The values and social experiences we have modelled for children are not simply lost during puberty. And: our role model continues to have an effect.»

* Names changed by the editors