Holistic development encompasses the physical, intellectual, emotional, and relational aspects of life. Globalization, urbanization, and individualization alter the lifestyle of young adults. Eating disorder, obesity, malnutrition, unsafe early onset of sexual behavior, sexual abuse, reproductive and urinary infections, depression, violence, addiction, school dropouts, suicidal tendency, and other psycho-social disorders among teenagers are common familial as well as social issues. [1] Teenagers and their parents would go a long way in preventing these problems.
A flexible parental mindset is the foremost important management to deal with these challenges and to reinforce the holistic development among teenagers. Parents should consider every teenager is a person and has diverse needs. Parents need to recognize and respond to these requirements keeping flexibility in their minds. Both teenagers and their parents jointly participate in different awareness programs to increase their understanding of nutritional, personal, sexual, and environmental health and hygiene. This can help parents to update their knowledge and teenagers can be a better decision-maker to live a healthy life.
Supportive care to deal with physical changes
The physical transition during teenage due to the onset of puberty requires some supportive care to avoid misguided your child from unauthentic sources. [2] During this stage, following parental supportive care require to cope up with the changes:
- Give stress to build self-esteem and confidence to your child so that he/she can positively accept his/her physical changes. Do not compare with others or criticize them.
- Play a positive role model by eating and offering nutritious foods and healthy drinks. Teenagers require a more calorie supply to match the physical demand. Healthy eating habit at this crucial stage of life remains its benefits until their later stage of life.
- Encourage physical activity to burn excess calories and help to keep themselves physically fit. [3] This can help to develop a positive self-image and they also tried hard to become a role model for the society.
- Express parental love by showing respect to their physical space but keep in touch with maintaining an open level communication.
- Allow teens to apply grooming habits and accept their prolonged bathroom time to sustain a sense of control over their developing bodies in their advanced adolescence age.
- Answer sex-related questions honestly but in a knowledgeable way. Show them proper images and educational videos for better understanding by referring to educational websites.
Supportive care to build cognitive development
Your child may not decide their life at their nascent stage but start thinking of their life after reaching their teenage. The concrete thinking operation processing in the brain starts developing after seven years of age and is completed at eleven years. At approximately twelve to fifteen years of age, teenagers developed advanced reasoning skills. Teens usually give priority to their feeling during the thinking process because at this stage brain develops meta-cognition processing. Realistic thinking, logical strategies, memory retainment are the parts of cognitive development during adolescence. [4] These cognitive changes require the following parental supportive care:
- Carefully listen to your teens and show respect to their process to develop a genuine trustworthy relationship.
- Discuss with your teenage boy/girl about their opinion on different behavioral rules. And encourage them to act in a safe environment and deal with the consequences of the reality check.
- Give chance to your teens to take risky actions under your supervision in a fully controlled environment.
- Share your bitter experiences with teens and what you learned from them, so that they may not repeat the history.
- Provide an opportunity for teens and encourage them to participate in community services for their overall development.
Supportive care for psychosocial development
How teens interact with family and friends is an indication of their psychosocial development. Often psychosocial development of teens influenced by peer pressure, as they spend more time with their friends and lesser time with family. Therefore, both acceptable and non-acceptable social skills are developed, and teens practice them in the influence of their peer group. But teens tend to make their long-term decisions related to their education and values in the influence of their parental inspirations. But they used to showcase themselves as a cool guy and want to enjoy life. Their interest frequently changes due to their fickle mind. [4]
Teens have a demand for their own space and privacy. They are more curious about sexuality and want to know how their parents handled this issue, but unable to ask. They start reading different articles and watch the video to get the answers. Often, teens tend to feel they know to become argumentative and start questioning the values and judgments of adults. [4] Therefore, following supportive care help teens to build consistent psychosocial behavior.
- Provide a safe and structured environment where a teen can get the opportunity to create their behavioral guidelines and deal with the consequences. This will help them to become a responsible person for their actions.
- Keep a close watch on friends and associations of your son and daughter. Try to make a friendly relationship with parents or guardians of your child’s friend circles. Discuss your views about them with your daughter or son and aware of them if you don’t feel anything right about their behavior.
- Give enough opportunity to your home, so that teens feel comfortable to chill out.
- Do not forget to praise teens for their efforts, and accomplishments.
- Exhibit your cool acceptance of their physiological growth and development. Like, mother and daughter go for lunch to celebrate her first onset of the menstrual cycle or a father can arrange camping and enjoy it with his son when he starts to shave.
- Helps teenagers to attempt realistic goal and reward their achievements and do not forget to praise them. This helps them to know the requirements to live a healthy and happy life.
- Give your teens importance by listening to them carefully and spending quality time with them.
Different supportive care systems require to deal with behavioral changes that occur during teenage. Parents have to understand the situation from their experiences and provide support to overcome the behavioral challenges their teens faced during their adolescent period. Parents need to be always calm and showcase their care about their child’s help to avoid developing aggressive behavior among their teenagers at this stage.
References
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222714094_ISSUES_IN_HOLISTIC_DEVELOPMENT_OF_ADOLESCENTS
- https://ceufast.com/course/adolescent-holistic-health-issues
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201497/
- https://ceufast.com/course/adolescent-holistic-health-issues