- पुरानी जीन्स और गिटार
मोहल्ले की वो छत और मेरे यार - यारों दोस्ती बड़ी ही हसीन है
ये ना हो तो क्या फिर
बोलो ये ज़िन्दगी है - \”Whenever you remember, I\’ll be there, Remember how we reached that dream together\”
What flashes through your mind when you read these lines? Your school, college, university days, your friends, your friendships, and a whole lot. Isn’t it?
Friendship and Teenage – 2 important teachers of everyone\’s life. One that can be eternal and one that is temporary.
The two are so closely intertwined. Teenage shows us how life gets tougher gradually from time in school to the first few years of college and friendship helps make these tough times easier. Teenage teaches us the art of improving individually while friendship teaches us the art of pulling one another up to improve together. When put together, friendships between teenagers of the same age group form some of the best qualities in an individual that other aspects of life may not be able to.
Some people may ask that what about family members like brothers or sisters?
Teenage friendships form fraternities like never seen before. It teaches a growing child that loyalty and brotherhood exist even outside family. The interesting part about teenage friendships is that for people who do have a family, friendship helps build a new family for them. It teaches us the importance of setting boundaries in a friendship to keep oneself and the other safe in a relationship.
The following are some of the qualities that teenage friendships teach children:
1. Sharing sorrows, happiness, and common interests
Friendships evolve in adolescence from a common interest in activities to a sharing of opinions, emotions, and feelings. Teenagers want to hang around their peers because they feel the same anxieties, fears, and emotions. They go through different kinds of phases of life together. Failing exams together, sharing the smallest meals and planning shenanigans together while getting approval from parents saying \”Their parents have agreed. They\’re asking me now\”.
A phase of life that has been seen to help build more confidence and friendships in sports. Playing a common sport has also helped teenagers befriend more people and fix up their daily schedules together to help improve each other at the sport.
2. Listening to others
Teenagers tend to be rebellious to their family members in this age but their friendships teach them the art of listening to what the other has to say and be observant of what is not being said in friendship.
3. Synergy and Teamwork
Modern families are trying to bridge the gap between parents and teenage children through friendship by observing the friendships their children are having. Parents are becoming receptive to their opinions allowing children to become friends with their parents and learn to not hesitate in asking for advice or voicing their concerns with each other. This has been seen to help improve harmony and synergy not only in families but even in friend circles. Sport is another area seen to help build this quality. Playing a common sport helps go through common emotions at the time of victory or defeat leading to building more team building spirit in one another.
4. Emotional Intelligence
With friends going through tough times together, it has taught teenagers the art learning to work through tricky situations while being emotionally intelligent rather than being emotional.
Education teaches children to improve their Intelligence Quotient (IQ) while friendships complement parental guidance to help teenagers improve their Emotional Quotient (EQ).
5. Communication & learning to say ‘NO’
An aspect of teenage friendships that isn\’t talked about much is peer pressure. Sometimes in order to fit in larger groups, teenagers are seen to give in to the pressurization of their peers and take part in activities out of their comfort zone. With open communication amongst friends who one might be closer with, it becomes easy to say ‘NO’ when the child knows that he has a pillar of support to take a stand with him. This helps build self-confidence as well as learning to lean on each other.
- A valuable lesson: Relationships are a 2-way street
During teenage, a child learns a hard fact of life that not everything will remain permanent. He / She realizes that every relationship they have is a 2-way street and nothing is granted to them. Friends made in school will part ways due to college and it is seen that a lot of friendships and love interests will end due to the long distance creating a loss of communication. But then, it is also seen that constant effort from both sides has helped establish a friendship strong enough to call it a brotherhood. Constant communication and learning to express yourself instead of dumping your emotions on the other person have helped build the greatest qualities in life – Loyalty, Consistency and Trust and this takes them a long way.
I, Kavita Yadav, a Counselling Psychologist and a dual Certified Parenting Coach and Parenting Expert, Career Guidance & Counselling Expert, and an Author, work in the field of ‘Parent Coaching and Teen Counselling.’ I, work with parent/s of teens and adults, having behavioural, emotional, and career related challenges with their children, and not able to communicate effectively, openly with them. I help parents enable to better the way, they conduct themselves, with scientific, psychological knowledge, practical, doable tools & techniques so that they can have better loving, understanding, & respectful parent-child relationship because love & respect are the two main ingredients for family happiness and abundance.
Please feel free to reach out to me, in case you are facing any challenges with your teenage children, by filling in the form available on my website https://jina.co.in/contact-us/
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