Control is must

'Way back when he was little, this teen-ager of yours may have wakened from sleep at night, startled by dreams that brought from his unconscious mind impulses so terrifying that they made him cry out. A dream of choking baby sister, for instance, may have come too close to a conscious wish. In any case, he had the impulse to do many frightening things. But his littleness in a way was a guarantee of safety. He knew that you would stop him and that you could because you were big.

But now in his new bigness, you may be no bigger than he. His body has grown to such size and strength that should he let himself go, he fears he may run amok. And so, to feel safe, he needs to know very firmly from you that controls are a must.

By now we have seen that we cannot dictate to him how he should feel or how he should not feel. Neither can he dictate this to himself. We cannot change his feelings by telling him to feel one way and not to feel another. Neither can he change his own feelings by telling himself to change them. He feels what he feels and that is that.

As we've seen, he can, however, sometimes come to feel differently as he faces his feelings and gets them off his chest in ways that essentially preserve his sense of integrity and selfrespect.

To this end--

There can be no restrictions on how he feels. On the other hand, there must be restrictions on how he acts.
To acquire control he must learn:

To recognize how he feels;
To express his feelings as they are and for what they are

But--

To express them only in certain WAYS

at certain TIMES

and

in certain PLACES.

"We've begun to see that griping is important, Jim. And we want to hear how you feel. But we will not tolerate your showing your resentment by slamming doors when your great Aunt Patricia's here! There's a better way of doing it and a better time and place."

Your teen-ager wants to know that his feelings are natural, not monstrous, so that he may know he is not monstrous in having them. Furthermore, he wants to learn how to handle his feelings as much as you want him to. He wants to find that he doesn't have to obey that impulse. That there are things he can do to bring it more readily under control.

How to help him, that's still the big question--to bring out his feelings freely, honestly and safely in acts he CONTROLS.

"Gee, you're swell," says Johnny to his father who has found how to do it. "You 'most always understand that I simply gotta feel the way I feel I gotta. But, when it's important, you see to it that I gotta do as I should."