Moody Teenagers are Normal Teenagers

Parents of teenagers all go through a very similar problem when facing their “children”. Be it your son or daughter brushing you off at the simplest of questions, tantrums being thrown, a fairly rapid change of hairstyles, clothing and sense of identity. All teenagers and parents of teenagers go through these many factors. 

 

These types of symptoms are all normal amongst teenagers, it’s not something for you as a parent to panic about. Your child is most likely afflicted by a common condition known as moodiness.

 

Researchers have just published a study on teen moods that offers parents a simple strategy that will work in the majority of cases: Wait it out.

According to the study, although teens face a few years of heightened emotions, due to raging hormones and new life experiences, teenagers learn to regulate their moods as they age.

 

For their study, a group of researchers from institutions across the Netherlands enlisted 474 middle, to high-income Dutch adolescents with ages ranging from 13 to 18. To monitor teen emotional stability, the study’s authors asked the participants to rate their moods using online diaries over the course of a three-week period during the school year.

 

To measure changes over time, the teens continued to record their moods over the same period for five consecutive years.

 

As they grow into young adults, teens’ ability to cope with emotions such as happiness, anger and sadness increases over time. Although there was some discrepancy between the genders, with girls showing more emotional variability with boys, both genders stabilized their moods at a similar rate over time.

There was one emotion, however, that didn’t fit the overall pattern: anxiety.

While anxiety dipped as teenagers aged, as they came close to adulthood, it increased again.

 

And herein lies a potential cause for concern for parents. While certainly some anxiety is to be expected from teens, particularly as they get older and eventually leave their childhood homes to pursue college or a career, excessive anxious behaviour could translate into a mood disorder as an adult.