Dealing with a teen who uses violence to resolve conflict is difficult. A violent teen often doesn’t understand how to handle his or her emotions, and the natural human response is to either fight or flight. While you may prefer that your teen flee from the confrontation, with all of the peer pressure to fight, that coping mechanism often wins.
The key to helping your teen with violent behavior is to use resources. These resources offer information you can use to help your teen understand how to deal with difficult situations appropriately. The following are some of the best resources online to help you navigate this hard stage of adolescence.
HelpGuide.org
This is a trustworthy, valuable resource with a great deal of information on how to help troubled teens. You will find the site provides many tips on how to approach many situations typical of violent teens. The Helping Troubled Teens page is a good place to start.
National Health Service
This UK-based website provides comfort and tips on how to deal with aggressive teenagers. Statistics such as 60% of calls the Parentline Plus hotline receives are about verbally aggressive teenagers, and 30% of them are about physically aggressive teens, help you feel less alone. The insight and knowledge you can gain from this site is valuable.
Empowering Parents
This is another excellent resource for parents. You will find expert articles, blog written by parents, behavior charts to print and use, and programs you can purchase to help you even more with your troubled teen. Kim Abraham, LMSW and Marney Studaker-Cordner, LMSW published an article entitled “How to Manage Violent Behavior in Children and Teens.” Read it to get started with the Empowering Parents website.
ADDitude
This website caters to parents who have children and teens suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disorder (LD), and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). The Violent, Defiant Children and Teens: Parent-Training Programs that Help Change Behavior article is perfect for parents. It explains why children/teens are aggressive, and how to help them manage it better. After some browsing, you will likely find many other articles that will help you as you teach coping skills.
Liahona Academy
Our website has a lot of great information. The blog is added to regularly with tips on how to best help your teen. To get started, read Contributing Factors to Teen Boys with Violent Behavior.
Additional Support Offline
If you use the above resources and don’t feel they helped, you may want to consider a residential treatment program for your teen. Our programs are successful at changing teen behavior. You can learn more about them on our website or by calling 1-855-587-1416.
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