It’s never been easy being a teenager. You’re trying to figure out the world, figure out yourself, figure out the people around and doing all of this while dealing with insane changes to your hormones and life in general.
Shout out to teens who have so much to try to navigate, a lot of pressure, and a lot of uncertainty. Not to mention dealing with the fact that it feels like even thought all parents were once teenagers, many parents seem to forget what it’s like to be a teenager or to deal with teenage mood swings.
Here’s Why Teenagers Have Mood Swings:
Teenagers always seem to have a lot going on with them. Trust me, most teens are super sensitive to things and might get mad for reasons that don’t make sense to you.
Why does this happen? Well, the main culprit is their hormones. Mood swings in teenagers are typically caused by their raging hormones which end up stressing them.
If we’re being honest, mood swings in teenage girls are worse than mood swings in teenage males. The girls are softer and have stronger emotions hence they appear more moody than the males.
The major causes of mood swings in adolescence nowadays include:
School Stress
Does your teen always complain of being overwhelmed with school work? This may be because your teen is currently juggling too many things at the same time. College preparation, extracurricular activities or hard subjects typically cause mood swings in teenagers.
When your teenagers have too much school work to do, you can help by relieving them of some house chores so that they’ll have more time to study.
Hormonal Changes
Like I said earlier, this is the main cause of mood swings in adolescence. During this period of their lives, they may experience significant hormonal shifts that can affect their mood.
As your teenagers mature, they’ll become irritable, gloomy and may be frequently frustrated. All these are due to the chemical changes taking place in their bodies. So don’t worry, it’s a phase that’ll eventually pass.
Social Life
Well, social media presence and friendships are the highlights of teenage life. Most teens feel the need to fit in with a certain group of people and hate the feeling of being left behind.
Whenever they feel rejected by their desired group, they’ll start hating themselves and behaving strangely. Mood swings will prevail when teens lack healthy friendships and social lives.
Trauma
If your teen recently faced a difficult situation that left a scar in his heart, he’ll probably be having mood swings for a while. It could either be as a result of physical or emotional trauma.
Things like bullying in school or on social media can traumatize your teen. Plus we can’t discuss teens and mood swings without mentioning family problems. They’re infamous for traumatizing teenagers and wrongly shaping their view of the world.
A teen from a broken or toxic home may have constant mood swings because of the trauma such family has left on the teenager.
Other causes of mood swings in teenagers include:
- Finding their identity
- Independence
- Cyber bullying
- Relationships
- Peer pressure
- Academic failure
- Poor eating habits
- Lack of sleep
- Fatigue
How can I help my teen with mood swings?
Although there’s nothing that’ll completely eliminate mood swings in adolescence, there are ways you can help your teen.
The first thing you should do is to communicate with them. Do this with love and in a reassuring manner. Don’t threaten your teens because they refuse to open up to you, instead try to earn their trust.
Remind them that they’re not alone and that you’re willing to help. Also, encourage them to exercise more and help them practice healthy sleep habits.
Feed your teenagers foods or drinks that have calming effects when they’re really worked up. Good food works well in cheering people up and so does a good night’s rest.
Offer some room for their feelings and their emotions, even when they’re messy. If your teen trusts that there is room for their emotions, they can work on those things and feel confident reaching out for help when they need it.
Why do teenagers have mood swings? It can vary from teen to teen, of course, but everything we’ve discussed in this article are the most common reasons. Every teen is different, so their mood swings can come from different combinations of the aforementioned things, but it usually has something to do with what we’ve covered.
Talk to them, try to understand where their moods are coming from, help them understand that it’s normal and help them figure out how to cope as best you can. Feeling supported is a huge, huge thing for teenagers in building confidence and having the courage to explore the world, learn, and become the person they want to be.
