THETEEN ROLLER COASTER

Drama, passion, silence, confusion. Parents and kids struggle to navigate thehighs andlowsofthe teenageyears.

STORY BY PATRICK MAY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM GENSHEIMER

It is a dance of both beautiful and baffling intensity, the almost exotic synergy between teenagers and their parents as both sides try to navigate the emotional minefield of adolescence. There is mourning and a sense of loss. There is hope and the frequent quickening of the heart.

And then, there are the hormones. Lots and lots of hormones.

Through this thicket of high drama, parents and teens wander together, often clumsily, always yin and yang. The protective guardians try to let go even as they struggle to hold on; the anxious youth, trying to forge an emerging identity, awkwardly shake off the shell of childhood and barrel like crazy people into adulthood.

“A friend of mine likened the onset of puberty to being hit by a truck — all of a sudden, everything is different,” wrote one frustrated parent on the Berkeley Parents Network, which sometimes serves as a frightening forum for parental frustration. “The good news,’’ another parent responded, “is that they do return. My sister, who teaches high school, tells mothers of her students, ‘A monster is going to take over your daughter for five years, but at the end of those five years the monster leaves and you get your daughter back’ ”

It can feel like a switch gets flipped in that 13th year Friends are in, and parents are out. Doors slam, and conversations stop. The silence is even stronger these days, now that whispered telephone gossip has been re- placed by social media platforms that make it easier to go incognito: Snapchat and Facebook, WhatsApp and Kik, texting secrets late into the night.

ABIJA ABBADASARI CAME from India with her husband in 1998 to Silicon Valley, where they’re raising two kids in San Jose, including 13-year-old Smarana. She says dealing with her teens has often been “a roller coaster of emotion for me.”

She and her husband recently agreed to let their daughter have a smartphone, but it was a rocky road to reach the decision. Sometimes, such as after a recent refusal to let Smarana attend a school dance, things can get edgy and the teen-parent connection seems to short-circuit.

“She was very upset, slamming the door, crying,’’ says Abbadasari “She said to me, ‘This is the last dance at school, and I won’t see any of my friends anymore.’ It was a lot of drama.’’

For her part, Smarana says that while she and her parents “are pretty open with each other, I do talk more to my friends because they’re my age. There’s a difference between friends and parents. It would be a little weird’’ to think of her parents as her friends But she says communication is key to the teen-parent relationship, and she enjoys that back-andforth with hers. “Thankfully, my parents know to trust me’’

Bob Casanova, a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Bay Area, says there’s an explanation for all the drama

“Psychologist Erik Erikson established the psychological stages of development,” he says “This stage, from 12 to 18 year[s] old, is called ‘identity vs. role confusion,’ and it’s when kids start asking that existential question of, ‘Who am I?’ ” Today, he says, there “are lots of new forces, like social me- dia and sexting, and all that puts even more pressure on kids.”

A survey by the Pew Research Center last year found that 24 percent of teens go online “almost constantly,” thanks to the proliferation of smartphones. More than 90 percent of teens, defined as those aged 13 to 17, said they were online daily, while more than half were online several times a day. Facebook, the study showed, was the most-used social media site among American teens, with 71 percent of all teens using the platform. Half used Instagram, and 40 percent were on Snapchat.

All that digital dialogue and photo-swapping throws fuel on the fires burning within these identity-seeking young adults, while their worried and sometimes angry parents look on in bewilderment

SHEPHERDING ONE’S children through their teenage years can be one of the most daunting parental duties of all. It’s a messy, heart-wrenching slog — and that’s on the good days.

“As a school counselor in the East Bay, I saw a lot of parents actually fearing the coming teen years,” says counselor Amy Specter, the mother of a 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, and who estimates she has worked with more than 1,000 kids in her career. Sure enough, when the teen years arrived, parents got frustrated.

“Parents would come into my office and say things like, ‘I give up. I feel disempowered and no longer have any inroads into the way my own child thinks’ ”

And while some kids veer off into a sort of self-imposed emotional quarantine, suffering from problems that include depression, anorexia or even suicidal thoughts, other teens suffer from trying desperately to excel.

“It’s tough enough being a teenager, but especially here in the Bay Area, where you’re sur- rounded by really high achievers,” says Sydney Brown, a high school freshman from Mill Valley.

Sydney and her mom, Carolyn Carpeneti, an entrepreneur and author, both stress the importance of communication in navigating the teen years.

“My motto,” Carpeneti says, “is to be curious but not critical. And what’s really worked for me raising my son and daughter was taking notice of my kids’ passions. With my son it was airplanes, and with my daughter it’s scuba diving, and sharing that always gave us something to talk about, especially in those years when you’re lucky to even get an ‘uh’ or an ‘ugh’ out of them.”

While Sydney says she and her mom have a close relationship, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re best friends. “My mom gives me advice on friends, on boys, on what to wear But she’ll also give me space when I ask for it,” she said.

Those are common themes in the teen-parent dialogue: Parents should give kids their input, even if it seems like they’re hitting a wall. Kids will internalize their parents’ values, so be conscious of the values you’re projecting, and be aware of the many fine lines that exist when hypersensitive teenagers are involved.

“Our kids are extensions of ourselves, and it’s very difficult for parents to separate themselves from their children and the paths they’re choosing to take,’’ says Michelle Skeen, a psychologist in San Francisco with three kids, including a 19-year-old daughter To learn where their teens are at “means truly listening to their kids with an open mind and an open heart. But as soon as they interrupt to interject their advice or think they know better, the kids will push back. And that’s when you’ll start to have problems”