"When I work with teenagers and their families, one of the things I usually notice is that it seems to be really hard for families to make the adjustments from dealing with young children, to dealing with adolescents/ young adults. There are a lot of things that are different, and it takes a while to "get the hang of it". A lot of people have written a lot of books and done research on the number of stages people go through when growing up...some say 5, some say 7 or more...
I'm kind of simple-minded, so I think of it as being two main stages that matter a lot... The first stage goes from the time the child is born until s/he's about 12 or 13, whenever the child starts adolescence (mention an age that is younger than the oldest child, or younger than the adolescent who's having problems). The second stage goes from then until the child/adolescent, young adult by then, is out in the real world, on his/her own.
In the first stage, the child's job is to learn how to get through the day without getting killed--without getting run over by a truck, spilling boiling water all over himself, eating things that will kill him, etc. Basically a pretty simple job. The parents' job in this stage is fairly simple, too: Get the kid to do what he's told. Direct feedback, direct commands (Look both ways before crossing.., don't play with matches, etc.). That's what happens, kids learn it and adults learn it. Then stage two.
Now, all of a sudden, the rules are different. And the final outcome of this stage, the job description, is that adolescents have to learn how to become adults: how to develop good judgment, how to disagree about things safely, how to stand their ground, and how to get along with their boss, well enough to keep their job. It no longer works for the child to blindly obey orders; the child must make his/her own mistakes in order to learn the coping skills they'll need in the world. There's a saying, "Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."
I notice that this stage is sometimes quite difficult for parents, because we all would like to protect children from bad experiences. But at the same time, we know we can't take care of everything, or the child will turn out to be a 50 year-old adolescent, who never learned how to become an adult. So the job becomes one of: trying to ensure that the teenager has the opportunity to make social mistakes and use bad judgment, without endangering anyone's life, and hopefully without doing things that really limit their options, like getting addicted to drugs or alcohol, getting AIDS, becoming a parent they're ready to... (drop the "becoming a parent" phrase if you suspect the teen may already be involved in a pregnancy].
And just like everything else an adolescent does, he first tries the "new territory" at home. Since learning assertiveness- and disagreement- skills is one of the first tasks to come up, the adolescent tries testing those limits at home, with people that he knows will still love him. Of course, he starts out the same way that a young child does: by saying "No!" (either literally or figuratively) to requests or expectations of others.
At first that looks like he has no respect for others...and people don't like that way of talking, and he gets feedback about it--later, he becomes more skilled at gently refusing requests. And gradually he learns. If he didn't have these opportunities to learn while still an adolescent, then he'd end up spending his adult life in prison "because somebody told me to do it", or being taken advantage of by peers or employers.
So (to parents), what you have to remember, when your son does something that you don't like, is that he is learning how to become an adult, and needs to have the opportunity to make the mistake AND the opportunity to face the consequences, in order to learn. And you continue to do your job of ensuring that your son has the level of freedom that he can handle, so he can continue to learn to make useful mistakes, safely.
And (to adolescent) of course, you remember that your parents are still adjusting to the changes, because you're growing up. They need to learn how to be parents of a teenager, and you're the one who has to train them. Just like any other training job: be sure to reward them for the things they do right (spontaneously doing un-assigned chores is one reward that parents love!) and have patience with them. You can even train them to think of you as a responsible young adult--it all depends on what you do, and the ways you show that responsibility in your behavior."