REASONS OF CONFLICTS OF SENIOR PUPILS WITH THEIR PARENTS:TO THE PROBLEM OF FAMILY ADAPTATION
Authors: Hlavinska Elina 
Published: September 2022

The psychological determinants for the formation of harmonious family relationships were highlighted: empathically oriented communication, humanistic style of children’s upbringing, their high level of self-esteem, smoothing the difference between “Me-ideal” and “Me-real”, positive attitude from others and self-respect.
Based on the results of our observations, which we carried out in 2021 in the educational process of educational activities of secondary schools № 15 of t. Rivne, we can exactly conclude that for senior school age is quite characterized of emotional fluctuations in mood. Some pupils were also characterized (in some cases) by neurotic and protest, sometimes by aggressive behavior, but these were isolated cases. We have diagnosed that tense situations are arisen between parents and children from time to time. However, again, our observations show that maladaptive family relationships are never caused by a single cause. For example, parents’ sexual problems have never been the predominant cause of maladaptive family relationships between parents and children, but aggressive tendencies caused by parents’ sexual problems often exacerbate children’s nervous and aggressive disputes with their parents. And even if young people find a way out of these disputes in some a way, in any case, the attitude towards parents remains negative, as, incidentally, the attitude of parents towards children (hair, clothes, hobbies, leisure, etc.).
We identify as the most important topics of conflict of schoolchildren such as:
- young people want to communicate, above all, with their peers, to defend their own interests and have weak parental control;
- compared to adolescence, the importance of hairstyles and clothes increases significantly among high school students (the conflict is caused by the mismatch between the standards of high school students and the generation of parents). For high school students, the style of hair and clothing were associated with the relevant youth subculture, which was partly seen as some “message” of the adult world;
- disagreements with parents and conflict situations on eroticism and sex occur at the age of 12-16, much earlier than in previous generations;
- the time spent by high school students at school has been increased significantly. Conflicts between high school students and their parents about schooling are inaccuracies in homework, low school performances, and, at the same time, senior pupils do not have enough time to help their parents with household chores. However, the most important causes of family conflicts are children’s smoking and their use of psychoactive substances. The latter more often there were aggravating relationships between boys and their parents (57% of male pupils and 32% of female ones). There are almost no differences between boys and girls when it comes to smoking (32% of pupils are male and 30% of them are female), and other problems are more common among girls.
Senior pupils name the following causes of conflicts with their parents:
- great differences in moral and value frames, attitudes and scripts of children and adults, especially in the period of personal growth (parents and children are also diagnosed with differences in personal experience, perception of the world, assessments of their own ethnic and national identity);
- lack of clear, consistent boundaries of the transition from awareness of child dependence to the freedom of an adult;
- lack of clear, consistent rules for parents to build family relationships, which significantly weaken parental power during the transition of children from childhood to adolescence;
- psychological and social differences in characteristics between parents and children. Pupils explain the latter with different ideas of schoolchildren about themselves, their own future, the formation of personally and professionally significant experience of adults. The latter also laments the children’s lack of perception of the evaluative and control role of adults in relations to the needs of pupils in achieving sovereignty;
- mental overload of both parents and children and, as a result, – a change in scenarios and scenarios plans of family relationships.