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iQuestions Faculty, Greg Smalley 
 
 
Question: 
 
My teenager and I seem to fight all the time. Is this normal, or is 
something wrong? 
 
Answer: 
 
I have so many friends, as parents, talk to me about their children as 
they’ve gone from children to adolescents, and where this perfect child 
before rarely had problems now all of a sudden hit the teenage years, 
and now we have all this conflict.  
 
I remember one mom actually asking me, “Are we normal? Is there 
something wrong? Am I doing something wrong? Is there something 
now wrong with my child? What is going on?” 
 
Well, let me tell you this: conflict for a teenager is extremely helpful. 
There’s actually something that goes on in the midst of conflict that 
teenagers need. If they’re not doing this, then it’s going to set them 
up for some trouble later on in life.  
 
But, again, we usually view conflict as bad, and “we should avoid it, 
and how do we not have it”—but actually, my hope is that you can 
begin to understand that as you go through with conflict with your 
teenager, you are actually helping them do something very important. 
 
Of course, I wish my dad would have understood this better, as I was 
a teenager. I remember one time—talk about getting into conflict with 
my parents as a teenager—we were driving one time, my parents had 
an RV, and they used to love camping, and my dad was a speaker, so 
we’d be driving all over the place, and we’d go along in this camper. 
 
 
And so, it was my dad and I sitting in the front seat, and for whatever 
reason, he sort of brought up some issues that had been going on—I 
was probably about fifteen years old—and we started to talk about 
some of these things. He was trying to give me some advice or 
encourage me or challenge me to not do this, and it just hit my 
buttons, and I’m reacting to him, saying things, getting angry, and 
that hit his buttons, and he starts getting angry with me, and all of a 
sudden we’re just in this massive argument.  
 
I tell you what, it escalated totally out of control. We were somewhere 
in New Mexico, and we were screaming at each other. And he had to 
pull the camper over, because he was so upset, and there was 
something he wanted to say to me—he probably wanted to ring my 
neck—but he’s saying, “I want to say something—and you listen.” And 
I was so mad at him that I wanted to teach him a lesson that that’s 
not okay, that he’s not allowed to talk to me that way.  
 
So, he pulled the camper over, and what did I do? I grabbed the lock, 
unlocked it, and I opened the door, and I ran out of the camper. I 
figured, “I’m just going to run away. I’m going to really teach him.” I 
had no idea where I was going. I ran up over a little hill, jumped a 
fence, went down this valley area, probably a couple hundred yards 
now, by this time, away. I can hear him screaming at me in the 
background.  
 
I’m thinking, “This is going to work. This is going to get his attention. 
He’s going to know he can’t do this to me”—when all of a sudden, I 
started to hear a snorting sound.  
 
And I’m thinking, “That didn’t sound very familiar,” and I kind of 
slowly turned around. Behind me, standing, was a herd of buffalo. 
They were grazing. I don’t know why I didn’t even hear them before, 
but as I came up and over, I was kind of looking back at him. I walked 
right into, staring at this humongous male buffalo. He starts to snort, 
Smalley -2- 
 
 
stomp his foot. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just 
assuming he’s going to trample me any second.  
 
That’s about the time that my dad came right up from behind, and of 
course scared me, and he said, “Don’t move.” And so, he kindly talked 
me through how to back away, and for whatever reason, the buffalo 
never actually charged. 
 
But I’ll never forget that moment of staring, thinking, “Okay, which 
animal do I want to face? The buffalo or my dad?” And of course I was 
glad to see my dad at that point. 
 
We were able to go back to the camper. We were able to sit there and 
really talk through what was going on in a way that felt really good to 
both of us. 
 
But here’s the thing that I really didn’t understand back then that I 
really understand now—and this is what I really try to help parents 
understand—is that conflict serves a key thing, a key role, in the 
adolescents.  
 
Adolescents, teenagers, they need to learn to separate, eventually, in 
an individual way from the family. What that means is they need to 
learn who they are. As they are developing as a young adult, they 
need to begin to work out their beliefs and their values and who they 
are going to be about.  
 
Now, the only way to do that is that something has to begin to propel 
them away from mom and dad, so they can begin to work some of 
these core issues out—and the best way to do that is through conflict. 
It’s not that we want conflict and look for conflict, it’s that conflict with 
teenagers can help them begin to separate, move away from Mom and 
Dad.  
 
Smalley -3- 
 
 
Now, if you see conflict for what it is with your teens, as a way to help 
them begin to move away from the family, then it becomes, “Well, 
then how do we manage this in such a way”—don’t shy away from 
conflict with your teen, but how can you do that in a way that feels 
good to both of you. 
 
That’s when I would encourage you to sit down with your teenager. 
Say, “I know that you and I are going to get into issues, and that’s 
okay, I know you need to do this as you start to move away from our 
family and figure out what you’re about, your beliefs, your values. How 
can we do that, though, in a way that feels good to you and to me?”  
 
Talk about some important rules. You know, maybe there’s a way in 
which you refuse to yell and scream at each other. You’re not going to 
do it that way—you’re going to honor one another through your words 
and in your actions.  
 
Whatever kinds of things you talk about that would be important, 
again, ask, “What can I do, Honey, with you, as you get upset and we 
deal with issues? What’s a way I could do that so feels good to you? 
How can we work through this issue and manage this issue?”  
 
I tell you, the beauty of it is that, again, conflict is not easy. You’re 
going to go through it. See it, though, first and foremost as an 
opportunity for your child to move away and away and away into who 
really they were created to be, their unique values and issues. 
 
But then do that in a way that feels good to both of you.  
 
 
 
Smalley -4- 
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