Here's a news flash: Parents and teen-agers think differently and have different jobs to do.

Having said that, just what are the jobs of parent and teen-ager?

Let's take a closer look at these differing and often conflicting jobs. We'll also look at some ``job tips'' for each one.

The teen's job:

Part of the job of teens is to begin to break away, defining themselves in ways separate from the family. This means they begin to pull away from the family and move toward the peer group.

In developmental terms, this is very normal. It also can be very noisy. Optimally, while teens are defining themselves as different from their family, they are also learning to be more and more in charge of themselves.

Tips for teens:

Pick your battles. There are lots of ways to go through the teen years besides kicking and screaming. Every issue doesn't have to be a battle for independence.

Treat your parents like guides instead of enemies that are trying to control your life. Even though times are radically different, your parents have walked this way before. It was Mark Twain who said, ``When I was a boy of 17, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in just four years.''

Earn your parent's trust. In families, trust is like video games at the mall. With video games, the more tokens you have, the more you can play. In families, the more trust you have, the more you can do.

The parent's job:

Here's a story that describes the parent's job. A few years ago, as I painted our house, I watched a bird building a nest in the vines around our mailbox. Each day, the mother bird first brought twigs, and then moss and paper to soften the nest for her baby birds. As the days passed after the baby birds were born, I noticed that the mother began to remove the moss and paper, and soon after that, the birds were flying and on their own, off to create their own families.

In this story we can see that the job of parents is to grow successfully functioning children who can then leave the nest and create their own lives in the world.

Tips for parents:

Learn to pick your battles also. Every issue is not a contest of wills or a definition of your worth as a parent.

Give your kids enough rope, not to hang themselves but to grow themselves.

Set boundaries and limits from day one. If you don't set and enforce limits on toddlers and children, what in the world makes you think they will obey curfew when they are teen-agers with a car?

In rough times, love them for who they are, not for what they do.

But how do you know if you are doing it right, you may wonder. I believe Robert Fulghum, author of ``All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,'' has some wisdom to offer us: ``You will never really know what kind of parent you were, or if you did it right or wrong. Never. And you will worry about this and them as long as you live. But when your children have children and you watch them do what they do, you will have part of an answer.''

Jeff Herring is a licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical hypnotherapist. Write to him c/o Tallahassee Democrat, P.O. Box 990, Tallahassee Fla. 32302-0990.

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