Young people going through the process of adolescence need what they have always needed from their parents. They want your love, your support, your encouragement, your nurture, acceptance and attention.
The difference for teenagers is that while younger children need their parents to be in the lead, teenagers need you to be by their side. When it comes to dealing with teenagers, we may use much of the same skills as we did when they were younger. These include being encouraging and enabling, allowing children to learn from their mistakes rather than ‘showing them how to do it’, accepting they might do it differently from you, acknowledging and respecting their choices, following the child’s lead rather than jumping in with ideas, being in the present and spending time focused on your teenager.

What teens need

All of us need to feel safe and protected, to have our physical requirements for food, clothing, warmth, healthcare met. One of the flash points with teenagers may be a conflict between parents wish to fulfil these needs and a teenager's apparent desire to frustrate or be unrealistic about them.
Teenagers may defy your attempts to keep them safe, by staying out late, running around with ‘bad company’, engaging in behaviour that you may feel is risky. They may go head to head with you on everything. Boring things like dental and health checks may be something they suddenly turn their noses up about.
The fact that they become contrary, however, doesn't mean they don’t want you to continue caring and continue to act on their behalf. What would help would be for you to discuss these things with them and meet in the middle. When you are clear about what is your concern and what you’d like to happen but are prepared to hear their point of view, you can get somewhere.
What teenagers want as much as when they were little is your love, your care, your respect and your attention. They want to be noticed by you. Too often, because teenagers are being moody and withdraw into themselves, we respond by ignoring them. Ignoring bad behaviour and not rising to it is one thing; ignoring the person who is annoying us is another. And it can become a pattern, where they mope so we ignore them so they mope even more, convinced we don’t care.