Like the seasons of the calendar, there are seasons of life. When children are babies and toddlers, there is sleep deprivation, worry and pure amazement. Elementary school children bring enormous learning, busy days and nights running from soccer, to drama to band, and close involvement in their small world. Their world expands in middle school, teachers expect more student involvement and less parent involvement. Middle schoolers are sometimes little adults, sometimes little kids often in the same 20-minute period. As parents we are amazed at their maturity and relish the closeness that resurfaces. Then adolescence hits. And it – is – not – pretty. We no longer recognize our children, and as if by overnight, we don’t recognize ourselves. Apparently, we have no experience, no intelligence, and absolutely, positively no ability to be the least bit cool. Overnight we became largely irrelevant to our teens.
How do we manage this new parenting territory? First, be cooool even if you don’t feel cool or calm, pretend. Second, don’t talk a lot. Right, seems like odd advice from a psychologist to talk less but hear me out here. Think of your teenager as a deer, shhhhhh, don’t scare them or they will bolt. In fact, maybe don’t make eye contact, it might scare them, too. Resist the urge to fill the silence. Allow your teen the time and quiet to process their thoughts. Remember that your teen cannot talk if you are talking. Do something simple that you do together: watch your teen play a videogame, watch YouTube together, watch a television show or movie, make cookies, shop, run an errand, walk the dog. These moments together set the stage for getting your teenager to talk to you like they used to. If you aren’t sure about this, try it, see what happens. But there are some other shifts in parenting to be effective with teens.
Listen and wait. When your teen brings something up, listen without judgement. If you critique, criticize, or correct, you have lost their attention and shut them down. This is the time in their lives to learn to think and feel for themselves. Next we need to hear what they are feeling and reflect it back: “you sound frustrated,” “I imagine you are really mad,” “boring happens to everyone,” “it’s sad when you lose a friend.” Do not try to make it better. You can’t. Feelings have to felt and if you want it to be better, you are robbing your teen of learning how to be with their feelings. Sometimes really intense feelings.
If you have made time for them in the past, this is the time to hang out. They might say a few things about what is happening in their lives. Teenagers do not have big talks, only short conversations. That is what they can tolerate. Be available even if you need to stay up later or get up early. If you want your teenager to talk with you, you have to be available to them not vice versa. Drive time often works well: no eye contact, relatively quiet, trapped in a car. Remember don’t fill the silence!
When invited to talk, share your own experience when you were a teen. Teens do not have the learning history you do, and it does feel like it will never get better to your teen. Say things like, “I’m on your side,” “There is nothing we can’t get through together, absolutely nothing.” Don’t say “I was a teenager too!” “I know how you feel.” The work of the teenager is independence, physical and emotional growth. Don’t fight it, roll with it.
If you are a worrier, now is the time to trust the time invested in your child up until this point. If your brain tells you, “I only have a few years left with this child…” consciously talk to yourself and your worried thought to provide an alternative that is less anxiety-provoking: “Trust all the previous years,” “This is temporary,” “This is what is supposed to happen, it will be okay.”
Do yourself a favor; enjoy this season, and all the seasons that parenting brings (even adolescence!)
Resources:
Cowart, J. (2017). The ABCs of coping with anxiety using CBT to manage stress and anxiety. Williston, VT: Crown House Publishing Company, LLC
Faber, A. & Mazlish, A. (2005). How to talk so teens will listen and listen so teens will talk. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Newton, S. (2007). Help! My teenager is an alien: The everyday situation guide for parents. London: Penguin Books, Ltd