Parenting Strategies For Teens
Parenting my teen is harder than I expected. Am I doing something wrong?
There’s an expectation that nurturing, loving, and respecting your children comes naturally when parenting. And for some people, it does. But when those teenage years hit, relationship dynamics become more complicated. Nurturing, loving, and respecting your teenage child looks and feels different than it did when they were small.
When as a parent, you are are faced with the stressors that come with providing for a family; the schedules, financial difficulties, arguments, illnesses, and more, it feels overwhelming and can easily result in a short fuse or an outburst you regret. You might have every intention to utilize challenging situations as a chance to connect, teach, and empathize. Yet, you lack the bandwidth and patience when the moment presents itself.
Teens feel this way too. The modern-day world asks a lot from your teenager. School, social activities, societal expectations, and extracurriculars all combine to create stress and anxiety for your teen. They may also be lacking the emotional bandwidth to cope adequately. Teens need emotional support and guidance through this major time of transition in life, and the way you handle these changes plays a major role in their development.
When you are feeling less confident in your abilities to do this, our Therapy Group for Parents of Teens can help.
What Is My Teenage Child Going Through?
You might be thinking, “I don’t know what they’re thinking about most of the time, they don’t talk to me, how can I understand them and help them deal with these changes?”
Well, Dr. David Elkind - an American child psychologist and author who has focused his research on cognitive, perceptual, and social development in adolescents, as well as the causes and effects of stress on them, created a theory about what teenagers are going through. He says that adolescents go through a stage of self-absorption that leads them to see the world only through their own perspective. He calls it “Adolescent Egocentrism.” It’s the belief that everyone around them is focused on them, their appearance, and/or something they said or did, which impacts the way they socialize, handle their emotions, and make decisions.
There are two simple concepts from this theory that might help to get to know your teenage child a bit better.
Personal Fable
Developmentally, teenagers believe that they are special and unique, so much so, that there is a denial that certain things will happen to them even if they are putting themselves at risk.
Example: “I am not going to get pregnant”, “I will not become addicted to anything”, “I won’t get hurt like they do,” “It won’t happen to me”
2. Imaginary Audience
Teenagers often believe that they are under constant and close observation by classmates, family, and even strangers. Another name for this is “spotlight effect,” the idea being that they are under a spotlight and the attention of others is on them. Your teen might become extremely self-conscious about how they are perceived by others, sometimes even developing social anxiety or depression if they don’t feel that they are meeting the standards created by society or by themselves.
Even if as a parent, you believe this concept is silly or extreme, understanding that it can feel very real and even threatening to your teenage child can help you empathize and connect with them.
It’s hard being a teenager. From school stress to social anxiety, complicated relationships, anxiety, mood swings, and major transitions, it can help to have professional support.
In order to understand your child, as a parent, it is important to make an effort to be aware of and intentional about the values, expectations, and factors that are shaping your child's life at home, at school, and in their community. This background information helps you provide meaningful, relevant, and respectful learning experiences for them and for your family.
My Teenager Won’t Talk To Me…
Have you thought about the way you frame the questions you ask them? Are you asking them to share their thoughts and feelings with you, or does it feel like an interrogation?
Teens HIGHLY value their privacy. It’s a normal aspect of their healthy development as they differentiate into adulthood. We want to honor this, AND it can negatively impact our communication with them. Teens realize that they don’t have to share all their thoughts, desires, secrets, and daily life details with you, especially if they think you won’t approve or they might feel embarrassed or judged.
Are you sharing your thoughts, feelings, and goals with them? Do they know who you are as a person aside from being their parent? Being mindful not to overshare, it can help to have a more balanced conversation where the focus and pressure isn’t solely on their feelings and experiences.
Occasionally, parents tend to hyper fixate on receiving an answer to a question, or information about their child’s school work, friendships, plans, etc., in a way that is “near-sighted.” Near-sightedness refers to the experience of dismissing the long-term parenting goals in the priority of receiving immediate gratification. When we are focused on knowing or being right, we don’t see the long-term effects of those exchanges on the relationship in that moment.
So, can you see beyond your own desire?
My #1 Tip for Parenting Teens
When your child DOES come to you with an issue, a thought, a feeling, or concern, first ask the question “Do you want me to just listen, or to help you?” Nine times out of ten, the child isn’t seeking help from you. They simply want to feel heard and supported. Offering help can undermine their intelligence, their independence, and discourage them from seeking you out again next time.
When you honor your child’s answer to this question, it helps them feel respected and safe in communicating with you, and encourages them to keep doing it. This, in turn, helps you feel closer to them naturally, making you less likely to interrogate them or appear overbearing to them in the future when you just want to understand what is happening in their life.
Why One Child Seems More “Difficult” Than Another
Have you noticed that you parent your children slightly differently? It’s probably because you’ve learned that they respond differently. Each child brings their unique personality, strengths, weaknesses, and attachment style. It is not atypical to have to tailor your parent approach to accommodate this.
The important piece is acknowleding that these traits in one child vs. another are not “good” or “bad” per se, but just “different.” When we label them as good or bad, we bring comparison and judgment into the parenting equation. Comparison only breeds resentment and can lead to your teenager feeling discouragement, distance, and disapproval from you.
If you find it easier to parent one child vs. another, let this serve as a reminder that it speaks more to your own strengths in a specific area as a parent, rather than to your child’s weaknesses or shortcomings.
As a parent, knowing your strengths, weaknesses, triggers, and blind spots, is invaluable. It helps provide more opportunities to support your children effectively while maintaining a healthy and respectful relationship with them. This is what we teach in our Therapy Group for Parents of Teens.
How Can I Feel Closer To My Teenager?
Sometimes parents and children have a particularly hard time seeing eye to eye and interacting with one another.
Working with a family therapist, or being part of a support group, helps rebuild communication skills and positive family dynamics. Our style of family therapy involves building respect and boundaries in the home environment by examining relationships and communication patterns.
The goal is for all family members to feel respected, heard, and valued. With the creation of a safe space within our sessions, family members (especially children and teens) feel that they can explore their feelings and thoughts in a way that they are typically unable to.
Parent Coaching Group in Raleigh, NC
Our therapy groups help you find a sense of community with others facing similar challenges. We offer a Therapy Group for Parents of Teens that provides:
✔ Effective and research-backed parenting interventions that get to the root of teenage problem-behaviors.
✔ Psychoeducation on typical teenage psychosocial development vs. mental health concerns.
✔ Resilience-building (because parenting a teenager is hard!).
✔ Tips for communicating with your child in meaningful ways to prevent undesirable outcomes, such as academic failure, substance abuse, social isolation, etc.
✔ A safe space for parents to connect with others experiencing similar challenges when it comes to parenting their teen.
The group leaders are therapists at Your Journey Through who work with teens directly and enjoy meeting with parents to discuss strategies, tools, and resources that can be used to improve the parent-child relationship and tackle teenage problem behavior. With older children, Parent-Child Relational Therapy might be most appropriate. This is a form of family therapy focusing directly on the relationship, where the child is incorporated into the session. During this form of therapy, the therapists acts as a “coach” and helps guide communication productively.
Sometimes it takes neutral ground and a trusted facilitator to have healing and meaningful interactions again.
