Congratulations! You’re A New Teen Parent
Congratulations you are the proud parent of a teen! A sure way of knowing this is the silence that now follows after your questions, or maybe it’s the tense body that you hug or kiss, that is, if you can find your teen. One of the hardest things teen parents do is manage the hurt they feel when their teen shuts them out. When you try to enter your teen’s world, you are met with a wrinkled face that grunts, groans, and may even roll their eyes. What a parent does at this point is very important maybe the most important thing you will do in parenting your teen.
Parents confronted with this surly teen at the end of a hard day, in a challenging economy, with a mortgage that is struggling to be paid may say, “Forget this. Do us all a favor and stay in your room.”
BUT
If you have it in you to take a breath, to conjure some humor, put your arms out for a hug, you communicate to your teen how much you want to be there. A colleague Dr. John Duffy calls this, Availability. You can check out his blog here. He tells this great story of a teen who was so hurt by his father’s criticisms and “stay in your room” attitude that the only emotion he seemed able to convey towards his Dad was anger. This teen yelled, “He left first!”
Not what you would think? Parents can sometimes think teens are so interested in hanging out with their friends that they don’t want to hang out with their parents. This is not true. Your teen should absolutely be hangin’ out with friends. Teens need to experience relationships with other people, but in the end, your teen wants you. They want their parents. Keep this in the back of your head, hopefully it will allow you to take their antics less personally because they just want you to want them back. For other common misunderstandings in parent-teen communication check out my post 11 Teen Parenting Dos and Don’ts.
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