Be more you so they can be more them
As featured in Montana Parent Magazine
So your kid is a teenager. You’ve moved past the days of worrying about skinned knees and runny noses and been thrust into those of coping with irrational emotions and a fierce need for independence. Cars, sports, drugs, romance, music, socializing, video games - these are just some of the things that your teen might become passionately interested in to the exclusion of everything else important. Navigating your child through these years is extremely difficult because at the same time that they are distancing themselves more and more from you, they are engaging in increasingly risky behavior. What once looked like an innocent hobby now looks like a black hole, sucking up everything around it.
Standing idly by as your teen uses their ever increasing freedom to make concerning decisions may not seem like an option, and it really isn’t. Because you care, you can’t just watch as they move farther and farther away from what you believe will make them a successful and happy adult. But potentially more harmful to their emerging understanding of themselves in the world is continued management of all decisions they make. The “helicopter parent” syndrome. This breeds contempt and resentment, but also inexperience and entitlement. At this point as a parent, it’s probably been a long time since someone told you to think about yourself more when confronting an issue with your kids. Well, that time has come!
The best way for you to encourage your teen to live a good life is to live one yourself! How do you think it looks to them when all of your free time is spent worrying about them? This is an issue I hear from teens all the time, wondering why their parents don’t have anything better to do. And while, of course, time must be spent focusing on your kids, it’s also very important for there to be time spent, a good amount of time on you and your goals. This includes more than just your career, too. What are your hobbies? How do you take care of yourself? How do you manage your own screen time? Take time to notice where you are in these areas and decide if there’s room for improvement. Then, focus your efforts here. As there’s an incredible amount of information out there about how to improve oneself, I’ll focus here on how to apply this to your relationship with your teen.
Once your needle of focus has moved closer to you and away from your teen, let this inform how you communicate with them about their goals. You might find that instead of insisting that they spend more time doing homework or playing an instrument, you’ll be able to talk about how good you feel about yourself when you spend time doing something productive. Or maybe you can relate on how hard it is sometimes to make the decision to do it. Another option is to explore what value there is in activities that you don’t want to do but know you should like cleaning, school work, healthy eating, exercise, or organization. Any of these reflections is valuable to your teen’s recognition of what makes life both rewarding and complicated.
This will likely be the most helpful action you can take to show your teen what it looks like to lead a successful and happy life, by doing it yourself! Also, avoid holding this over their head. Instead of saying “Look, I have hobbies!” or “I put MY phone down when I’m talking to you,” talk to them about the process you are going through in making these changes. This humility takes you out of the teacher role and puts you into the human role. That’s what you want here. Not to be seen as a parent or a friend, but rather a human in the world with the same struggles. Soon, they won’t have to listen to you anymore. Now is the time to allow your relationship to evolve to the point where, hopefully, they’ll choose to!