"We've spent the last decade learning how to worry about our kids' feelings the right way. We learned the language. We read the books. We went to therapy ourselves so we could show up better for them. We asked about their day - really asked. We became the emotionally attuned parents we never had. And in some ways, it worked. Our teens know we're trying. They know we're different from the parents we had."
"What I'm seeing, over and over again, is that we may have been solving the wrong problem. We got very good at staying on top of our teens' emotional lives - but we forgot that they also need space to develop a sense of self. And that can't happen while we're hovering, asking, checking, managing. Because worrying about their emotions is not the same as giving them room to figure out who they are becoming. And that's the part we missed."
"Most teens today aren't struggling because parents don't care enough. They're struggling because they're trying to answer much deeper questions while being watched: Who am I when no one is analyzing me? What do I actually want - not what will make my parents worry less? What parts of me can I explore without having to explain myself? Who am I allowed to be when I'm not managing someone else's emotions?"
Parents spent years learning emotional attunement, asking about feelings, reading books, and seeking therapy to show up better for their teens. Those efforts often succeeded at making teens feel known and showing parents' investment. Despite that, many teens are pulling away and shutting down when parents check in repeatedly. Constant monitoring and managing of teen emotions inhibits the development of an autonomous sense of self. Teens need private space to answer questions about identity, desire, and exploration without feeling observed or responsible for parents' worries. Worrying and frequent check-ins are not substitutes for granting adolescents room to discover who they are.
Read at Scary Mommy
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]