Sometimes, as parents, we can be our own worst enemies.
It can be extremely hard being a parent of a teen. We face immense challenges and sometimes extreme provocation from our children.
This can lead us to inadvertently and repeatedly shooting ourselves in the feet - and hobbling our teens too in the process - lapsing into criticising them, attempting to prove them wrong and bad-mouthing them, to their faces or venting to others.
Now if this in part reads like your current situation, don’t worry. All of us have been there at some point or other in our parenting journeys. I know I have.
But I am not there any more. My relationships with both my kids are awesome and I have been very intentional - and pretty unconventional - in my approach since they were born in order to achieve this.
Here are just a couple of ‘reframes’ that I hope will help you to reduce any conflict, tension or distance that has developed between you and your child in recent times:
A quick exercise to get us started:
- Reflect on all that’s great about your child, write it down too if you like.
- What are you grateful for in them? What do you admire about them?
Try not to resist or avoid this reflection. Just take no more than 1-2 mins right now and do it.
Even if your teen greatly offends you - perhaps in countless ways currently - if they are literally unbearable to be around or are showing up in the most disappointing fashion at every turn these days, relocate that unswerving, unlimited love you have or had for this being, the love that you knew, beyond any doubt, in easier times, the baby or the younger child that you adored and who adored you. Remember the boy or girl who was (and still is) innocent, sweet, deserving, funny, gifted and lovable. Find that love and bring it back to your heart and to your relationship now, in this very moment.
Sit with that for a bit, if you like, and keep it front and centre as best you can in every interaction you have with them from now on. Remember this about them and know that that is the same child that you are fighting or struggling with (and against) in subtle or overt ways these days.
Accept that some of your projection onto them of all that’s bad or wrong or unacceptable is exactly that. It’s a projection, a story, a limited framework and an identity that you have put on them and which can be reframed and released any time.
Accept also your part in how they are today, how they are behaving. Without collapsing into self-blame or defeat, just let in some of the responsibility that is yours for how they are showing up and behaving right now, and see from that vantage what they could use from you at this time, what they need from you today and for the coming weeks and months to help them step up and become their most robust, secure and best selves.
Parent from this vantage of perfect love (genuinely unconditional) at all times. Even if you feel you have to shout at them, call them out or do or say things they don’t want to hear - sometimes we might need to - do it from a place of pure love that is of benefit to all (even if it is painful in the moment).
Releasing Ourselves from Compulsive Blaming & Shaming
In our culture and society currently, we can indulge in a lot of criticising, blaming and judging of others when we feel provoked by our thoughts or emotions. This may seem fine to us - entirely justified or needed even - in order to defend ourselves or protect our own values and the world as we want it to be.
When it comes to our own kids though, we can really see the wreckage this typical daily habit can cause.
Firstly, we role model to our children how to do the same. In all their relationships then, just like ours, there can be an underlying sense of insecurity. We only criticise others to the extent that we also criticise ourselves. If we are low in self-love it expresses itself in criticism, blame and judgement of self and others.
So we teach our children self-criticism and insecurity when we criticise or judge others.
In addition to this, when we openly criticise, blame or judge our own children, we are directly creating this insecurity and self-criticism in them. We are labelling them in some ways as deficient and having them join us in that belief.
We might have come to a place where we are convincing ourselves and them that they, for example, ‘cannot be trusted’, or ‘don’t deserve our love and affection’. By making them not worthy of our parental love, they will then deny it themselves, leading to all kinds of erratic and self-destructive behaviours.
One solution for all of us is to start to practise holding our children in the highest regard.
Catch yourself thinking of them badly and refresh to this new (and true) vantage.
Our children deserve our compassion, service and reverence, nothing less.
We must learn to hold ourselves back from speaking about them badly to partners or friends.
Even when we are not with our child and we are venting with friends or our husbands, wives, partners, that all, energetically, enters into our relationship with our child.
One of my greatest teachers, a supreme parent coach amongst many other things, taught me that when we talk about our children in front of them we are ‘limiting their destiny’.
The minute she told me that, I knew it to be true, both in my own experience as a child and in my own experience as a parent.
Since then I have stopped saying who or what I think my kids are and this has brought about a much expanded view and potential of what they could be, as well as a greater connection to who and how they actually are in any given moment
It’s really time to start to clean our acts up and I believe, with all that I have learned and trained up in in my adult years, that I can help you and other parents to upgrade our buggy operating systems for a much better family life for all.
I think how we relate to, educate and generally raise our children is as big a part of creating a happy, healthy human society for the future as any other initiative.
And yet, currently, we parents receive precious little support or training to help us step into and handle this huge responsibility.
We can start to change, gradually and gently - without falling into self-blame or self-hatred - start to boldly pull ourselves together, to lovingly call out our own chatter and putting down of our children when we engage in it or indeed hear it from others.
This one new commitment will dramatically improve our relationships with our teenagers. It doesn’t matter how they are relating to us currently - they probably learned it from us anyway! - and there’s no way of changing this immediately.
We need to play a long game and start by taking responsibility for our contributions to the dynamics in this highly complex relationship.
Be brave and step up in a way that others around us might well not be doing.
It’s not really anyone’s fault, we have just been blind to the import of this so far and it requires leaders like us now to role model and share another way of treating not only our children but each other too, our spouses, partners, friends, colleagues...
So let’s hold ourselves to account and harmonise our side in this most precious of relationships, parent / child, in this most crucial role in life.
Start with self-love, compassion for ourselves and all we might regret and feel we have apparently done wrong in our parenting and in our relationships with our teens.
Write that list now, if you feel moved to get clear on all you might want to put your hand up for, in the name of clarity, generosity, responsibility, self-care, maturity and dignity.
Let’s move forward with self-love and a resolute commitment to relate compassionately, sincerely and lovingly to our children at all times from this point on.
For ongoing support, join our FREE Parent Community Facebook Group for direct interaction with Henry, resources and a space to connect with other parents navigating many of the same challenges.
