As our kids enter their teen years we have to learn a new way of interacting with them and sometimes that can feel like an uphill battle! Below, I share lessons I’ve been learning recently with my boys and some encouragement for your parenting journey.
Failure is an important part of growth. We can’t grow without failure because growth involves trying something we aren’t currently good at and doing it poorly while learning how to do it well. Unfortunately I have worked very hard over my lifetime to avoid failure, and have often demanded perfection of myself. Having such a strong aversion to failure is something I’ve been working to overcome and have made a lot of progress, but despite my efforts it has carried over into my parenting. I haven’t been as hard on my kids as I have been on myself, but I have still struggled to allow them to learn through making mistakes rather than stepping in and making sure they do things right. While this approach is not helpful when raising young children, it becomes even more problematic in the teen years. thr
Chris and Marcus talk in their 4 Habits of Raising Joy-filled Kids book about how parenting changes when your kids become adults. Our task as parents shifts to more of a coach coming alongside our adult children rather than a parent telling them what to do or how to do things. What many of us may not realize is that this parenting of “adult” children actually begins in the teen years as they are young adults finding their identity and becoming their own person. This unique season when they are learning to be adults and yet still in our home provides opportunities to create a safe space for failure where the landing is softer than it will be once they are out of our home.
The teen years are all about our children learning how to be young adults, discovering their group identity and who they are outside of being our kids. They question the things they have done and believed as part of our family to see if it’s something they want to take with them into life outside of our home. It’s a season of trying on independence, responsibility and freedoms, which of course will come with mistakes and failures. This process is a lot easier if they have already learned what is satisfying and what is not (check out my previous blogs on satisfaction, like this one, for tips).
My role in this season shifts from actively directing and telling them what is needed, to asking good questions to help them think through their own decisions. It is a season when even when I can predict that their plan will not have a good outcome, rather than intervening and telling them what they should do instead, I let them make mistakes. This is really hard for me! Having spent much of my life aiming for perfection, I have trained myself to be really good at seeing potential problems and figuring out how to avoid them, both for myself and my kids.
Where my instinct is to tell them “go to bed, you’ve tired and it’s getting late”, I have to reframe and ask “what’s your plan for going to bed tonight? What time do you need to be up in the morning?”. When they are struggling with a health issue, rather than telling them how to solve it, I am working to say “That really stinks, what are you going to do about it?” And I can lead them through questions “that’s a good start, what else?” or if they don’t know I can invite them to ask if they need help or additional resources. Or if there is a resource, or law or information I know they are unaware of, I can ask questions and share tidbits to help them become aware. Rather than telling them they need to get their work done before they get on screens I can say “what’s your plan for today?” When they are going to run out of time to finish their responsibilities, I am working on letting that happen rather than intervening and then processing afterwards how they want to handle things differently next time.
When we are trying to do something differently than we have before, an example is always helpful. I had a great conversation with a friend recently who has launched 3 young adults into the world. She was sharing that in this season our kids fly close to the mountain and sometimes we can see that they are going to hit it and we need to let it happen (unless it’s a big mountain where the stakes are too high and then we still speak up). She blessed me by taking the time to listen to my struggles, share her stories of how her parenting changed when her kids hit their teenage years and help me brainstorm how I could also shift my parenting in this season in the specific circumstances I was trying to navigate. While the concepts we talked about I already “knew”, having someone who has walked it before and shares an example made such a difference. I am so grateful for parents who have gone before me successfully raising teens, especially when they share their hard earned wisdom!
Learning a new way of interacting with our kids can feel like an uphill battle. Don’t forget to give yourself grace for your failures and mistakes as you are learning your new role as well! And I encourage you to seek others who are ahead of you on the journey of parenting teens and ask questions and look for examples.
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Learn More:
I recommend The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-filled Kids and Joy-Filled Parenting with Teens as helpful resources.
Thanks for sharing your experience Jen, this is helpful!