First off, I’m not. Parenting a teen girl, that is. But I do therapy with teen girls and with their families, and I get to be in the position of seeing both sides (long before I attempt the endeavor myself, so thank you to all my clients for that!) I thought I’d share some of what I’ve noticed.
Often I hear from parents—most often, mothers—that their daughters used to talk to them and don’t anymore. It may seem that simple, and that sudden: One day your daughter was interested in your thoughts and opinions, and the next she wasn’t. In some cases, not only was she not interested, but she was rude and sarcastic about it. And man, that hurts. Being shut out is not only painful but frightening. At a crucial time in your daughter’s life, when her choices seem like they have more potential for danger than ever before, you feel like you’ve lost your influence. For a lot of parents, when they feel like they can’t influence, they try to control. Then come the power struggles, and the relationship degenerates from there.
So it’s with the utmost respect for the degree of difficulty involved in parenting an adolescent that I wanted to throw out a few ideas. If you’re a parent caught in the cycle I just described, step back and take your own pulse. See if your anxiety and frustration is getting the better of you. How easy are you to talk to these days? An open and honest exchange of ideas will get you much further in the big picture than trying to catch your teenager and punish her for every infraction. Being willing to explain the reasoning behind rules and to empathize with your teenager about not wanting to follow them can be invaluable, as can negotiating those rules when appropriate. Do I think parents are more to blame for the dynamic than their teenagers? Absolutely not. But I do think as a parent, you need to take more responsibility for the dynamic than your child; when you demonstrate an ability for self-reflection, you’re modeling just the kind of skills you want your teenager to develop. And you’ll realize you’re not nearly as helpless in changing things as you thought.