Photo by Meina Yin on Unsplash I’m guessing you opened this article because you’ve experienced some of these symptoms: Living on high alert parenting a teenager or young adult Being hyper-aware of your child’s every mood and movement Constantly scanning and trying to anticipate all the hazards Watching them make choices you know will turn out badly Holding a lot of tension and pain in your body An inner voice yelling, ‘GET IN THERE RIGHT NOW AND FIX IT.’ Always waiting for t

I got this message from one of my readers a couple of weeks ago: "I don't really want to admit it, but I am sometimes secretly judging my 20-year-old son. I love him a lot but, when it comes to some areas of life, I can’t help thinking that he’s a narrow-minded little jerk… I tell myself to be more compassionate, but these nasty judgements keep popping up and I feel really bad about it." The truth is that no parent wants to be judging their young adult child. And yet, we do.

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash When you've got a teenager, you spend a lot of time in your head, trying to stay one step ahead of what's going on and how it might cause a meltdown, blow up or relapse.    When it looks like things are about to deteriorate, your mind is running through what worked and didn't work last time. Why did saying, “I know this is hard for you” trigger them into a rage? Why did sitting beside them make them retreat even further? What would make the

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash Alexis thought all was lost. Her son had caused some trouble at school for the third time in a...

Mei had been silent for a full minute. I had asked her if she could recall having this feeling at any other time in her life. She had closed her eyes; I waited in silence and held space for whatever was arising in her. Then, in a tiny voice, she said, "I think part of the reason my daughter's behavior annoys me so much is that I did the same thing when I was a teenager and my dad got mad and said I was extremely, disgustingly selfish. I can picture the look of disgust on his

Remember the fairy tales you heard when you were young? In many of them, once the scary thing was brought out into the light, goodness followed. The people went back to their village, the lovers reunited and the sheep were safe on the hillside. As parents of this generation of teens and young adults, we face scary things. The scary things out there – violence, greed, dehumanization, political instability, environmental degradation – and the scary things lurking inside our chi

Photo by Will Hulbert on Unsplash I want to tell you a story about when I was 10 or 11, a freckle-faced kid in faded jeans. It was a...

“I’m not doing a good job with my 17-year-old,” she said. “I hate what’s happening between us. There’s so much strain and friction. And I feel awful because I’m not being the kind of parent I hoped I would be, the kind of person I am deep down inside… I know what I want to be able to do, what I wish I could say, but then I just can't do it, and I then feel bad about it all over again.” Maybe you’ve said something like this somewhere along the way on your parenting journey or

You're standing in the kitchen with your teenager. You're trying to talk to them about chores/homework/responsibilities but they're not listening. They're getting upset and defensive. And you're getting frustrated. Voices are rising. And then your kid yells, “You just don't get me!”  Ooof, that hurts. It feels like a blow to your heart because you've been trying so damn hard to give them space, the benefit of the doubt, time to adjust… You’re disappointed, confused, frustrate

OK, let’s have a show of hands. Who lied to their parents as a teenager? All but three of us, right? Are there one or two incidents etched in your memory? Or was it a long pattern of lying about almost everything? I grew up in a very small town where there were only two options: a teenager was either cool or insignificant. Of course, I wanted to be cool and fit in, but I wasn’t allowed to do what other kids my age were doing. So, I took to sneaking around and lying, which led

Is your teenager just plain different from the rest of your family? Meena says it like this, “The rest of us are pretty quiet, accommodating and thoughtful and Tay just isn't. Her energy is boisterous, impulsive and sometimes kind of reckless. And if I'm honest, I don't really like that energy. It puts me on edge.” Another client says, “Our family vibe is playful and witty, and we say it like it is. Except for Austin who, compared to us, is extremely sensitive. He doesn't fi

Tara sits quietly at the kitchen table. The dishes are done and lunches are ready for tomorrow. It's dark and, more than anything, she wants to go to bed and disappear into the novel on her bedside table.  But she's waiting for her teenage daughter to come home so they can maybe have a talk. Not just about laundry and signing up for the theatre workshop. Tara wants to know how she’s really doing these days, her friends, her life. They never seem to get to those conversations.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent many hours of your life trying to twist yourself into what you thought someone else would like. Agonizing over how to sound cool to your classmates. Saying yes to your boss when every fiber of your being is screaming No. Trying to guess what to bring when you meet your mother-in-law. Trying to be liked. One of the earliest messages I got about being liked was from my mom, who taught us that upholding a favourable image in the community

A letter to our 21-year-olds: Oh, my dear, I see how your heart is aching. How you feel disappointed, betrayed, confused and humiliated. I understand how your dreams for this relationship have disappeared in just one conversation. How much it hurts to not have that special person anymore. And I have such a powerful mama bear instinct to shield you from this heartache. The urge pulses through my veins and raises my heartrate, and I feel like I would move mountains to protect y

I was talking with a recent acquaintance about his ‘grown and flown’ kids and he said that he talks with them every week. I asked what he thought contributed to that ongoing communication and he's said, “Well, we built a bridge when they were young. And then we learned, when they were teenagers, that we had to do regular maintenance just to keep the relationship going. Then, I guess it became a habit.” Of course that got me thinking about bridges. The old single-lane bridge i

Do you brace yourself for your teenager's reactions? “I see her name on my phone and I immediately feel tense. I wish I didn’t, but I hold my breath and think, 'Oh no, here we go again.'” “He walks in the room and I just know. I don't know how to describe it but I just know he's going to explode. There's a certain look. I've come to recognize it and I know what's going to happen next, so I brace myself.” These are the words of some mothers I've been working with. Maybe you’ve

Photo by Lori K Walters Scenario 1: What would happen if your doctor said the problem was your fibula when it was actually your knee? You’d be angry, for sure. You’d lose your confidence in their knowledge and trustworthiness. Once they’ve made an incorrect diagnosis, they can’t really un-make it. Scenario 2: What would happen if you were 16 and flailing around in all sorts of big emotions and your mom said you were way over the top, out of line or just seeking attention? You

As you well know, parenting young adults is not for the faint of heart. It’s a great exercise in discovering all you don’t know. And it’s an ongoing invitation to expand your capacity to be with your own inner child and develop adult ways of meeting their still-unmet needs so you can be in a healthy relationship with your big kid. One of those primary needs is belonging - one of those concepts that we don’t often ponder and yet profoundly affects our behaviors and beliefs and

When I was a child, I often felt like I didn’t quite belong in my family. Maybe every kid feels that to some extent and maybe it’s part of the human journey. My siblings seemed more ready to engage in the rough and tumble ranch life but I was different – softer, more sensitive. I was more curious about who people were on the inside, but I was living in a world of hard work and getting ahead. Gentleness and introspection weren’t valued in my family. I'm not sure when exactly I

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash I recently wrote about ways parents can stay connected with our young adult children when they feel angry and I received a couple of replies, “But how do I make them feel better?” Here’s my answer: You don’t. I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping to hear. You want to know what to say or do to calm them down. You want the magic formula for fixing their problem and returning your house to normal. I get it. We all crave peace and harmony

If you and I met for a cup of tea and I told you how angry I was with my boss, partner or neighbour, you wouldn’t tell me to tone it down or just get over it. You wouldn’t tell me that my anger was unwarranted. And you wouldn’t lecture me about being grateful for my job, marriage or neighbourhood. You would see me as a human in distress and listen with compassion. And so, I’m wondering, can we do the same for our teens, who are still learning how to navigate their emotions? W

"I know I should stop but I don’t know how." "It's just the way I am." "My rage takes over and I'm helpless." "Taking the blame and apologizing is my automatic go-to." There’s a moment when parents know an old trigger is activated. Whether that upcoming reaction is yelling, controlling, shrinking, blaming, etc., they know they don’t want to do it again. They've set an intention to take a breath or two but, in the next second, they're already caught up in the reaction… But how

In recent weeks, I’ve listened to several moms talking about their fear of showing anger around their teenager or young adult. “I don’t want to set her off… It’ll just escalate… I’m never sure what would happen… It feels too risky.” We’ve all felt like this. And when you’re building an open, trusting relationship with your big kid, stuffing down your emotions is denying a part of yourself and, ultimately, it blocks true connection. Anger is a complicated experience. It’s an e

The first time I was told to ‘listen to my body’, I was confused. It sounded so basic and self-explanatory, like something everyone knows how to do. But I wasn’t even sure what it meant. I was 23 and I was all in my head. As far as I knew, that’s where all my wisdom resided. Even things related to the care of my body were in my head — how many minutes to devote to trail running (whether my knees felt good or not), how many calories to consume (whether I was hungry or not), wh