Excluding your teenager and not even realizing it

Photo by Lori K Walters

Is one of your kids 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 find the same things funny and can’t take even a bit of teasing. It seems like no matter what we say, he's going to take it too seriously.” 

Each family has an energy - a certain vibe that parents bring into their home and that shapes family life. Kids perceive this energy when they’re small and subconsciously make choices about how to behave to match this energy. If you cast back over your own childhood, you can probably describe your family’s predominant energy and maybe you recall having a sense about how you were or weren’t in sync with the rest of them.

Fast forward to when you were creating your own family home. How would you describe its predominant energies?

Then the children arrived, each with their own passions and expressions and their own ways of moving in the world. And if you think back to the early days of parenting, how did your preferred mood/ vibe/ energy influence how you interacted with them? Were you, like me, constantly shushing them? Were you saying things like, “Stop being such a snowflake/ troublemaker/ spoilsport/ etc. Everyone else wants to do this so you just have to get on board.”?

And now you’ve got teenagers.

It’s fairly easy to think of words we've said that let them know that their energy isn't OK with us. What's more difficult to recognize are the more subtle ways that we might be excluding our teenager.

• You might not even be aware that you are doing it but, when your teen starts to get upset and you think, “Oh no, here we go again”, do you roll your eyes or grimace? 

• If you feel like your kid is unreasonably irritated, do you make a little brushing away gesture with your hands?

• When it seems like they're about to start shouting, do you clench your fists, look away, or let out an audible sigh?

• When they do that thing that really bugs you, do you turn your body slightly away from them, take a step back or cross your arms?

These patterns can be so ingrained that we don't even know that we're doing them. And yet we are sending a message to our child that what they're bringing isn’t wanted.

If I asked your teenager if you turn away from them, they might not be able to say yes or no. But even if they haven't registered it consciously, you can be sure that their system has received the message.

And when you think about these faint signals, are they replicated by your partner or other kids? Does the rest of the family back away when Tay becomes boisterous? Does everyone roll their eyes when Austin gets offended? 

Where our light meets

Each of us radiates a unique love light into the world and, when you and I meet, your light meets my light. You've felt this at some time. Perhaps when you met your very best friend, you could feel where your light delightedly mingled with theirs. Or maybe you can recall a time when someone's energy repelled you, even though you couldn't quite say why.

And so, I'm wondering how we might be energetically excluding or rejecting our young adult child.

Plenty of the parents say to me that there's something that doesn't quite match up with one of their kids. Something uncomfortable, misaligned, off-balance, clashing… And they catch themselves turning away, either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.

Take a breath here.

Just notice what’s coming up for you in this moment as you relate to this.

Another breath.

Be curious and self-compassionate.

Deep in my heart, I'm aware of ways in which I almost imperceptibly move away from each of my kids in certain situations. I'm not saying this from a place of shame or pressuring myself to do ‘better’. I'm just noticing my humanness and my ways of being with them.

And so, I sit quietly for a moment and ask myself,

How do I want to hold myself in their presence?

Where is my heart tightening and closing and what balm is it asking for?

What thoughts are generated by my brain that sit like hurdles between me and fully meeting their light?

How shall I open myself to all of who they are?