Parenting Adolescents
QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK
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Hear Jean Walbridge interviews on NPR.
Parent Question
Dear Jean:
Our son is 14 and a 1/2. Around the time he transitioned from 13 to 14 he became more and more withdrawn from us, his family. Now that he's in high school, the silence and sullenness when he's with us (his parents) are unbearable. When he does speak, I hear an attitude in his voice--he mutters, doesn't make eye contact. When I call him on it ("Are you ok? Your voice makes me think that you really didn't enjoy... today) he becomes defensive.
My questions fuel his sense that I am "scrutinizing" everything he says. I've tried to be aware of how I come across to him, but frankly, if I don't ask questions, I won't know anything that's going on in his life other than when he wants to be driven somewhere. He makes it clear that he'd rather be anywhere than home. When he is home, he's either on the family computer (he's been denied a laptop of his own), or up in his room texting, or using his handheld device (which I think he's been using to access the internet, though I've told him not to).
He doesn't see that there is a problem. I understand that pulling away is part of asserting his independence, but it's painful, and we worry that we're losing him. To a certain extent I realize we are, but we're afraid that if he's this uncomfortable talking to us that we won't know if he's headed down the wrong path. Help!
(To Jean's response)
Parent Question
Dear Jean:
Our son is 14 and a 1/2. Around the time he transitioned from 13 to 14 he became more and more withdrawn from us, his family. Now that he's in high school, the silence and sullenness when he's with us (his parents) are unbearable. When he does speak, I hear an attitude in his voice--he mutters, doesn't make eye contact. When I call him on it ("Are you ok? Your voice makes me think that you really didn't enjoy... today) he becomes defensive.
My questions fuel his sense that I am "scrutinizing" everything he says. I've tried to be aware of how I come across to him, but frankly, if I don't ask questions, I won't know anything that's going on in his life other than when he wants to be driven somewhere. He makes it clear that he'd rather be anywhere than home. When he is home, he's either on the family computer (he's been denied a laptop of his own), or up in his room texting, or using his handheld device (which I think he's been using to access the internet, though I've told him not to).
He doesn't see that there is a problem. I understand that pulling away is part of asserting his independence, but it's painful, and we worry that we're losing him. To a certain extent I realize we are, but we're afraid that if he's this uncomfortable talking to us that we won't know if he's headed down the wrong path. Help!
(To Jean's response)
2nd Parent Question
(We have no teen question this week, so I'm taking the opportunity to answer a second parent question.)
Dear Jean:
How should I handle my daughter going to live with her Dad for the first time? She is 13, well-behaved, outgoing, mature for her age. We have been divorced for 7 years. She got mad one day and left without telling me. She has decided to live over there now.
Jean responds:
Dear Parent,
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but it sounds like maybe you want to know, among other things, if I think it's okay for you to agree to her living with her dad for now.
I get that you cannot force her not to live with her dad--unless you believe for some reason that she would not be safe in his care. If the latter is true, then you'd presumably need to fight the move through legal channels.
Barring that worry, though, the concerns I would have would be whether you've tried to process with her her anger at you--to really try to understand what made her so mad and whether there was a mistake on your part that might have contributed to her becoming so angry that she felt she had to leave.
Even with that processing and a better understanding between you, she still might not want to return to your house. And if she is safe with her dad, and wants to be there, you probably do best by just letting her be there. It would be important for you to make clear to her that she can return to living with you when she wants to--that you won't reject her because she decided to live with her dad for a time.
Kids this age are trying to find out who they are--to establish an identity--and when there's been a divorce, they often decide that they have to try to live with/explore more their relationship with the non-
custodial parent as part of this 'finding themselves' project.
Good luck, and stay in touch with your daughter, even if she is with her dad, and even if she doesn't respond to your attempts to communicate with her. She needs to know you're still there and still involved.
Jean.
Disclaimer: Ms. Walbridge's response to your question is intended to be educational and informative. It is not a substitute for face to face consultation or psychotherapy with a mental health professional.
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Send in your own question.
Go to the Archives and explore all of the Q&As Jean has answered.
Jean responds:
Dear Parent,
Unless there is information missing from your letter, I have to say that your son's behaviors--and your feelings and worry about them--sound absolutely typical for this age.
What you can do is back off. Let him come to you. He will, when he wants/needs to. And you cannot force him--as you are finding out, to your dismay--to talk to you.
The thing is, not only is he reaching towards greater independence, but also he is trying to become his own person. And the only thing he knows about who that might be, right now, is that it's not you--he has to not become you.
But himself-in-relationship-to-you has up to now been the only self he has known. It's like you become the enemy, to some degree--because he has to leave you emotionally now, in order to prepare himself to leave you physically in a few short years--yet he doesn't know how to do that, really. It's not that he doesn't 'hear you calling'--the thing is, he does hear you, and it's kind of a siren song to him right now.
On an unconscious level, your attempts to 'interfere,' i.e., get him to talk to you, find out what he's doing, etc. (which you might think of as your normal parental duty), invite him to lean on you--to collapse back into the dependence he enjoyed (and he did enjoy it) for the first 12 years of his life.
We often forget that adolescents are, albeit unconsciously, only too aware that they could continue to define themselves by who you are and who you want them to be, could continue to rely on your opinions, your rules, your wishes. They have to turn away from all of that to some degree as they grow into the people that they can and want to become.
This is one reason you make as few rules as possible--you want to leave them at much at choice as you possibly can. You do make rules in important areas, but only in important areas, and you negotiate these with the teen rather than lay them down arbitrarily.
"I understand that pulling away is part of asserting his independence, but it's painful, and we worry that we're losing him." Ah yes, just so--join the club! Their pulling away IS painful--to you. It's supposed to be! The pain is evidence of the real attachment between you. He also needs it to hurt you some, to prove to himself that he's doing it--pulling away from you. But he also needs to know that you can take it!-- that his pulling away isn't destroying you. If it's going to destroy you and/or completely wreck the relationship between you, then he can't do it! And that would be tragic.
But I get that you realize you're not being destroyed--it just hurts, and you worry. He'll become less sullen (maybe) if he feels safer that you don't care--about the sullenness. Leave him alone. That's the wish he's communicating.
I do NOT mean that you act in a mean or angry way towards him--returning sullenness for sullenness--but that you just 'rise above it,' observing him, as it were, and being there if/when he turns to you.
You let him know, in other words, that it's okay, what he's doing and where he is right now, that even if you feel some loss/pain around it, you can take it.
You can insist that he join the family at certain times during the week, but you can't expect him to like it! Still, you can insist that he be with you in body, if not in spirit, at least some of the time, so you can lay eyes on him and still claim him as part of the family.
Nothing in your letter makes me think he's in trouble. Signs of trouble might include failing in school (or drastic drop in grades), repeated inability to follow the few rules you set for him, sleeplessness/too much sleeping, not eating/compulsive eating. It's kind of like when he was an infant or toddler and unable to communicate to you in words what might be wrong--you look for other signs. It may be helpful also to get to know the parents of his friends: some info can come from the parental grapevine.
BUT: he NEEDS to have a life that you don't know about, in addition to the life you do! Argh! I know. It's hard. But he's beginning to create his own world, and he needs to know you're there as the steady, rock-solid background, but not that you're determined to know everything that's going on in that world. You wait for him to share, and let him know you're there if he wants to talk more about it.
Read some more in the Archives--your complaint is the classic complaint of the parents of an adolescent.
Jean.
Disclaimer: Ms. Walbridge's response to your question is intended to be educational and informative. It is not a substitute for face to face consultation or psychotherapy with a mental health professional.
To 2nd Parent Q of the Week
____________________
Send in your own question.
Jean responds:
Dear Parent,
Unless there is information missing from your letter, I have to say that your son's behaviors--and your feelings and worry about them--sound absolutely typical for this age.
What you can do is back off. Let him come to you. He will, when he wants/needs to. And you cannot force him--as you are finding out, to your dismay--to talk to you.
The thing is, not only is he reaching towards greater independence, but also he is trying to become his own person. And the only thing he knows about who that might be, right now, is that it's not you--he has to not become you.
But himself-in-relationship-to-you has up to now been the only self he has known. It's like you become the enemy, to some degree--because he has to leave you emotionally now, in order to prepare himself to leave you physically in a few short years--yet he doesn't know how to do that, really. It's not that he doesn't 'hear you calling'--the thing is, he does hear you, and it's kind of a siren song to him right now.
On an unconscious level, your attempts to 'interfere,' i.e., get him to talk to you, find out what he's doing, etc. (which you might think of as your normal parental duty), invite him to lean on you--to collapse back into the dependence he enjoyed (and he did enjoy it) for the first 12 years of his life.
We often forget that adolescents are, albeit unconsciously, only too aware that they could continue to define themselves by who you are and who you want them to be, could continue to rely on your opinions, your rules, your wishes. They have to turn away from all of that to some degree as they grow into the people that they can and want to become.
This is one reason you make as few rules as possible--you want to leave them at much at choice as you possibly can. You do make rules in important areas, but only in important areas, and you negotiate these with the teen rather than lay them down arbitrarily.
"I understand that pulling away is part of asserting his independence, but it's painful, and we worry that we're losing him." Ah yes, just so--join the club! Their pulling away IS painful--to you. It's supposed to be! The pain is evidence of the real attachment between you. He also needs it to hurt you some, to prove to himself that he's doing it--pulling away from you. But he also needs to know that you can take it!-- that his pulling away isn't destroying you. If it's going to destroy you and/or completely wreck the relationship between you, then he can't do it! And that would be tragic.
But I get that you realize you're not being destroyed--it just hurts, and you worry. He'll become less sullen (maybe) if he feels safer that you don't care--about the sullenness. Leave him alone. That's the wish he's communicating.
I do NOT mean that you act in a mean or angry way towards him--returning sullenness for sullenness--but that you just 'rise above it,' observing him, as it were, and being there if/when he turns to you.
You let him know, in other words, that it's okay, what he's doing and where he is right now, that even if you feel some loss/pain around it, you can take it.
You can insist that he join the family at certain times during the week, but you can't expect him to like it! Still, you can insist that he be with you in body, if not in spirit, at least some of the time, so you can lay eyes on him and still claim him as part of the family.
Nothing in your letter makes me think he's in trouble. Signs of trouble might include failing in school (or drastic drop in grades), repeated inability to follow the few rules you set for him, sleeplessness/too much sleeping, not eating/compulsive eating. It's kind of like when he was an infant or toddler and unable to communicate to you in words what might be wrong--you look for other signs. It may be helpful also to get to know the parents of his friends: some info can come from the parental grapevine.
BUT: he NEEDS to have a life that you don't know about, in addition to the life you do! Argh! I know. It's hard. But he's beginning to create his own world, and he needs to know you're there as the steady, rock-solid background, but not that you're determined to know everything that's going on in that world. You wait for him to share, and let him know you're there if he wants to talk more about it.
Read some more in the Archives--your complaint is the classic complaint of the parents of an adolescent.
Jean.
Disclaimer: Ms. Walbridge's response to your question is intended to be educational and informative. It is not a substitute for face to face consultation or psychotherapy with a mental health professional.
To 2nd Parent Q of the Week
____________________
Send in your own question.
