PEOPLE PLEASING WITH MY KIDS - SPRING BREAK EDITION
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 42.
Hello, friends. I just got back from a spring break trip to Barcelona with my family. Throughout our kids' lives, we've typically taken beach vacations because, to be honest, I'm not that into sightseeing.
My idea of a perfect vacation is to sit in the sun all day, reading, eating nice lunches and dinners, naps whenever you feel like it. When our boys were little, our beach vacations weren't exactly relaxing, but the boys were typically really entertained by running around on the beach or playing in the water. I definitely wasn't sitting around reading a book at that time, but that's been a luxury I've enjoyed over the past six to seven years now that I don't have to worry about the boys drowning in the water anymore.
I do like to travel and see new places, but I'd much rather experience a new city by strolling around shopping or sitting for hours in a restaurant with a bottle of wine than sitting in lines waiting to see one more church. So that's just me. And I realize because that's my preference, we haven't done much of this sightseeing as my kids have grown up.
So my oldest mentioned a few months ago that he'd never been off the continent. We've been to Mexico a few times, all for beach vacations, but never to another country off of this continent. So while I'd been hoping we might take an adventure to yet another tropical paradise this spring, my husband and I asked the boys if we were to go somewhere else in the world for spring break, where should we go? Both boys had a list, but for some reason Barcelona was high on both of their lists.
So Barcelona, Spain it was. I'd been to Barcelona before over 25 years ago with my two college roommates right after we graduated. We took a backpacking tour around Europe, staying in hostels, wearing tibas, generally eating and drinking our way through Europe as inexpensively as possible.
I think we stayed in Barcelona for a few days, but I'll be honest, what I remember is eating dinner in the gothic quarter, staying in a really sketchy youth hostel and randomly running into one of my friends from high school outside of a nightclub. I vaguely remember having an incredible night, but that was a long time ago. So we went to Barcelona, my boys a bit younger than I was when I first went, but still closer to partying and clubbing age than I am now.
As we prepared for the trip, one of my boys kept asking me if I'd bought tickets for the various sites. To be honest, I hadn't spent any time looking into tickets or frankly even what the sites were. I kind of figured we'd figure it out as we went along.
I know there's some people who are really good at planning itineraries and making the most of every second when they travel, it's just not me. The first time we took our kids to Disney, you'll laugh if you're a Disney person, I realized then I wished I was one of those people who knew all about how to do Disney, because visiting the magic kingdom the first time without a plan or a fast pass was pretty much misery for us. And here's the odd thing, in my regular life, I'm a planner, or let me take that back.
I'm a planner when it comes to my boys schedules, my schedule, my list of things to do. My daily life is pretty regimented. I'd like to be busy and productive.
Maybe I'm a typical type A in that way, but when it comes to my free time, the weekends and definitely vacation, I'd like to leave room for spontaneity. Actually, let me be honest, I like to leave room for doing nothing. Do you ever feel as a mom that you're just tired of doing something every single moment? Even my weekends are filled with doing, attending kids events, driving my younger son places, cleaning up, laundry, dinners.
I think it's interesting when you think about it, there's this contrast, the overwhelm of our lives as moms with our kids still at home. And so then we can't wait for these moments to do nothing, but then we look ahead in our lives and we think about the emptiness of the empty nest when our kids leave home. And somehow that huge contrast of nothing to do without our kids around combined with the sadness of having to say goodbye to them, that type of doing nothing brings with it a whole other set of emotions because of what the doing nothingness means.
But for me now on this vacation with my boys, the doing nothing was heaven. But even from the start, it was clear that doing nothing was not going to be an option. We took the red eye to Barcelona and landed at 9 a.m. Before we even left, my son wanted to know what we were doing first.
I guess there was a part of me that felt guilty. Had I been selfish in taking the boys to only beach vacations growing up, that they'd never had the chance to be a tourist in a foreign country? They've both been taking Spanish theoretically since they were three. They're definitely not fluent, so maybe I should be asking for my money back.
But here was an opportunity for them to test out what they've been learning. So I was all in. I kind of knew this wasn't my dream vacation, but I was doing this for the boys because this is what they wanted.
Now look, I don't think just doing this, making this decision makes me a people pleaser. If moms were labeled people pleasers just because they did things for their kids, then every single one of us would have to admit to being a people pleaser. Look, sometimes you do things for your kids, for the people you love, just because they want those things.
That's part of the give and take of any healthy relationship. Sometimes I choose, sometimes you choose. And let's face it, I'd pretty much gotten my way in terms of vacations for 18 plus years of their lives.
While we were at the top of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I asked my husband, I pulled him aside and I said, so when the boys don't want a vacation with us anymore, do you think you'll want to go back to just doing beach vacations or do you want to do touristy vacations? I'm pretty sure I asked it just like that. I think I was hoping he'd say, oh, 100% beach vacations, but he actually said both. And I thought, crap, I've been married to this man for 20 years and now he wants to go on touristy vacations.
But back to our most recent touristy adventure and people-pleasing. So as I said, we're going on a vacation that was maybe not at the top of my list of top vacation destinations, but I went willingly. Look, these moments when our kids still want to go on vacation with us, they're fleeting.
You never really know when will be the last one. While the boys are in college, their winter and spring breaks may not line up. They're very likely to make plans with friends on breaks.
Summers are typically filled with work or internships. I'm hopeful this won't be the last vacation we take together, but you never know. And this uncertainty seems to put a bit more pressure on the adventure.
Like you kind of think you have to make it good. I know from experience that anytime you put high pressure and expectations on something that's pretty much out of your control, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. And let's face it, on vacation, when you're traveling, there are a ton of things that are not in your control.
But on the top of the list, as much as we don't want to admit it, on the top of the list of things outside of our control is how everyone feels. This is a cold reality, and I have to admit, even as an experienced life coach, I struggle with the concept of letting go of the need to try to make my boys happy. Intellectually, I know it's not possible.
You can't make anyone else happy. Look, even when someone else is happy because of something we do, it's because they've decided it's what they want. We could buy the perfect present for someone in our mind, plan a perfect night out, plan every detail, and think this is exactly what the other person wants and needs, and we could be totally wrong.
The other person is only going to be happy if they also agree that the present or the night is perfect. I'm not saying they might not be grateful you tried, but my point is what's perfect will make them happy. It's all a matter of their own perspective.
I could tell you exactly what I want, and if you fulfill that need or desire exactly as I've requested it, I might be happy. And you might think to yourself, you made me happy. But at the end of the day, we each still have agency over our feelings.
We make ourselves happy by interpreting the circumstances of our lives as something we either like or we don't like, that the circumstances are something that contribute to our happiness or not. So I know this. We can't make someone else happy.
And look, I should also know by now that if there's anyone in the world that I am the least capable of making happy, it's my teenage sons. I've been beating my head up against this wall for years. Sometimes I'm amused that I still find myself trying, despite all evidence that I have any ability to influence their happiness.
I don't have girls, but I very much imagine that the confidence or lack of confidence we might feel as moms when it comes to helping support our kids and their happiness, it's not necessarily a gender thing. It's just an individual child thing. We have different relationships with each of our kids and relationships are an interesting thing.
Have you ever stopped to think about what a relationship is? Very much like a feeling, a relationship is not a tangible thing. Our relationships with others, they're actually just a figment of our imagination. And what I mean is we observe other people and we decide whether or not those are people that we want to have a relationship with.
Family relationships, they're complicated by stories about the fact that we think we should have a relationship because that person is related to us. And actually no matter how we want to or don't want to interact with anyone we know, we have a relationship with them. We could have a relationship with someone where we never want to see them again.
And maybe in this case, our relationship is defined as a no contact relationship. We have a relationship with them in our head, but it's one where we want to separate ourselves as much as possible. Then on the opposite side of the spectrum, for many of us, we have a relationship with our kids.
And the nature of this quote unquote relationship, well, it's complicated. And I don't care how close you think you are with your child. The relationship you have with your child, it's a series of perceptions you have about how you interact with your child, for better or for worse.
When my boys were little, I would have characterized our relationship as positive, supportive, engaged. When I asked my boys questions, even up until they were 10 or 11, they'd always answer. I never wondered about whether or not they wanted to be with me.
We went out to dinner every weekend. We went out to the movies together. When my boys had birthday parties or even had friends over and it involved going out to dinner or eating together, my husband and I were included.
It wasn't even a question that would have come up that we wouldn't be there. I guess if I had to describe our relationship back then, it was easy, uncomplicated. Now, it's different.
We rarely go out to dinner anymore. Although we got to spend every meal together in Barcelona. More on that in a minute.
At home, we never go to the movies anymore. And it used to be we spent the weekends together. And now I have no idea what they're doing on the weekends until the last minute.
And sometimes not even then. If you ask me what place I have in my boy's life right now, I wouldn't be sure what to tell you. I wouldn't actually know if I have a place.
For sure, we still pay for everything. Although they both have jobs, they're definitely not able to support themselves. Let's not even mention how much we're investing in college for both of them.
We provide for them. My husband and I are here if they need us. And they do need us for small and more substantial things.
Advice, a ride, instruction on how to do things, invest in stocks, open a bank account. We're a resource, I guess. Maybe more reliable than Google.
So we're an ATM, a search engine. Is that all? It's disheartening to think that the only reason my boys need me is for money and for the random piece of advice that they could possibly find from a thousand other sources online. I actually don't think at all that they think of us transactionally.
But when it comes down to it, what is our relationship now? Because the reality is they don't need us for many things. They don't confide in us anymore. If they're down or experiencing some kind of hurt or heartache, I think they'd both sooner go to a friend than come to us.
This actually isn't so surprising. When I think of myself as a teen, I had a close group of girlfriends who I could share anything with. I would never have shared these intimate details with my parents.
In a way, I think I felt powerful in my independence from my parents when I was a teen. It's part of figuring out who you are. Of course you don't confide in your parents anymore.
But then you're a parent and it's happening to you. And when you think about what your relationship is with your teenager, you feel kind of at a loss. Throughout my boys' lives, I've had different and evolving relationships with both of them.
And in different ways, both of them opened up to me when they were younger. And now, neither of them do. At least not regularly.
This feels like a major shift. I used to be someone they trusted with their secrets, with their innermost feelings. Now they don't.
Whatever the nature of your relationship with your teenager is now, how that might have changed over time as they've grown up, notice what you make all of it mean. For certain, there are tangible, identifiable signs the relationship is different. Maybe you could count the number of minutes or times they open up to you and prove that number is less than it was when they were younger.
Maybe you can demonstrate that the door to their room stays closed 80% more than it used to, or that they're out with their friends 70% more than they used to be. For sure, there are physical, observable signs that demonstrate the difference, the change in the nature of our interactions with our kids. And you know what's interesting? In our regular lives, I'm used to the change, or I should say the lessening of our daily interactions for the most part.
We're all busy. I don't take it personally when they stay in their rooms for most of the time when they're home. I don't even take it personally when they take their dinners up to their room because they say they need to study.
I don't typically look for reasons to make their choices and their behavior about me, but I noticed while in Barcelona, I struggled. I wanted to share this experience with you because I talk a lot about relationships with teens because I coach women who typically have teenagers. I talk a lot about teens and parenting, but I'm not a parenting expert.
As a coach, I'll never tell you what you should do. My work is on understanding our minds as mothers so we can decide what we each individually want to do from a place of intention rather than subconscious reaction. So in Barcelona, I noticed really wanting to make my boys happy.
As I said, maybe part of it was the pressure of thinking this might be one of the last trips we take together. Maybe it was my son's vocal interest in taking adventures and making the most out of every minute. Could it have been some degree of guilt on my part that this was the first touristy vacation we'd taken the boys to? I think another big part of it is that when you travel with your family, you're actually together a lot more than you are in your normal life.
You eat every meal together. You tend to truck out on each adventure together, particularly in another country where no one really knows where they're going. So the togetherness, it makes you notice just a little bit more how things are different.
And whether I really intended this to happen or not, because I went into the vacation with a bit of a feeling of hopefulness that we would spend family time together and pressure to make the vacation great. All of that makes for a huge pile of expectations just waiting to be disappointed. Think about what happens when you're trying to make someone else happy.
What you do is do something, whatever it is that you think might hopefully make them happy, and then you wait. You wait for a thank you, for a smile, for reaction. You wait for a sign that you did it right.
Sometimes if you're lucky, you get the right sign that gives you permission to know, or at least think you know, that you've made the other person happy. But have you ever found yourself in this position where you're trying to make someone else happy, and then you find yourself spending the whole day lying in wait for some positive sign. And when you don't see the sign, you notice all the other signs.
You notice the fact that they didn't say thank you, that they didn't look particularly excited about the adventure, even though it's what they said they wanted. You notice they're having a hard time finding something in the restaurant you picked. In short, what you really notice is that you don't succeed in making the other person happy, and you feel a responsibility for that failure.
I'll be honest, that's where I was in the first few days of our vacation. I actually don't typically think of myself as a people pleaser in my everyday life, but on vacation with my teenagers, I became the ultimate people pleaser. Now you may be familiar with this concept, but in case you're not, some define a people pleaser as someone who tries hard to make other people happy.
But based on that definition, I'd say that mothers on average tend to be people pleasers with their children, whether they really want to be or not. We tend to want our kids to be happy, and we tend to be willing to go out of our way to please our kids, even if it means sacrificing our own time and resources. I think at a basic level, this is normal motherly behavior.
And yes, in a typical mom sense, I am a people pleaser with my kids. But for me, people pleasing on vacation, I felt like I reached a whole new level. People pleasing becomes a problem when you don't set boundaries or when you repeatedly act against what you want or need in a situation.
For example, people pleasing with our kids can look like letting them get away with things because we don't want to piss them off by punishing them. Sometimes we can also sacrifice our own needs to the point where we don't speak up or stand up for ourselves. And then we start to feel resentment, exhausted, and overwhelmed.
We can try so hard to make other people happy that we actually make ourselves miserable and don't in fact succeed in making the other person happy at all. Being a people pleaser is sometimes a label we put on ourselves as in, I am a people pleaser. But I want to offer that this really isn't a thing.
We're not born people pleasers. People pleasing is a general description of actions we can take to try to influence how someone else feels. So I've mentioned before that the actions we take or don't take are all driven from how we feel at any given moment.
So think about it. What feeling would cause us to be people pleasers? I think we'd like to think the feeling is something like selfless or caring. We'd like to think the reason we're doing these nice things is because we're just good, caring, generous people.
And sure, maybe that's also true. But if you think of the goal of people pleasing, in essence, it's to try to make someone else happy. It's actually a little controlling.
Now stick with me, because if you notice that you might have people pleasing tendencies with your kids, I'm not telling you you're doing anything wrong. I just want to explore with you where this is coming from. So why would I say it's a little controlling? Well, think about it.
Why would we want someone else to be happy? Of course, there is a part of us that wants other people to be happy in the world. But when it comes to our kids, we really want them to be happy. It's not a passing wish.
It's almost a need. We would do anything to make them happy, really, if it were in our power. Because think of the alternative.
If our kids aren't happy, then we often feel like we can't be happy. Our happiness at times feels like it's dependent on theirs. And I'm not suggesting we should try to be happy if our kids are unhappy.
But have you noticed, the teens are not particularly good at showing us, their mothers, that they're happy. Our kids have a whole world going on in their minds that has very little to do with us. The thoughts swirling around in their heads are making them feel a million things at once, some good, some bad.
So many of them things that they don't share with us. Sure, there might be brief moments when we interact that my kids think something I've done is particularly annoying or lame. There are definitely moments when they think about me for good or bad.
But those moments are typically, I would imagine, pretty far and few between. And meanwhile, I'm over here watching, hoping, doing everything I can to try to get their attention so they can show me they're happy. It's a game they just aren't playing.
And when I remind myself how futile my hopes and efforts are, I realize how much I've been setting myself up for disappointment. My kids weren't doing anything wrong on vacation. They just weren't showing me they were happy as often as I seem to have needed them to in the beginning of our trip.
I was standing on my head trying to make them happy from a feeling of insecurity and dependence, deciding subconsciously that the only way I could be happy was if they were happy. And yet, I couldn't find signs of their happiness. They say people-pleasing behavior often stems from instability in a relationship.
And I can say that unstable is one way I would definitely characterize my relationship with my boys over the past few years. Unstable, fluid, changing, definitely not the same. And that place of instability is likely to be one thing I can depend on for the foreseeable future.
Things will continue to change. So the question for me, for us moms of teens, is do we keep putting off our own happiness until our kids perform their happiness so that we can give ourselves permission to be happy? Or can we let our kids be themselves to feel what they need to feel, to have their own joys and disappointments entirely separate from us, and somehow find a way to capture our own happiness that is no longer entirely dependent on them? Just think of how powerful it would be to not need your kids to be happy, but to actually want them to be themselves. And in the beauty of that truth, that we could also allow ourselves to be happy or at least content knowing that we didn't need to put the pressure of our happiness on their shoulders, that we could be happy that our kids are exactly who they are.
So as I remembered this on our trip, I still noticed when my kids were grumpy or not talkative, but I reminded myself that they were being who they needed to be. And I got to be the mom I wanted to be, a mom who loves her boys no matter how they show up. And then I went to a cafe and had a glass of wine by myself, which was exactly how I wanted to spend that vacation.
Can you find the power in taking ownership of your happiness?
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
