TEEN LOVE
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode 36.
Hello, my friends. I was reading a blog post the other day and the woman was talking about how isolating this time of motherhood is when our kids are teens and young adults. She compared it to those days when our kids were babies, not sleeping, not yet walking.
It was so easy to get together with a group of friends and just share your frustrations. Because even though it was hard for all of us, so many of the ways our lives were hard were similar, or similar enough. I was thinking that the other reason it felt easier to share mommy frustrations with our friends when our kids were little is because of how we interpreted the day-to-day frustrations.
The fact that our kid wasn't sleeping, or wouldn't eat, or threw a tantrum every night. I remember feeling like I wasn't doing a great job as a mom during those times. I remember feeling overwhelmed and frustrated on a regular basis.
But it wasn't entirely personal. I don't think I thought my friends would think anything differently about me because of what my kids were doing. They weren't doing it because I was a terrible mom.
They were just being kids. We had a shared experience that helped us create bonds as moms. I don't know if you've felt similarly, but as my kids have gotten older, I know I've also felt reluctant to bond with other women over my experience as a mom of young adult men.
The issues and challenges our kids are facing, they're much bigger than the problems were when they were babies. We're no longer dealing with missing naps and fussy toddlers. It's drugs, alcohol, dating, sex, social life, grades, extracurricular pursuits, college, just to name a few very big categories.
I'd go out on a limb and say that every one of us as mothers has some mix of unique worries when it comes to our teens and young adult kids. And it's not a competition, really. Our worries about our kids are our worries.
They're very big and very real to us. When it comes to talking to our friends about some of these challenges, unless we're talking to a really close friend, it just feels like the information is too personal, particularly if it has to do with tricky subjects like sex, drugs, alcohol, or any of the other experiences our kids might be having as they grow up and explore their independence. There's a big part of us that worries that our friends will judge us, judge how we're parenting.
It's hard enough to decide how to parent each of our kids. Look, we're already over here judging ourselves harshly enough to have a friend's or acquaintance's face reflect the judgment we already feel. It's just too much.
And let's face it, so many of us only post on social media about the proud mom moments. And of course, we deserve to be proud. But how many of us post about the other moments? The time when you're sick with anxiety and worry? The times when you're going crazy with fear or frustration over something going on with your child? We don't post about those moments.
So in this episode, I'm going to tackle the subject of our kids' love lives and more specifically the intricacies of why the subject is so challenging for us. Much more challenging than the beautiful posts of prom pictures might suggest. This is touchy territory for us, primarily because we feel a whole host of emotions as our kids become teens and start showing an interest in romantic relationships.
It starts off as kind of cute, actually. It's adorable when you hear your 10-year-old say they like someone or they have a boyfriend. You're fairly sure at this point that it's all very innocent.
And our kids are typically still talking to us at this point. So we get as much information as we need about the relationship. And there's typically not much to tell at this point.
They probably only see each other at school. There are no real dates, certainly no time alone with each other. Then at some point before we're ready, things change.
And whether your child is 15 or 25 or whatever age they're navigating their relationships, this conversation is going to be relevant to you. Now, before I go down the rabbit hole of loving our kids, I want to say there's no perfect time for our kids to start dating. Each of our children are very different, unique individuals.
And when they find that first relationship, it will be on their timeline. Our expectations about what that should look like can be challenging to us, though. If our child starts dating too early, and let me tell you, our kids' definition of dating is much different than our definition of dating.
But if your perception is that they're too young to start dating, then it's likely you'll feel some anxiety or resistance to your child's interest in dating. Or alternatively, you might worry that your child hasn't had their first real relationship yet. You might worry that they feel badly that they're not in a relationship, or you might wish that they were in a relationship now while they're still at home so you can watch over them so that they can have a bit of age-appropriate experience before they head off to college and they're on their own.
So even before our kids are involved in romantic relationships, we have opinions about these relationships. And let's be honest with ourselves about this for a moment. We have opinions.
Of course we do. We have opinions about when they should start dating, what it means if they're dating or aren't dating yet, whether they should or shouldn't be having sex and at what age. And I'm not here to judge your point of view.
That's none of my business. But what I want to explore with you is what we create for ourselves when we aren't intentional or at least aware of our opinions and how they impact how we show up as mothers. Because if it's one thing I've found that is fairly universal when it comes to motherhood, not one of us tries to intentionally be a bad mother.
Well, maybe there are some exceptions in the world, but if you're listening to this podcast about the journey to the empty nest, I'm going to bet you're a mother or father who cares deeply about how you show up for your kids. That doesn't mean that our kids are going to be happy about everything we say or do, but our intention is always to advocate for what we think is in our child's best interest. So this is how we approach their romantic relationships as we've approached everything in their lives up to this point.
We're looking for danger, signs of trouble. We just want our baby to be happy. We want them to be happy.
And here's the crazy thing about young love. Sometimes it makes our kids over the moon with happiness, and other times it's like they're crashing down into a deep dark hole. It's a roller coaster to say the least.
We're generally thrilled when they're happy, but watching your child when they're in the depths of despair over a breakup or a fight with their boyfriend or girlfriend, it's agonizing. There's nothing we can do. And sometimes we find that our kids don't want to talk to us about it.
So we have no details. They don't want to fill us in about everything that happens. So we're left to piece together an incomplete story that leaves us basically in the dark, completely unable to help and full of worry, filling in the blanks.
Or alternatively, our kids tell us a lot, like many details, and that can be hard too. Now you've got more information that is racing around in your head, giving you more scenarios to worry about, more thoughts about what should or shouldn't have happened. And look, if it were as simple as dealing with a breakup and experiencing a little heartache, most of us have experienced that at some point in our lives.
It's part of growing up, right? Our hearts hurt a little when we see our babies hurting, but we know that it's part of the journey to find love, which we also know from experience is a rare thing. So many marriages end in divorce. So many married couples are miserable.
We want our kids to be happy and in love, but what will that look like for them? We may still be wondering what it looks like for ourselves. As our kids navigate their dating lives, the landscape is so much different from when we grew up. I'm going to sound like a grandma right now, but as you well know, there was no texting or social media when we were growing up.
I don't think I had a phone installed in my room until I was a junior in high school. Before that, I had to take the phone in the kitchen with a long cord around the corner and talk very quietly so no one would hear. And at any time, my parents could pick up the phone and know I was talking to someone.
If you called someone and they weren't home, you could leave a message on an answering machine, but you weren't going to do that with a boy you like, or even someone you were dating. You both just kept calling until you eventually connected. Now kids are connected literally 24 hours a day, in the middle of the night, during school, whenever they feel like it.
And their social interactions aren't limited to people in their school. They're frequently meeting each other through Snapchat or any of the other social networks where kids are regularly gathering, communicating, or commenting on each other's Instagram posts. Our kids are navigating a dating world where they're never out of reach from their network, unless they have the discipline to literally silence or turn off their phones when they need to concentrate.
For our kids, this is normal. It's how they grew up. The other big change from when we grew up is that our kids have a lot more knowledge than we ever did about sex or anything else they could possibly want to know about.
Every answer is just a click away. When we grew up, we relied on the stories, largely fictional, from our friends and whatever knowledge our parents passed on to us, which may not have been a huge amount depending on your parents. Talking about sex with your kids, it can be awkward.
And so many of our parents didn't really do it. Well, I can't generalize. Some of our parents didn't do it.
And now that we're parents, we probably have an opinion about whether they should have told us more or less. I actually think, particularly given our understanding about sexually transmitted diseases, our generation of parents has generally tried to be more open with their kids about sex. At the very least, warning against the dangers of unsafe sex.
You know, I actually saw a study that said that kids today are much less sexually active than in previous generations. Less sexually active. Now granted, this is by percentage points.
The latest statistic from the CDC is that 55% of kids in the US have had sex by age 18. So more than half, but still only 55%. And apparently the statistic is declining.
The CDC also says that use of contraception among teens is on the rise, as in the vast majority of teens practice safe sex. I want to stop here for a second. Did you know any of this? That kids today are actually less sexually active than they were when we were growing up? This was news to me when I read it.
Maybe I just expected that kids today had access to so much more information than we did, that they were getting exposed to information about sex so much earlier than we did, that somehow that meant that teens being sexually active was going to be inevitable. And look, it's still 55%. But my point surrounding all of this is our kids are navigating romantic relationships on a completely different playing field.
It's a landscape that we in fact know very little about. And yet here we are, still determined to support our kids in any way we can. But I want to offer something that's going to drive most of the rest of this conversation around our kids.
We actually don't have any control over what they do, how they feel, or what they think. Okay, on the one hand, that might seem obvious to you. I don't have any control over what my kids do, feel, or think.
Let's really explore this for a moment. Do you have any control over what your kids do, particularly as it relates to sex and romantic relationships? When our kids were little, we had total control of how they interacted with anyone. I'm going way before romantic relationships here.
Our kids didn't even have a play date that we weren't involved in planning for a large number of years. Then they get into the territory beginning in middle school and then certainly in high school, when all of a sudden they're referencing hanging out with friends you've never met or heard of. They say they're going out.
They might tell us who they're going out with, but do we really know? My mother used to have a phrase, trust but verify. And your child could be totally trustworthy in that they always tell you the truth. I'm not trying to imply that there's some reason not to trust your child, but the reality is our kids have an increasing amount of autonomy in their lives as they get older.
This autonomy skyrockets once they can drive or even when their oldest friend gets their license. Suddenly they've got independence. And we remember this for when we were younger, right? So as parents, we naturally set up rules to keep them safe.
We establish curfews. We might have life 360 on our phones and can track how fast they're driving. And presumably we enforce consequences when our kids break the rules.
But this is one thing I've discovered. And if you want to know the truth, many of my clients have had this similar experience. Trying to set appropriate rules and enforce consequences with teens is like playing whack-a-mole.
You set up rules, you think are reasonable, and all of a sudden they go and do something that you never even thought to set up a rule about. And specifically what I mean is typically when we have rules, if our kid breaks a rule, there's a specific consequence. Like when I came home later than my curfew growing up, my mom would deduct the number of minutes I was late from my curfew the next night I went out.
When I broke the curfew, I suffered a natural consequence. But what happens if you discover your kid's doing drugs? You probably told him not to do drugs, but you never thought to set a specific consequence. It's new territory.
The same could be true with sex. Maybe you didn't tell your kid not to have sex, but then you discover they are, or they come to ask you for advice. You didn't have a rule about it, but somehow when faced with the circumstance of your child having sex, it's hard not to have thoughts about it.
And even if you don't want them to have sex, can you even really set a boundary around not having sex? I mean, I'm sure you can, but how could you ever really enforce it? None of this is to imply what you should do. I'm just illustrating what an unsure time this is for us as parents. There are a lot of things we want our kids to do in life, and sex is probably not one of them.
And maybe some of us know they'll have it, but how you feel about it is going to be a function of your thoughts about that fact. Some of us might think, no big deal, I had sex at her age, or absolutely not, he's too young. And once they're having sex, then there are all these other worries.
Is she safe? Are they using protection? Will he get STDs? Will they get caught? Do her parents know? I could spend an hour going through the worst case scenarios in our minds. We don't talk about it. This is our baby.
We're not going to talk about our kids' sex lives, but it's a lot to process for us. And I want to first just hold space for us. Wherever your child is on their journey to find love, still looking, in the midst of a breakup, in a very serious relationship, wherever they are, you're a mom watching on the sidelines, just wanting what's best for them.
And you have no control over what they're doing. We can advise, remind, reiterate. We can buy them condoms.
We can try to keep them from ever being alone with a boy. We can tell them to be respectful, that no means no. But ultimately, their actions, their actions are now up to them.
And short of keeping them locked in their room, we can't control them. But we kind of still try, and I'll admit, I've done this. Because we're right.
Look, getting a sexually transmitted disease, that would be terrible. Women need to protect themselves from getting overpowered. It unfortunately still happens.
Men should never force themselves on anyone. Getting pregnant and keeping a child, that's a life-changing event. We know we know better about all of these things.
And so we try really hard to convince our kids. And although the facts are on our side, we could probably look up statistics to prove our point of view. We take the responsibility to teach our kids these lessons before it's too late.
So seriously, that we can do a lot of reminding, reiterating, nagging, controlling from a place of worry and fear, possibly even panic. What if all of this turns out terribly? It's my job to fix it. So we try really hard to convince our kids to be safe and do the right thing.
And maybe some of our kids are still listening. Some might hear our advice and think, Mom, you're right. But others of our kids, they're in the moment.
They're living their lives. And all they think is, Mom, get off my back. You don't trust me.
I don't want you in my business. And sometimes, let's face it, our kids may not be thinking. They're certainly not sitting there worrying about all of the bad things that could happen.
The what ifs. They're living in the moment. We, on the other hand, are living perpetually in the fear of what could go wrong in the future if they make the wrong choices.
Our kids look at the world through their lens, and we look at the world through ours. And for many of us, our lens sees danger around every corner. Even just the thought of our kids having sex, it's uncomfortable.
We're not welcoming it. So no matter what conversation we're entering, if there is any indication sex is a part of the mix, we're uncomfortable, resistant. So our kids' perspectives vary, of course.
Some of our kids may be very reluctant to pursue intimacy with anyone. They may have thoughts about sex that creates their own emotional discomfort or resistance. And that, to our great relief in those cases as moms, might lead our kids to be extra careful and perhaps even delay getting seriously involved with anyone.
A sigh of relief for some of us, right? But then others of our kids, they're not reluctant to have sex at all. They're all in. They can't wait.
They think somehow everyone else has already had it, and they're an outlier. The sooner the better. And then once they're in a sexual relationship, well, good luck getting them to stop or slow down or listen to anything mom has to say about sex.
No thank you. So we have our lens, meaning we have our own viewpoint about our kids having sex or not having sex and what all of that means for them and for us. And our kids have their lens, their viewpoint about having sex.
And nine times out of ten, those perspectives are not going to match up. It would probably be true anyway, but everything I mentioned before about how different dating is today than when we grew up, not only are our perspectives different, but our perspectives are born out of completely different, almost cultural circumstances about what romantic relationships look like today, how you communicate in a So our kids are going to think what they think. Try as we might, we're most likely not going to have much success changing their minds.
And based on what they think, they're going to be motivated to take action based on their own perspective. None of this is in our control unless they happen to agree with our point of view. So I'm going to give it to us that this is hard.
We're in the midst of a big transition with our kids. They're on the brink or in the midst of these really big relationships that involve a lot of things that bring up a lot of uncomfortable feelings for us. If you've ever wondered whether or not other moms are feeling this, I want to assure you, there are.
You are not alone. There's nothing wrong with you if you feel challenged by all of this. But now what? If we can agree that the circumstance of our kids growing up and exploring sexual relationships is hard, and that we can't control how our kids act or how they think about approaching romantic relationships, then it feels like the whole situation is hopeless, right? We're stuck over here in anxiety and fear over everything that can go wrong, and our kids are over there doing what they want and definitely not listening to us 100% of the time.
Here's what I want to offer. We can't control our kids. The only power we have in this situation is over ourselves and specifically over how we show up for our kids.
When we're in the throes of panic and frustration over how our kids are behaving, and this applies to really any situation, not just sex or romantic relationships, but if we're feeling fear because we're thinking our kids are making terrible choices or are going to get themselves in trouble because they're not listening or being careful, we're going to feel anxiety, maybe even bordering on panic, because we're going to be thinking it's our responsibility to fix this or else. Or else they'll get into trouble. They'll get hurt.
They'll have to face consequences, severe consequences. They'll alter the course of their life. We put so much responsibility on our shoulders to help our kids navigate their lives, so much in fact that it can feel like if we don't take on this responsibility, or even if we try and we fail to guide our kids through these murky waters of their teen years, that we will have failed as a mother.
If we're to really face the possibility that we have no power over our kids and what they do, it's almost like we have to accept failure. Our failure will be inevitable. But there is another way forward here, because when we think that this is all our responsibility and everything's going to go terribly wrong unless we as moms do something, we feel anxiety, and from that place, we control.
We nag. We yell. We show up in a way that often has a negative impact on our relationship with our kids.
And look, they get to decide how they want to interpret our nagging or our insistent advice, but in some cases, what's likely is they pull away. They listen less. They communicate with us less.
It can have the opposite impact of what we're really going for here. But rather than approaching the situation from a place of wanting to control our kids and their behavior, what would it look like if we were to approach the situation asking ourselves how we want to show up for our kids? What does it look like for us to show up as the mom we want to be as our kids grow up, as they navigate romantic and sexual relationships? It's not about who we want our kids to be. We need to start with us.
Who do you want to be as a mom? What I've discovered is that I'm not always going to do it right. I often have the best intentions and my efforts fall flat, but I'm willing to keep trying and learning. But the most important thing I'm embracing is that I have the power to do what I can to create the relationship I want with my children.
That relationship starts with my own willingness to allow them to be who they are, to acknowledge that I may not know entirely what's best for them in their own mind, but also that I have some wise information that I can offer them. They get to decide what to do with my advice, but when I offer it from a place of love and respect, it's often so much better received than when I offer my advice from a place of fear. Sometimes we can be so focused on the relationships our kids are building that are separate from us that we forget to nurture our own relationship with our children.
And that relationship is evolving. It's a crazy changing landscape and we don't feel prepared. We feel fear.
We're worried so much can go wrong and we're frustrated they won't listen, but we love them so much. And so let's start with love. Love that understands control is no longer an option.
So now what? Until next time, friends.
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