GETTING YOUR TEEN TO LISTEN — LETTING GO OF CONTROL AND REBUILDING CONNECTION | EP. 52
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins.
Hello, friends. First, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening every week.
Thank you for your reviews and your comments. Thank you for reaching out through Messenger, responding to my posts, and thank you to those women who've applied to Mom 2.0. Although I've connected with each of you separately, I'm so grateful to you for sharing your story with me. It means the world to me that these messages are resonating with you, and even more, that they might be giving you hope that there's a different path, that there might be a way to find peace amidst the chaos of our lives, raising teens and letting them go right now.
I don't think there's one mom among us who doesn't struggle. Our challenges may be different, but honestly, it's not a contest. In hearing from so many women, both my clients and the new applicants to my program, I'm struck by how many of us are in fact facing similar challenges.
I say this because as you're listening, you may be thinking you're alone in your pain and that no one else is going through what you are, and I want to let you know you're absolutely not alone. What I see time and again is that we as moms carry so much pain because we love so fiercely, and frankly, none of us want to love any less. So when the flip side of love and care for our kids brings us sadness and anxiety and guilt and frustration, it seems impossible to let go of it.
But my mission is to give you a glimpse into the possibility that it doesn't have to be this hard. One of the challenges that comes up a lot with my clients is communication with our teens. The communication challenges come in many forms, but by and large, when I ask my clients what they want, what their goals are, they say, I want to get back the connection I had with my child.
That statement itself implies a loss, that we had something now and we no longer have it. Our kids are precious to us, so the thought of losing them, losing even a piece of them, our connection with them, it's excruciatingly painful. I've had my mom who's a professional counselor on my podcast in the past, my very first live podcast, in fact.
My mom is my idol. She pursued two master's degrees and a PhD in counseling all while I was in high school and college. It's very possible she was inspired to pursue all this learning because I was such a terrible teen.
I'll have to ask her back on the podcast to get her to tell me the truth. But I distinctly remember as a teenager finding one of her school books lying around, and I remember actually making fun of it. The title of the book was How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.
The book's by Adele Faber and Elaine Maslisch. I think it was first published in 1980, so by the time I was a teen, this book was taking the counseling world by storm. The book's still in print.
I think the last edition was put out a little over 10 years ago, and in some circles, it's considered a parenting bible. As you can imagine, my take on it as a teen at the time was fairly cynical. I actually just recently picked up a copy of the book to jog my memory, and now as an adult, I can look through the pages and appreciate the examples.
But as a kid, I skimmed the cartoon graphics and thought the whole premise of the book was terrible. It felt like manipulation. I might have titled it How to Make Your Kids Listen and Tell You Stuff.
Sometimes for me, it's helpful to bring myself back to that teenage place because I actually loved and adored my mom as a teen. But I definitely spent more time focused on myself and what I wanted than I did spending any time appreciating and being in awe of her academic and professional pursuits. Well, over 40 years later, this book is still very much in demand, and the authors even put out a companion book in 2006 focused on teens.
The book is unsurprisingly titled How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk. So an homage to my mom, and with quite a bit more of a humble lens given my role as a coach and as a mom navigating the rocky road of teen relationships, I decided to revisit these books to see what they might have to offer us in the context of the tools I teach my clients. Unsurprisingly, the book's many examples validate the challenges we face as parents when connecting with our teens.
They're trying to figure out who they are, and that often involves separating themselves from who we are. Teens have mood swings, and the intensity of their emotions can seem out of proportion to the situation. They're dealing with peer pressure, being liked, fitting in.
They want so badly to be independent. They want to have more control over their lives. Their brains are developing at warp speed, and at the same time, they're prone to taking ridiculous risks and testing limits.
Look, this is happening developmentally. And so if any of these examples strike a chord with you in terms of what's going on with your teenager, you're definitely not alone. But if you're thinking it's hard to keep in mind that this is possibly just a stage, when you're in the throes of a big blow-up or a stressful situation, I'm with you.
It can be hard to grasp the magnitude of the changes we're seeing in our kids. What seems like just a handful of years ago, I had two fairly compliant, happy-go-lucky, friendly, talkative, open boys. At least that's how I look back on them with my rose-colored glasses.
Whatever the challenges we faced parenting them five or six years ago pale in comparison to the challenges we're facing now. So it feels like whiplash to try to reconcile these cuddly, friendly children that we have in our minds with the people we see in front of us right now. Here's some adjectives I hear from clients quite often.
Disrespectful, sullen, mean, disengaged, depressed, along with, she won't talk to me. He treats me like the enemy. She thinks I'm trying to control her.
He won't listen. So understandably, many of us can feel in over our heads and in need of guidance to help us work through this rocky time with our teens. So Faber and Maslisch's book offer a number of strategies, including active listening, validating our teens' emotions, setting limits.
Ultimately, it focuses on creating effective communication, resolving conflicts, and finding compromise. It's all very helpful advice, but here's the problem. There are undoubtedly many strategies in the book that would be helpful to us in our interactions with kids, but the reality is knowing how to communicate is not necessarily our problem.
Seriously, we're grown adults. We communicate with people all of the time. Now we may all have different communication styles and different comfort levels when it to setting boundaries and resolving conflicts, but ultimately, whatever style or approach you typically have most likely works with a majority of the people in your life.
This probably has something to do with the fact that we tend to gravitate toward people with whom we enjoy communicating. We pick our friends this way. We pick our partners this way, and that's not to say we get along with everyone in the same way, but we tend to spend more time with the people who we enjoy connecting with and much less time with people whom we don't like.
When it comes to people in our family, especially our kids, we want to have positive relationships with them. It almost feels like it's a should with a capital S, like of course I'm going to have a good relationship with my kids. I should have a good relationship with my kids, but then when we think our kids are pulling away, especially if we've had a close and loving relationship up to this point, as we think that our relationship is challenging and not what it used to be, this brings us so much pain, and it's not like we're going to walk away from our kids.
In fact, we want desperately to fix the relationship, to repair our communication with them, and resolve the conflict, or just get them to listen. We want to feel close to them again. We want them to be safe and move in the right direction.
Everything we want, we know it's for their own good, that they'll be happier if only, and so it's really interesting to notice that this is something we want more than anything, to rebuild a strong connected relationship with our kids. We are absolutely motivated. We want this, and we actually know how to communicate with other people in our life.
So why is this so challenging? It's tempting to just blame our kids. Let's just go there. As I mentioned before, clients come to me describing their kids as disrespectful and mean and closed off.
We use these adjectives to describe kids based on their behavior, and we also judge how they're showing up, that they don't talk to us, that they accuse us of controlling them, or they don't listen. We're working from two underlying assumptions when we approach our kids this way. One, that the adjectives we're using to describe our kids are the truth, and two, that this version of what's happening right now shouldn't be happening.
You may be listening to this and thinking, yep, that's about right. It's true my kid's disrespectful, and also it's true it shouldn't be happening. When you get together with your friends or talk with your partner, and you might describe what's happening, and everyone might agree, yep, that's disrespectful, and it's no good.
And look, I don't want to argue with you about whether or not your teen is disrespectful. You absolutely get to think whatever you want about their behavior. When we think someone is being disrespectful, we tend to get mad.
It's human nature. We all expect people to generally be polite and to show each other the courtesy of respect. We, in fact, expect this of total strangers.
So, of course, we're going to expect this of our kids, who we have raised for 20 plus years and literally done everything for them, including changing thousands of diapers. You're welcome, by the way. I completely understand how frustrating and provoking it is to look your child in the face, that beautiful child who you've loved their entire life, sacrificed everything for, put them before yourself 110,000 percent of the time, and now the same child is looking at you as if you don't deserve to be treated with kindness and appreciation and love.
After everything I've done for you, I deserve a little, insert expletive here, respect. I get it. This is why it hurts so much.
Think about this. When a total stranger is disrespectful, like they're rude or talk back or even if they give you the middle finger, don't forget, I live in New Jersey, the finger is very popular here, but when this happens with a stranger, you might be thrown off guard and your heart might race for a minute. You get thrown into fight or flight, but ultimately you shrug it off because who cares what the stranger thinks of you? Who cares how they treat you? We hopefully never have to see them again, but when it comes to our kids, no way.
How dare they? So let's go back to the two underlying assumptions using this example of disrespect. The first assumption is that the adjective we're using to describe our kids is the truth. So again, that it's true that our kids are being disrespectful.
Okay, again, I'm not here to argue, but when we believe something is true, that it's a fact, it also means that we're right. You could also think of this as we're right and they're wrong. Think about the distance you create from someone when you draw a line in the sand and decide that you're right and that they're wrong.
There's no meeting in the middle. There's no compromise unless the other person caves and agrees that we're right. Have you ever told your kid in the heat of an argument that they're being disrespectful? I have to admit I've done it.
And let me just say, based on my experience, it's rare to have the other person say, wow, I didn't realize I was being disrespectful. Gee, mama, I'm so sorry. The truth is we're watching our kids behavior and labeling it as disrespectful.
It's 99% likely that whatever the kid is doing, they would label it differently. They might call it sticking up for themselves, just trying to get us to listen, but they're just tired and they wish we would get off their case. Who knows? The point is we think it's true that they're being disrespectful.
They don't label what they're doing as disrespectful. So as long as we need to be right, there's no compromise. And that brings me to the second assumption, that this version of what's happening right now shouldn't be happening.
In other words, not only am I right that my teenager is disrespectful, but they shouldn't be. That whatever behavior that they're engaging in right now, whatever you want to label it, shouldn't be happening. And so we're right.
And we want whatever is happening right now to change. And let me reiterate, nothing I'm saying is a judgment. This is where we are as parents right now.
And I've been there too. It's actually because we care so much about our kids that all of this is so painful. And let's layer on the responsibility we take as moms to help our kids become these engaging, responsible, respectful adults who will go out in the world and be good people.
Be honest. Have you ever observed something your child is doing that you don't want them to be doing? Being disrespectful, for example. And you pile guilt on yourself because you think there's something you must have done wrong if this is how your child is behaving.
It's awful to think this way. But we all do it. We all have times when we think we're terrible moms because we blame ourselves for something our kid is doing.
Well, let me offer you a glimmer of hope. However your child is showing up right now, it's not your fault. I'm not saying that we don't all make mistakes, all of us.
But the way each of us feel and show up is about how we interpret the world around us. Someone could scream in my face, and it will only bother me if I have a thought about it. Think about that stranger again.
Say they come up to you screaming obscenities. You'd certainly think it was unpleasant. You would definitely want them to stop.
But you would very likely not think it was your fault or that you deserve it. You wouldn't take it personally. But with people we love, we of course take it personally because we think it's personal.
Our feelings are all rooted in our perspective, in our thoughts. So the way your child feels right now, it's based on their perspective, their thoughts. And they have all sorts of thoughts right now, the majority of them being very different than yours.
We're just not on the same page. We used to think that our kids loved and adored us because they were so good and they listened. But that was only because they would observe us and think, mom's the boss.
I trust her. What she says goes. Guess what? Our kids are not thinking that right now, that we're the boss, that what we say goes.
It's possible they might be questioning a lot about what we stand for and what we want for them. It's possible they may not entirely trust us right now. So when we think our kid is being disrespectful and we're sure we're right, and we're sure it shouldn't be happening, we're setting ourselves up for pain and conflict because who gets to be right? Us or our kids? When we're sure we're right, it leaves no room for our child to be right.
And guess what? Whatever's happening right now, whatever the facts of the situation are, they're happening. So wishing things were different, demanding things be different, it just closes us off to the possibility that there's a reason things are the way that they are. And my friend, I don't think you deserve to be screamed at or have obscenity shouted at you or rules disregarded.
There's some behavior that we absolutely can decide is unacceptable and that we'll set rules and boundaries around. This is true no matter how old your child is, because we can set boundaries with anyone in our life, with any adult in our life. But because as we enter into this territory where the relationship we have with our teen seems rocky, a lot of the time it can feel like a game of whack-a-mole to try to set rules and boundaries and demands around every behavior and interaction.
Faber and Maslisch in their book offer quite a few strategies, which as I said, seem pretty intuitive. Brainstorm solutions. Describe the problem rather than giving orders.
Instead of threats, give choices. Instead of pointing out what's wrong, state your expectations. Don't get me wrong, the book provides strategies that any one of us as parents might think, wow, that could help.
There's one example where instead of nagging your teen to take out the dog, they suggest having the dog write a note to the teen. Dear so-and-so, insert name of child, please take me out or I'll poop inside. Love, the dog.
Amazing. I actually might use that one. And look, I don't have an affiliate deal with this book to promote it at all.
It's got some good ideas. But overall, my point is, I think the challenge isn't that we don't know how to communicate or ask nicely or negotiate. The challenge is that the emotional landscape that we have with our teens is so heightened that it feels impossible to take rational action.
We're so angry or upset or hurt or worried or anxious. We have all of these intense, painful feelings when we think our teen isn't behaving the way we think they should, or that they're treating us or themselves in a way we think they shouldn't. We don't want what's happening.
We want it to change. And we think we're right about all of that. And on top of that, we're not exactly in a calm, peaceful, emotional place.
Can you start to see how strategies like active listening or validating feelings, while worthwhile, become almost impossible to implement in the midst of a heated argument or in the face of a situation that's really emotionally challenging for us and also for our kids? If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're the kind of mom who loves her kids, who would do absolutely anything for them. But we also carry the weight of so much responsibility for making our kids happy, for helping them be successful, for keeping them safe, to getting them to be respectful, responsible adults. The stakes feel so high.
And when we think we're failing because we see evidence that they're not safe, happy, and successful, and totally disrespectful, it's like an alarm goes off in our brains and we need to fix it. We need to get them to see, to listen. But if they don't want to listen right now, can we make them? If they don't want to talk right now, can we force them? Here's what I know.
There are millions of books and parenting coaches and courses that will give you strategies about how to parent your teen, but none of them will work unless you're able to use them from a place of peace, from a place of calm. And I don't know about you, but for me, before I understood how to create that peace for myself, I took action from fear and worry, from anger. And let me tell you, the results were almost never what I wanted them to be.
So how do you create that peace, even when you're faced with a teen that's pulling away, doing things you don't want, being disrespectful, being unsafe? This is why mindset work is so powerful, because you create your feelings, no one else, just you. And when you learn how to harness that power, you can create anything. Connection with your kids, a sense of peace, even when the world around you feels like it's in chaos.
Freedom from the roller coaster of emotions that your teen is mostly taking you on right now. Peace is available to you, and you're in control of creating it. You probably just don't know how, and this is the skill set I teach in my program Mom 2.0. So how can you start? Here's one tip.
Whatever adjective you use to describe your teen right now, consider that they might have a different perspective on how they're showing up right now, and why. Open your mind to the possibility that you might not be entirely right. I'm not saying you're wrong, but maybe your teen isn't wrong either.
This is the start of finding peace. 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.
