HOW TO REBUILD TRUST WITH YOUR TEEN AND LET GO WITHOUT LOSING CONNECTION | EP. 175
Welcome to the Almost Empty Nest Podcast, where we moms of teens and college kids reframe what letting go really means to feel more connected, confident, and at peace. I'm your host, Master Coach Jennifer Collins.
Have you ever said or thought, I just don't trust my teen right now? Or maybe you felt the hurt of your child not trusting you. And it leaves you wondering, how do we get our trust back? In this episode, I'm going to explore why rebuilding trust can feel so hard once you feel like you've lost it. And we'll talk about a different way to think about trust, how it's not something you have to wait for and hand out like a reward, but something you actually have the power to create in your relationship with your teen. By the end of this episode, you'll learn a simple mindset shift to help you rebuild trust without needing your teen to go first.
Hello, my friend.
So if my oldest son just got back from a trip from Bangkok, he was visiting his girlfriend and he spent a week over there. And it sounds like it was an incredible experience. While he was gone, I barely heard from him other than a few texts here and there. I also wasn't constantly checking in. If I'm honest, I was thinking his girlfriend has been there all summer. She knows her way around. And so I knew he was in good hands.
Although I've never been to Bangkok, I felt a level of trust that he was safe and okay. And then he missed his connection in Paris on the way home. His flight from Bangkok was delayed, and his connection in Paris was tight enough that he had no chance.
So he got booked on a flight home in the morning, which meant he had a night to explore Paris. Was there a small part of me that wished he would just stay in the hotel by the airport and not adventure out? Yes. Yes, there was.
Especially since he had to be back at the airport at 8 a.m. And it was already late by the time he got through customs. But of course, this kid is a week shy of 20, and he's never been to Paris. So of course he was going to go exploring.
So fine, I'm thinking, take a cab to the Eiffel Tower, take some pictures, get back to the hotel by midnight. Fine, mission accomplished. Well, that's not exactly how things turned out.
Let's just say at 2 a.m. in Paris, he's still out, not answering our texts or calls. And by the time he did pick up, he said, Mom, I've been in Thailand for a week. Do you really think I can't take care of myself? I acknowledged it.
I said, I know, I'm being overprotective. I'm a mom, and I love you. Clearly, I'd felt safe when he was in Thailand.
But now, with him roaming the streets of Paris at 2 a.m., not speaking the language and never having been there before, and with a young person's sense of invincibility, I wanted to say, it's not that I don't trust you. I just don't trust random people walking in a big city in the middle of the night. In my mind, I was just trying to make sure everything was okay.
But to him, I could tell it felt like I didn't trust him, like I was swooping into baby him when he'd been managing just fine on his own. It made me think about how often I have conversations with clients struggling with a similar dynamic. Sometimes it's around worries about their kid's safety, that they're not sure that they can trust that their kid will take proper precautions or really understand the risks that they're facing.
Other times, we might face a situation where our kid has done something wrong or concerning, broken a rule, like we find beer or a vape pen in their room, or we catch them in a lie. My clients will tell me, I want to trust my kid, but they've broken my trust. And then there's a situation where a kid just isn't talking.
We might sense something's wrong and we want to help. Women will say to me, she just doesn't tell me anything, or I'm just trying to get him to open up a little bit. When our kids don't talk, we don't trust that they're being honest about everything being okay.
Moms will even tell me that they've said to their kid, you have to trust me, I'm your mom. Or they'll say, trust is a two-way street, or you have to earn it. It's like we think about trust as a kind of emotional transaction.
You do the right thing, I trust you. You mess up, I take my trust away. You shut me out, then I try to earn your trust by asking nicely.
But if you don't open up, I feel like I need to demand that you trust me. I am, after all, your mom. I mean, there was a time when our kids did trust us.
When they were little, they trusted us completely, almost instinctively. They came to us when they were scared, when they were hurt, when they needed anything. And they never questioned whether we'd be there.
They just trusted that we would be, that we were a safe place. But then as our kids grow up, at some point that changes. And for every kid, it looks different.
Some of our kids push us away in a pretty intentional and almost personal way. Others just start wanting more privacy or space. Or they might start making choices we wouldn't make.
They stop telling us things. Or maybe it's just that as our kids grow up and they start facing the real world and real consequences of life more directly, we don't really trust that they've got it. We don't trust that they have the work ethic or the emotional resilience.
We don't trust that they can fully do this on their own. In so many ways, the trust we have in our kids, in our relationship, it changes. And not because we don't love our kids.
In fact, the real reason it changes, at least for us, is because we're afraid. Afraid that if we don't know what's going on, that something might go wrong. Or afraid that them pulling away means that we've lost our connection.
We can even fear that if we don't insist that they open up, really insist on trust, that we won't get it back. So we try to pull them closer. We ask more questions.
We hover a little. We tell them, you can tell me anything. And when that doesn't work, it turns into more of a demand.
You have to trust me. I'm your mom. We think we deserve trust.
Really that we have a right to be trusted by our kids. I think that belief comes from a very human and deep maternal place. I mean, we've earned it, haven't we? We've spent years, decades even, showing up.
Day in and day out. We've sacrificed sleep, time, money, emotional energy. And it's not like we've done this for some reward.
But when your kid lies to you or shuts you out, it can kind of feel like a slap in the face. You can feel like, after everything I've done for you, how can you possibly not trust me? The other reason we feel like we deserve to be trusted is that we believe we know what's best. Look, we've been keeping them safe since the day they were born.
You're welcome, by the way. And now they're doing things that don't feel safe. Driving late at night.
Choosing friends we wouldn't choose for them. Making choices that are risky or immature and even dangerous. So we think, if only they listened.
If they would just trust my advice, then I could protect them. Truly, our demand for trust is coming from love. We want to keep our kids safe.
But on the other hand, when we tell our kids what to do from a place of fear, it can come off as controlling. Or like we're discounting their ability to be more independent in ways that they might not think we appreciate. Clearly, my son thought he was more capable of handling himself on the streets of Paris at 2 a.m. than I did.
I thought I knew best. And so did he. So which one of us gets to be right? But here's another thing about trust.
We think trust equals closeness. And actually, what we do is associate closeness with knowing. If they don't tell us what's going on, we don't know.
So how can we trust? It feels like they're pulling away, so we assume the worst. And then we say things like, Why didn't you tell me? You should have trusted me. I'm the one person who will always be on your side.
And look, if you're listening to this podcast, I have no doubt that you are a mom who loves her child and that your intentions are always good. We never demand trust because we want to control our kids. And I don't think it's wrong for us to want our kids to trust us.
Of course we do. And honestly, I do think we know best. We have more life experience.
We're thinking through all of the scenarios and looking to minimize risks. We're not wrong. But when we expect trust from our kids, when we treat our kids' trust as something we're entitled to, it stops being about a relationship and starts looking like control.
On the other hand, we think our kids need to earn our trust. And again, this also makes total sense because sometimes they lie. Maybe they've broken a rule or made a decision that felt reckless or dishonest or disappointing.
And suddenly we feel like we can't trust them. So we tell ourselves, they need to prove that they've changed. They have to earn my trust back.
Again, this sounds totally reasonable. But underneath this approach, we're coming from fear. Fear that if we trust too soon, that they'll let us down again or take advantage of our trust again.
We don't want them to keep making the same mistakes. But also, ultimately, we don't want them to face the consequences of their bad choices. And if we're honest, it would feel like we're failing if we let that happen, right? Like we should have stopped it or seen it coming.
Like trusting them kind of makes us irresponsible or worse, naive. So we double down on not trusting them. We micromanage and check their location.
We lecture them about what could go wrong. We say it's because we love them and we do. But underneath it, we're also thinking, if I don't watch over this, if I don't make sure that they do the right thing, they're going to mess up again and then I'll be the one to blame.
The weight we're carrying isn't just the fear of what they might do wrong, but what it would mean about us if they did. So we actually try to protect ourselves by withholding our trust. The weight we're carrying isn't just the fear of what they might do wrong, but what it would mean about us if they did do that thing.
So we actually try to protect ourselves by withholding our trust until they meet some standard. But the problem is when we believe they have to earn our trust, we put them in a no-win situation. Because no matter what they do, we're watching for signs that they're going to mess up again.
Even when they're doing well, we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to mess up again. And so it actually makes a lot of sense that sometimes our kids get to this place where they stop trying to prove themselves. If they can't win, why bother? And to be honest, I don't even think that they're rationally thinking of it this way, but just imagine every time they mess up, even a little, you watch them a little more closely.
You start asking more questions. You say you want to trust them, but they can feel your doubt. It actually makes so much sense that they pull away, not even to be defiant, or even because they don't care, but even more because they're protecting themselves now.
They don't want to think of themselves as someone who's always messing up. And let's face it, they very likely view the impact of their choices very differently than we do. The part we don't always take the time to appreciate is that our kids pulling away is developmentally normal.
Teens and young adults need to start separating from us in order to start figuring out who they are separate from us. They need room to make decisions and even to fail and learn from their own mistakes. They need to feel some ownership over their lives, even if they're not always doing it right.
So when they feel like they're being constantly watched or judged, they don't feel safe to grow. And ironically, the more we try to control them because we don't trust them, the more we reinforce the perception that we don't think they're capable. And then also double down on the disconnection we're trying to avoid.
When you take a step back and look at all of this, it really makes so much sense. We think we deserve trust because we've shown up for our kids for their entire lives in every possible way. And we want them to earn our trust back when they mess up because we're afraid of what might happen if we don't hold them accountable.
But all of it, this push and pull of who's earned trust and who deserves trust, who's holding back trust, all of it is coming from fear. Fear of messing up, of losing connection, of what their choices might mean for their safety and for us as parents. And in all of that fear, we start using trust like a scorecard.
One mistake, one lie, one silence, and suddenly they're back to zero. But the more we withhold trust, the more they can pull away. Not to rebel, but to protect themselves.
And the truth is that that pulling away isn't just emotional, it's developmental. Because our kids need that space to grow. And think about it, when trust turns into a test, they stop trying to pass.
And that's when we get stuck in the cycle of disconnection that nobody actually wants. My friend, none of this is intentional. If anything, I opened up this episode sharing my story about my son in Paris to show you how well-meaning and natural it is to fall into this cycle.
And the answer isn't to stop holding our kids accountable. It's not to stop caring about what they do or asking them questions or setting expectations. But if we want to rebuild trust, real trust, we have to start by seeing the cycle we're caught in in the first place.
It's a mindset that treats trust like a test. It's a test that our kid either has to pass in order for us to feel safe or it's one that we think we've already passed. Therefore, we deserve their trust without question.
It sounds so logical, right? If they break a rule, we want to make them prove that they can follow it the next time. If they lie, we want them to show us that we can believe in them again. And if they don't open up to us, how can we trust them? How can they not trust us? But what we don't always realize is that the moment we turn trust into this test, we stop treating it like a relationship.
We stop seeing our child as a whole person in development. Sometimes that looks really messy. And instead, we start watching them like a potential liability, waiting for them to prove us wrong or even to prove us right.
We do this so subtly every single day. And my friend, I've done this myself. Where are you going? Who's going to be there? You said you were studying.
Why did I see your location at the mall? Why didn't you just tell me the truth? And again, none of this is coming from a bad place. It's all coming from love. But it's also coming from fear, from the belief that if we let our guard down, something really bad could happen.
But here's what can start to happen when we treat trust like a test. We actually don't feel better when our kid is doing better because we're not sure if we can trust it yet. We also stay on alert for mistakes instead of appreciating the ways that our kids are actually growing and learning from their mistakes.
We also can send the message without meaning to that we're just waiting for our kids to fail again. And my friend, our kids are smart enough to sense that. Even if they can't articulate it, they know when we don't really believe in them, when we're checking up on them instead of cheering them on.
As I've really started to appreciate what it must feel like to be in my boy's shoes when I check up on them and second-guess them, I have so much compassion for the times when they tell me with exasperation, Mom, I've got this. I also appreciate that they don't often share with me because sometimes they don't really want my opinion. There was a time when I had to really look myself in the mirror and recognize how much I was setting my boys up for failure and how much pressure I was putting on them so I could feel okay.
And this is really the deeper cost of this mindset. When trust is treated like a test, it actually makes it impossible to connect with our kids. It keeps both of us stuck in this defensive position where nobody's winning.
And honestly, it creates this confusing double standard. We want them to trust us without question, but we won't fully trust them until they prove that they've earned it. And so everyone ends up feeling let down and misunderstood.
But my friend, what if trust isn't something your child has to earn or even something that you deserve, but something instead that you can choose to build? You do this by choosing intentionally how you show up through how you listen, how you respond, especially when things don't go the way that you hope. In fact, trust is a choice. It's a decision you make about how you want to show up in a relationship.
Even when you've been hurt, even when you're scared or unsure. And I'm not talking about ignoring red flags or pretending everything's fine or letting your kid get away with doing whatever they want. What I'm talking about is saying to yourself, I see the reality of where things are and I'm actively choosing how to show up from a place of belief in my kid, in our relationship.
Trust isn't about knowing your kid will always make the right decision. In fact, you can almost trust that there will be times that they will make decisions that are totally different than the ones you would make for them. But you can also choose to believe that they can learn from their choices, that they're capable of growth and deserve space to figure things out, even when it's messy.
Trust also includes boundaries. You can trust your kid and communicate rules and consequences. You can believe in their potential and also say no to behavior that crosses a line.
You can be open and protective. But the difference is this, when trust is coming from fear, our boundaries come out like threats. But when trust is coming from love, your boundaries are not only in your power to create, but they come from a place of calm confidence.
Here's a simple way to think about it. You don't have to trust your child to always get it right, but you can trust yourself to respond with calm, compassion, and consistency. This is where your power lies.
Not in waiting for your kid to prove something or demanding that they trust you and take your advice, but in deciding how you want to show up in the relationship, no matter what they're doing. Trust isn't about control. It's actually about connection.
And connection is about choosing to stay present, even when it's hard. So here's the real invitation. Instead of waiting for your teen to earn your trust or demanding that they trust you, what if you went first? Let me offer you a question to think about.
What if trust isn't something that has to be earned, but something that you could model minute by minute, just by how you show up? Because your power has never been in controlling your child's choices. Instead, it's always been about how you choose to respond, how you regulate yourself and show up in the relationship, even when it's hard. And really, this is what boundaries are all about.
They're about what you do, the choices you make, the way you respond, what you will and won't engage in, and how you take care of yourself in the process. And trust works the same way. It's a decision you make about how to take action from the kind of mom you want to be, regardless of whether your kid is meeting your hopes and expectations or not.
And this is the work we do in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. If you're tired of feeling stuck in fear or unsure of how to set boundaries or waiting for your big kid to change before you can trust them, let's change all of that. In Mom 2.0, I teach you how to find your power to rebuild trust and connection and show up as the mom that you want to be in this chapter of motherhood. If this is something you're ready for, I would love to talk.
So let's go back to that night in Paris. Yes, I was checking in and I was definitely worried and wanted my son to go back to the hotel. But notwithstanding all of that, I chose to trust him.
Not because he's always going to make the choices I would make and definitely not because I never feel fear or worry, but because I have to let go of the idea that trust is something I deserve just because I'm his mom or alternatively, something that he has to earn by never messing up. My son and I have built trust over time and not because I've been perfect, but because I've been honest. It's been through my willingness to let go, even when it's been hard.
I've also been willing to have hard conversations and set boundaries that he didn't like when it's been necessary. We've built trust together by learning how to give each other the benefit of the doubt, even when things have gotten hard. When my son came home, I gave him a big hug and I was grateful to have him home and safe.
And I said to him, Hey, I'm sorry I was calling you in Paris. I was just worried. And he said, Mom, I know it's because you love me.
And also there was a sketchy guy who asked me the time at the Eiffel Tower at 3 a.m. So I knew it was time to get back to the hotel. I'd like to think that he heard me, even though it looked like he was totally annoyed and ignoring me. But I also realize he probably had to experience it himself.
Trust isn't all or nothing. And it's not lost forever because of our mistakes. But it's also not something you have to wait around hoping to get.
It's something you can create by how you show up through the calm presence you bring to the hard conversations. You don't have to get it perfectly. You just have to be willing to go first.
Until next time, my friend. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to check out my next free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes.
You have more power than you think, my friend.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
