INVISIBLE CONTRACTS WE USE WHEN PARENTING TEENS—HOW TO STOP FEELING SO LET DOWN | EP. 185
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 felt frustrated with your teen? Well, that's probably an obvious question. How many times have you felt frustrated when your kid ignores you or disrespects you or just seems to not care at all about connecting with you? Or maybe you've asked them a hundred times and still they don't act differently.
The truth is, most of us are operating with what I call invisible contracts. Unspoken agreements we believe our kids should honor, but they actually never signed. And that's true even when we've said it a hundred times.
In this episode, I'm going to show you how to spot your hidden expectations and why they cause you so much pain. I'll also talk about how to take your peace and power back without giving up on love, connection, or respect. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend. I want to start this episode with a story that might sound familiar to you. So it's Sunday night.
You've planned a family dinner and you've made everyone's favorite meal. You might have even made, or in my case, bought, a dessert. You picture in your mind the whole family gathered together around the table, catching up and laughing, maybe even sharing stories from the week or plans for the week ahead.
As you're shopping and preparing for the dinner, you can see in your mind exactly what you want it to look like. But here's what really happens. One kid wolfs down his food in five minutes and heads straight upstairs.
The other doesn't come down at all because she's FaceTiming with her friends. And you're left staring at the half-empty table thinking, why do I even bother? But here's something really interesting. This isn't just about the dinner.
What you've done is set up an invisible contract. You've created an unspoken agreement in your mind that says, if I put in the effort to make this special, then you should show up, appreciate it, and connect with me. And my friend, we don't just do it with our kids.
We do it with our partners and our friends and our parents, other people in our lives. But here's the problem. Your big kid, or those other people for that matter, never signed this invisible contract.
But when it gets broken, it feels personal, like a rejection. And over time, those little moments of disappointment can build into resentment, self-doubt, and even the fear that you're losing the relationship and connection you want. And this is true, especially when it's happening with your child.
So what do I actually mean when I say invisible contract? It's basically an expectation you have, but one you've never actually said out loud. It's that unspoken agreement in your head about how things should go. And the truth is you believe it's just understood.
It sounds something like, if I cook, you should thank me. Or if I ask about your day, you should at least share something. Or if I'm driving you everywhere, you should show a little appreciation.
If you get something out of the refrigerator, you should put it back into the refrigerator once you're done. But I want to stop here and just say, these obviously aren't crazy expectations. They come from a reasonable place.
Honestly, they come from love and a sense of fairness as well. If I'm putting in the effort, I hope you'll meet me halfway. If I'm showing up for you, I hope you'll show up for me.
These expectations also come from a place of responsibility, because there's a big part of us that hopes we've raised our kids to be good humans. We feel like we've modeled kindness and responsibility. So when our kids don't reflect it back to us, we also kind of feel like we're failing to do our job, failing to raise these kind humans.
But the problem with these invisible contracts is that our kids don't actually know they exist. They haven't agreed to them. Because let's be real here too, because it's not like you haven't told your big kid to say thank you.
Or that you haven't asked them a million times to put their dishes in the dishwasher or to not roll their eyes. I mean, the contracts don't really feel invisible or unspoken, do they? So here's the nuance. There are times when these contracts aren't invisible because we've never said them.
They're invisible because we assume that saying it should be enough. That if we've asked clearly, our kids should respond the way we want them to. And when they don't, it feels even worse.
It feels like they're ignoring us on purpose. Because the truth is, even when we say the words of exactly what we want and expect out loud, we're still holding on to an unspoken contract that sounds something like, if I've told you what I expect, then you should respect me enough to follow through, to listen. And that's the part that actually feels so frustrating.
Because it's not just about the behavior. It's about the meaning we attach when our kids don't do what we've asked. That they don't care.
That they don't respect us. They don't appreciate us. That we don't matter.
So sometimes there are things we really do tell or ask our kids. And other times, these contracts are really only in our heads. They're the expectations we assume our big kids should just know by now.
Like, if I've been running around all day, you should notice and offer to help when I'm carrying in all the groceries by myself. Or if I leave laundry folded up on your bed, you should put it away without me having to ask. Or if I'm sitting in the car outside waiting to pick you up, you shouldn't be dilly-dallying with your friends.
You should come right out on time. If I text you, you should respond quickly. Or if I don't nag you about homework, you shouldn't take responsibility for getting it done and appreciate that I didn't nag you.
Notice how few of these expectations we ever articulate out loud. And maybe these aren't the ones for you, but there are so many expectations we have. And we don't actually sit our kids down and say, here's my full list of everything I expect for you.
But the truth is, all of these expectations are still running in the background of our minds. And actually, just notice how many of these expectations seem totally reasonable to us as moms, but they're also totally open to interpretation in terms of what it actually means to meet that expectation. Like we want our kids to put effort into school, but how are we supposed to know what the right amount of effort is? We want our kids to respond quickly to our texts, but what does that mean? Is that five minutes or within an hour? What's the right amount of time before we feel let down and ignored? And even when we do articulate these expectations, it can sometimes feel totally arbitrary, maybe even to us about how much is enough.
It's like we only know we've been let down when we start to have feelings about something because our minds have then decided whatever's happening isn't meeting that invisible, unarticulated expectation. So sometimes these contracts, these expectations we have for our kids are totally invisible, and sometimes we feel like we've made the expectation very clear. But the ultimate problem is our teen hasn't actually bought into the contract.
And that gap between what we've asked for or what we wanted and what they actually do is where we open ourselves up to a lot of disappointment, frustration, and hurt. And look, of course, when your teen doesn't do the thing you expected them to do, whether you said it out loud or not, it feels like a disconnect, like they're ignoring what matters to you, or maybe even what you feel like should matter to them. And because so many of these contracts come from love, when they go unmet, it truly does feel personal.
Let me give you a few other examples. You spend hours cooking your teen's favorite dinner, and when they just want to take it to their room, it feels like rejection. You pick your kid up from school, excited to see them and hear about their day, and they give you a one-word answer.
It feels like they don't care. You come home from a long day of work, and you find open containers and trash all over the kitchen counter, and it feels like disrespect. Maybe even that you've raised disrespectful kids.
You text your kid to check in, and hours go by without a response. Kind of feels like you don't matter to your kid, like you're not a priority. And notice what happens in each of these examples.
The pain feels like it's about the dinner, or the conversation, or the trash, or the text. But it's really about the meaning your brain attaches to these things. If they cared, they'd notice.
If I mattered, they'd respond. If I were a better mom, this wouldn't be happening. These thoughts are the real cost of invisible contracts, because they turn everyday disappointments into evidence that you're losing your connection with your kid, or evidence that you're failing.
And the truth is, this hurts so much because these contracts aren't about control. They really are about love. You're doing all these things for your big kid because you love them.
You don't really want it to be a quid pro quo. But at the same time, really? Is it too much to ask for a little bit of appreciation or respect? Too much for them to show a little love back? Believe me, there have been more times than one in my life where I have thought, after everything I've done for you, this is how you're treating me? It feels mean. You're not just disappointed that your expectations haven't meant bad.
You feel frustrated and resentful, maybe even a little heartbroken. And let's be honest also, because it's not like these types of disappointments just happen one or two times. It often happens repeatedly over time.
So your resentment kind of builds up. It's the accumulation of a lot of unmet expectations, and they stack on top of each other until it just feels like a really bad pattern, like proof that things are headed in the wrong direction. So let's talk about why we create these contracts in the first place.
At the most basic level, expectations are just hopes. They're what you want. What you hope will happen.
You want your teen to show appreciation, to be responsible and connect with you. Again, all because you care. These expectations come from love.
But they're also shaped by so many other factors. And one is how you were raised. Maybe in your family, everyone sat down for dinner, and so you expect the same with your family.
Or maybe something didn't happen in your family of origin, and so you want to create something different with your own kids. Our expectations can also come from societal or cultural messages about what it means to be a good mom or a good family. Think about it.
From the time we became mothers, we've been surrounded by examples of how it's supposed to look. On social media, we see these perfectly coordinated posts and family dinners and vacations where everyone looks happy. And we've seen movies and TV shows where families are laughing around the dinner table or kids confide in their parents.
In fact, in our own minds, we have our own invisible contracts for ourselves, these standards of what it looks like to be a good mom. Because a good mom has kids who do well in school or who at least try their best. A good mom makes sure that her family eats dinner together as much as possible.
She doesn't yell. She doesn't lose her patience. Her kids want to spend time with her and connect with her.
They don't stay locked in their rooms, and they're not always on their phones. They talk together with their mom in the kitchen, and they go on family adventures together on the weekends. It honestly sounds unrealistic even as I'm saying it.
But be honest with yourself. This is the standard you're likely holding yourself to. And the minute we tell ourselves it's not realistic, it's like we're giving up on what really matters.
All of these standards, these hopes for what it will look like for us to have done our job well, to be a good mom, they start to creep into our minds, and then we build contracts around them. Expectations around how our kids should behave if I was really doing my job right as a mom. The problem is these hopes aren't just neutral.
They're actually loaded with a lot of judgment. Because when life doesn't match this perfect picture, it truly feels like we're failing. But at the same time, these expectations don't account for the messy, complicated, and imperfect reality of raising teens.
They don't account for your teen's personality or their independence, or the developmental push and pull that naturally happens at this stage. But because those societal messages are so powerful, we don't even realize how much they're shaping our invisible contracts. They're in the background of our minds, really fueling our sense of what should be happening, and also setting us up for even more disappointment when reality looks different.
Another source of these invisible contracts is the past. Those moments when you have felt connected with your kids. Those times when they used to listen and comply so much more easily.
So it makes sense that if you felt this connection with your kids in the past when they were younger, that you don't want to lose that. And that's where these invisible contracts can also be influenced by our own fears. The fears that if we don't expect a certain level of behavior or a certain type of interaction, that we'll lose the chance to connect and influence our kids altogether.
Maybe that we won't have the connection that we want into the future, or that we're not doing our job to prepare our kids for adulthood in the right way. Here's another aspect of invisible contracts at play here. Your brain actually creates these contracts as a way to try to make life feel predictable and safe.
Because if I can picture how I want things to go, my brain thinks maybe I can make that happen. If I set the expectation, maybe I can avoid the pain of disappointment. But as you've probably noticed, that doesn't usually work.
Because expectations are really about emotional payoffs. And here's what I mean. We don't want our teen to put the dishes in the dishwasher just because it's efficient and makes our life a little easier.
We actually want them to do it because it would make us feel supported and respected. We don't care about that family dinner just for the food. We want it because it represents connection and feeling like we still matter to our kids, that we're building our relationship with them.
And that text that we're waiting for from our kid, it's not just about logistics. We want it because it helps us feel secure in our connection, like we still have a place in our big kid's life. Just last night, my son's blood sugar went low twice, and I can still see it because I'm still connected to his continuous glucose monitor.
And both times, miraculously, he texted me from college in the middle of the night with a simple, on it. Beyond just the logistics of treating his blood sugar, those two words meant safety for him and honestly, also for me. And surprisingly, I also had this beautiful thought that he cares enough to know that I am all the way down here in New Jersey worrying about him.
This is the emotional payoff that we're hoping for when we have these invisible expectations. And my friend, of course we want this payoff. Underneath every expectation we have is really a hope about how we'll feel if that expectation is met.
The payoff is the emotion we think the met expectation will give us. The peace, the love, the connection, the relief. That's really the heart of why unmet expectations hurt so much.
Because it's not just that the thing didn't happen. It's about the feeling we were counting on that we didn't get. So let's talk about how you can start noticing your own invisible contracts.
Because remember, a lot of the time we're walking around not even consciously aware of them. They're just running in the background and shaping how we feel. One place to start is to look at those moments when you feel disappointed or resentful or frustrated or hurt.
Those emotions are usually a sign that an invisible contract has been broken. When you reflect on that moment, you can ask yourself, what did I expect would happen here? What was this hope or expectation I assumed my teen had already agreed to? Either because I've told them a hundred times already or because I feel like it's what they should know by now that they should do. You can even reflect honestly about whether you put in a certain amount of effort and then expected something in return.
Now, first, I want to say that as you reflect on these questions, part of it is going to feel obvious. Like, of course I have these expectations. And I'm sure the vast majority of your expectations aren't at all unreasonable.
They all make sense. But by asking these questions, what you're really doing is giving yourself an opportunity to articulate these expectations more clearly. So you can see the ways that they might not be landing with your big kid or how much meaning you're attaching when they're not met.
Because that's the real power of this self-awareness. It's not about judging yourself for having expectations. It's about slowing down enough to notice what they are so you can decide with intention how you want to respond instead of just reacting from frustration or hurt.
I'll give you an example from my own life. When my oldest first went away to college, I would text him all the time just to check in. A quick, how was your day? Or how did that exam go? Sometimes just love you.
And honestly, I almost never got a response. I'm not even exaggerating. Maybe he'd answer every 10 texts.
And even then, it might only be a few days later. For a while, I felt hurt. My invisible contract sounded something like if I text you, you should text me back.
Or at least give me a quick reply, just an emoji. And honestly, the underlying thought was if you cared about me, you'd text me back. I was missing the emotional payoff of receiving that evidence that he cared.
But the reality is my son never signed that contract. To him, not responding wasn't personal. It wasn't about me.
It was just him being busy, living his life. So I realized I had a choice. I could either experience the ignored texts as rejection.
Or I could take responsibility for my invisible contract. So my invitation for you is this. The next time you feel that sting of frustration or disappointment, stop and ask yourself, what contract did I just expect my teen to honor? Naming it does not mean you have to let it go.
It just gives you awareness. And that awareness is the first step to start shifting into being intentional about how you respond. So that's the next question.
How do you want to respond to these unmet expectations? Is this a contract you want to articulate and enforce? Maybe even to set boundaries and consequences around? Because sometimes that is what you need to do. Or is the invisible expectation more about you and what you need than it is about something different that your teen really needs to do? You can think of these invisible contracts as having three layers. The first is the surface expectation.
Using the example of my son not texting from college, my surface expectation was, if I text you, you should text me back. And we'd all probably agree that this is a reasonable expectation. But underneath that expectation is a second layer.
It's my emotional need. It's what I was really hoping to feel if my expectation was met. I wanted to feel connected and secure knowing he was okay.
I probably also wanted some reassurance that I still mattered to my son. So when he didn't respond, my brain immediately told me a story. And that's the third layer.
For me, that story sounded something like, he doesn't care. He doesn't need me anymore. And that story made me feel hurt and sad.
This is how you can start to unpack the layers of these invisible contracts. My pain wasn't really about the texts. It was about the meaning I attached to all of it.
My invisible contract was really, if you loved me, you'd show it in this specific way. My friend, it's not wrong to want these things. It's not wrong to want connection and respect or even appreciation.
But when we start attaching our sense of worth or security to whether our kids fulfilled these invisible contracts, we set ourselves up for constant disappointment. That's why breaking down these layers can be so powerful. It gives you a way to step back and say, okay, here's what I wanted.
Here's how I hoped it would make me feel. And here's the story I started to tell myself when it didn't happen. Once you can see all of these layers more clearly, then you can decide how you want to respond with intention instead of reacting from hurt.
You don't have to stop wanting connection or respect from your team because of course you want those things. But you can learn to shift how much power you give these invisible contracts over your emotional wellbeing. Instead of letting your peace depend on whether your team listens or does what you expect, you can take ownership of your expectations in a way that starts to put the power back in your hands.
Sometimes that looks like clearly articulating that invisible contract, what enough really looks like. And maybe you even need to set boundaries around that. But it could also look like recognizing the deeper feeling you were hoping for and finding other ways to create that feeling yourself.
And sometimes it could look like letting go of the painful story your brain wants to offer you when things don't go the way that you hope. This is the work I do with my clients, learning how to spot these patterns, understand the feelings underneath them, and then create the power to access peace without needing anyone or anything outside of you to change first. And when you do this, it changes everything about how you show up with your team and yourself.
So here's what I want to leave you with. Invisible contracts are so interwoven into this experience of motherhood. Most of the time we don't even realize they're shaping how we feel.
But once you really see these expectations, the emotional needs underneath them, and the stories your brain wants to tell about them, this is when you get your power back. You don't have to let go of love or connection or even your hopes for your relationship with your team. But what you can let go of is giving your peace away to whether they follow through in exactly the way that you hoped.
So I want to invite you to reflect this week. Where are you holding on to an invisible contract that your team never signed? And if you want help with this work, seeing these patterns and learning how to create peace without needing anyone else to change, this is exactly what we do together in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. It truly changes everything about how you show up as a mom and as a woman in this chapter of motherhood. My friend, I will never tell you that you should lower your expectations.
Or give up on what matters. But you can learn how to hold these expectations with compassion and self-trust so that you can stop outsourcing your peace and start creating the experience of your life that you want. Until next time.
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.
