THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS AND ADULT KIDS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK—“I’M WORRIED MY TEEN WILL RUIN MY HOLIDAY” | EP 210
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 had a thought as a mom and then immediately felt terrible for thinking it? Believe me, you're not alone, and you're truly not a bad mom for thinking it. In this series on the thoughts us moms are ashamed we think, I'm exploring these thoughts and where they're coming from.
Because when you shift from judgment to understanding, that's when everything changes. Let's dive in.
Hello, my friend.
I'm worried my teen will ruin the holiday for me. I've actually heard this thought quite a few times over the past few weeks. Is there a part of you thinking this too? You might have even heard or actually said the socially acceptable version of this thought.
The kind we can joke with our friends about. Like, watch, my son will roll out of bed at 1 p.m. and miss half of Christmas. Or, my daughter will probably spend the whole time glued to her phone over break.
Or you might say, I'm going to be stuck in the kitchen doing all of the cooking while everyone else watches football. Or, my teen's already annoyed with me and they're not even home from college yet. These mini-complaints feel relatively light.
They're the kinds of comments you know you're going to get a laugh from your friend about. And we've all been there, experiencing some version of the typical teen in your house. And so we don't feel like we're exposing too much by just admitting these simple frustrations.
And honestly, joking about it helps us vent a little bit of the pressure. But behind these jokes, there's a related category of thoughts that we rarely say out loud. Thoughts like, I hope my kid will actually talk to me.
Or, I really want us to feel close but I haven't felt that way for a long time. Maybe I'm scared they're going to be distant or moody the whole holiday. I hope they actually want to spend time with me.
Or, I hope we don't end up arguing the whole time like we usually do. You could also be having thoughts about how your kid's struggling. Like, I hope they don't act moody and depressed the whole time.
Or, I hope their stress about getting that job or getting into school doesn't make them shut down and not enjoy the holiday. We often don't share these thoughts because they feel a little too personal. And we're also not looking for our friends to feel sorry for us.
I mean, empathy is one thing. But sympathy, even pity, would feel terrible. It's like you have this idea that if you admit these deeper, darker fears to a friend, that they'll be thinking, thank God I don't have that problem with my kid.
And you don't want to risk that type of judgment. But here's the thing, anytime we fear the judgment of someone else, the truth is we're already judging ourselves. I mean, how did we let this happen? We look around and it seems like everyone else is getting along.
Or those other teens seem to be thriving and resilient. You get those holiday cards of shiny, happy families. Some people even write those long letters about all the fun adventures they've taken with their kids all year long.
I mean, sure, you can probably imagine that not every family is perfect. But it can feel like everyone else's family must put aside their differences and the stresses of their lives to enjoy each other's company over the holidays. Of course, if you were to peel back the facade of anyone's life, it's not all joyful and merry in any household.
But it can feel true. Meanwhile, here you are wondering, why is this so hard for us? What am I doing wrong? Why can't we have a nice, happy holiday like the other families? You feel this combination of dread about how your kid might act. But you also feel this fear about what their attitudes and behavior says about you and what it means for you.
Maybe even what you've lost. Do you remember when the holidays used to be so much simpler? I mean, yes, chaotic and busy in their own way. But at least then our kids wanted to spend time with us.
They bought into the magic that we created and the traditions we made for our families. And now everything's different. The kids spend a lot of time in their rooms when they're home.
Or they're out with friends and you're not exactly sure when they're going to be around. You want to have a family meal or a movie night, and they act like it's the last thing they want to do. You feel like you can't even compete with Snapchat or YouTube.
And these are just basic challenges. Our teens can also be acting defiant or annoyed with us. And they can make you feel like you're invisible and irrelevant.
You imagine spending the whole holiday dreading walking on eggshells every single day. Or alternatively, they could be going through a really difficult time in their life and no matter what you do, you can't cheer them up or get them to put their moods aside long enough to just have a little fun with the family. So I wonder if you can relate to this feeling that as you think about the holidays ahead, part of you is excited and hopeful because you want the holidays to feel warm and meaningful.
You want it to be a time when you connect with the people you love most, especially with your kids. But the other part of you feels this dread. Like you're already preparing yourself for the likelihood that it's going to be rough.
You're already imagining the tense conversations and the disappointment of having your kid bail on you again or be totally moody and checked out. And the hard part is this isn't just about the holidays, although I think these times of year can magnify these challenges. Ultimately, the issue we're feeling is the shift in our relationship with our kids in a direction that we don't want.
And we imagine that it's only going to get worse. If they're pulling away, it feels like they're only going to get more distant as time goes on and then one. Eventually, they won't come home at all.
Or if they're struggling, did I somehow fail to give them the tools to work through those challenges? And why won't they trust me to help, to talk it out and find a solution? This phase of motherhood is challenging because you feel like you used to be able to curate a certain mood in your home. Maybe not all the time, but we could generally try to help our kids feel better. Or we could get them to spend time with us in a way that we planned.
But now we have absolutely no control or influence over the way our kids feel or how they show up. The holidays in particular used to be the one time you could count on to get everyone in a good mood. When you knew that you'd all be together even if life is busy and stressful other times.
This is meant to be a time of family togetherness. But now you can't count on this to be true anymore. And it's not that you expect your kid to be perfect.
And you really don't want to force them to do things they don't want to do. But wouldn't it be nice if we could just feel a little closer to them? For just a little bit. To connect in a meaningful way.
To share a little bit of what we mean together. I mean, is that really so much to ask? And look, I get it. We want the holidays to feel good.
We want the connection and the conversations and those little moments that make us feel that even if life is more complicated now, that even if our kids are growing up and pulling away in some ways, that we still matter to them. That we still have a close relationship. And that they still trust us to help them through the hard parts of life.
The problem is that in our desire to feel close and connected to our kids, we start to believe that we can only capture those feelings if our kids show up in a certain way. Like if they're talkative. Or relaxed.
Or in a decent mood. If they're willing to come out of their room. They're not stressed or glued to their screens.
Without realizing it, we have all these expectations of what the holidays are supposed to look like. And it's interesting because anytime I talk to moms about expectations, they often tell me, I actually don't expect much from my kid. I only ask them to do a few things around the house.
But what I want to invite you to consider is that the expectations we often have for our kids are much broader than just what we expect from them in terms of chores or tasks. Even more, we have emotional expectations. We have in our mind a certain way we hope our kid will engage with us so that we can feel connected.
And like we matter to them. Think about what that list looks like for you. For example, we might want our kids to answer our questions with more than one or two words.
If there's something wrong, we want them to tell us what it is. We want them to join us for dinner. To smile at us rather than acting like we're annoying them.
If we're really honest, we also hope that they won't bring the stress of school or whatever challenges they're facing in their life into the holiday festivities. We want our kids to be open and appreciative and present enough so that we can relax and enjoy our time together. So many of these expectations, we never say out loud.
They're less about specific things we want our kids to do and more about how we want the holidays to feel. We want warmth and closeness. We want moments that feel meaningful, especially because we don't get as many of them as we used to.
And when we imagine what a good holiday looks like, we picture our kid being open and communicative and looking like they want to be with us, maybe even having an actual conversation with us. These moments are the real expectation or the hope that we have. And we don't often recognize these hopes as expectations, but they absolutely do shape how we approach the holidays or really any interaction with our kids.
These expectations can set us up to compare what we hope with the reality of how our kid acts. And when our brain sees our kid being moody or withdrawn or just doing things that we'd rather them not be doing, our brains register it as a problem. Here's the thing that makes all of this harder.
When we talk about feeling connected, that word connection automatically implies in our minds to people. It feels like connection requires some kind of back and forth, like a mutual dynamic. And when we're thinking about our kids, we're not just wanting them to show up a certain way so that we can feel okay.
We're wanting them to show up in a way that helps us feel like our relationship is okay. We want to feel close to them. And it feels like closeness has to be a two-way experience.
And look, hopefully over the holidays, you do get to experience some of those moments where your big kid reciprocates, where they actually smile or engage in a conversation, maybe even give you a hug and actually say, I love you. I in no way want to suggest that you shouldn't look forward to or hope for those moments because they're so great when they happen. But the reality is there are also those other times that can feel like regular day-to-day behavior that gets on your nerves.
Seeing your kid be lazy, the empty bottles and the trash left all over the house, the attitude and the eye rolls. Meanwhile, here you are doing everything to make the holiday beautiful for everyone, even more than you usually do, which is already a lot. And you feel like your big kid doesn't even meet you halfway.
I've heard moms say it was one thing when they were little, but now it just feels obnoxious that they sit up in their room gaming or scrolling online all day, and I'm constantly working to clean the house and get things ready. I don't know, would the laziness and the lack of helpfulness be easier if they were kind and loving and appreciative the whole time? I actually think it would be. So I invite you to consider this for yourself.
Do you care more about your kid not helping out? Or is it really about the way your kid connects back with you that feels like the real problem? Because yes, we would love our kids to be helpful and clean up after themselves. But even more, we have these thoughts about what connecting with our kids should look like. Do you ever find yourself saying things like, all I'm asking is for you to sit with us and watch a movie? Or all I'm asking is for you to come to dinner? All I'm asking is for you to just talk to me, just a little bit.
Even when we don't actually say these things, we're thinking them. It's almost like, how am I supposed to feel close and connected with you if you won't even give me anything to work with? So this, my friend, is where we can start to fall into a trap. Because on the one hand, connection does feel like something that involves two people.
It feels like, I'm here showing up with love and effort, and I need you to meet me somewhere in the middle. That's how most of us have come to define connection. It's some kind of mutual exchange.
But when you really think about it, connection is a feeling that you want. It's that feeling of warmth and closeness, that sense that your relationship is good. Connection is your experience of your relationship.
But I think what we often do when we're looking for connection is that we fall into the trap of emotional outsourcing. It's when you think you can only feel that connection, that closeness, if your kid behaves in a certain way first. It's when your brain thinks, I need you to talk to me, or I need you to be pleasant before I can feel connected to you.
So I'm pointing out a difference that is really subtle, but it's important. Because connection is a feeling that's created inside of you. But emotional outsourcing is when you mentally tie that feeling to something outside of you, like your kid's mood, or their attitude, or their behavior.
In other words, connection is how you feel about your kid, and emotional outsourcing is about how you think your kid needs to behave before you're allowed to feel that way. And look, you're not consciously doing this. It's not like you're sitting there thinking, I'll only feel connected if my kid gives me a hug.
It's so much more subtle. It's really tied up with the unspoken expectations we have for our relationships. It comes up when we feel disappointed in those moments when reality doesn't match what we hoped would happen, when our kid doesn't meet us halfway.
But here's something interesting to consider. I think we've come to approach our feeling of connection as something that's conditional, something that you can only feel if someone else does something specific. And this is exactly why our connection with our kids can feel so delicate.
Because when they don't meet our hopes or expectations, which, let's face it, sometimes they don't, it feels as if your feeling of connection disappears. But think for a minute about how different that is from the way you love your kid. When they were born, you felt this deep love for them before they'd ever done anything.
They didn't have to earn it. They didn't have to meet you halfway. They didn't even have to show up in any particular way.
In fact, as infants, they were a lot of work. But you loved them because they were yours. And even now, no matter how old they are, or whatever mood they're in, or however obnoxious they are, I know that you still love them.
This love is unconditional. You don't stop loving them just because they're messy or moody or defiant. For sure, you might get frustrated or hurt or annoyed with them.
But you never stop loving them. So why does connection feel so different? Why does it feel like it has to depend on their behavior when love doesn't? What I want to offer is that somewhere along the way, we started tying our feeling of connection to a set of conditions. A list of expectations of how we think our kid should show up so that we can access that warm, close feeling.
And these conditions we place on feeling connected, this is how we fall into the trap of emotional outsourcing. Essentially thinking, I can't feel connected until you behave differently. So ultimately, it means that we're left waiting for our kid to create connection for us.
But that feeling of connection, like love, like any feeling, is actually inside of you. It's something you create. Your feelings are based on how you think about your big kid, not how they act.
I have absolutely no doubt that you already love your kid for exactly who they are. So why is it that you don't allow yourself to feel connected to them, no matter what they're doing? And I'm not saying that you let them walk all over you. You get to set boundaries around behavior that isn't acceptable to you.
But the invitation here is to stop making connection be something you need to get from your kid, but instead something you choose to feel because you want to, because that's who you want to be. Because if you can love unconditionally, I know you can feel connected unconditionally as well. And so as you head into the holidays, here's what I want to leave you with.
Connection isn't something your teen has to give you. And it's not something you have to wait for. It's actually a feeling you create by deciding how you want to show up to this relationship, no matter what mood your kid is in, or how much they help, or how they're spending their time.
So if you're willing to consider that connection is actually something that's in your hands, maybe instead of trying to get your teen to meet you halfway, focus instead on what it looks like for you to be present in the relationship you have with them right now, where you love them unconditionally and care about connecting with them without needing to place conditions on what that has to look like. Creating unconditional connection might be as simple as letting go of the expectation of exactly what it needs to look like for you to feel connected. Maybe it's deciding ahead of time that you're going to look for those moments of connection that you do have instead of focusing on what's missing.
Maybe it's as simple as remembering, I love my kid and I want to feel connected, and allowing that to be enough. Because the truth is, the holidays are going to be what they are, and your teen is definitely going to be who they are. Some moments are going to feel wonderful, and some will feel messy, but none of that has to decide what connection feels like for you.
My friend, the real gift you can give yourself this season is to give yourself the feeling of unconditional connection with those you love without waiting for them to create it for you. If you can choose unconditional love, you can choose unconditional connection. 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.
