“NOTHING MATTERS TO MY KID”—THOUGHTS MOMS PARENTING TEENS ARE ASHAMED THEY THINK | EP. 286
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.
There's something I hear from moms all the time, and I think it's worth talking about because it can honestly be infuriating. And it can also be one of those things that you think you're the only one dealing with. And that's when your big kid just doesn't seem to care.
They get Cs on their tests, maybe even Ds, and it doesn't seem to bother them. Or you set consequences, take away the phone, or you tell them they've lost access to the car for a week, and they say, okay, in this flat voice. Or you sit them down, and you tell them something they did that really hurt you, and you get nothing, a blank stare.
You might try to have a conversation with them about their future, and they say, I don't know, or the word that makes every mom's blood pressure spike, whatever. You feel absolutely powerless and frustrated. Like, why is it that nothing matters to my kid? They don't seem to care at all.
And it's not just that they don't react. It feels like everything you try to do to engage them seems meaningless. You ask them to text you when they get there, because you can't sleep until you know they're safe.
And they don't bother. You try to tell them you love them, and that you're worried about them, and they say, why? You can feel like all of this effort just goes into a black hole. You're still trying your best, loving them in all the ways that you know how, trying to hold them accountable and encourage them to reach their potential, and you get nothing back.
It hurts, and it's frustrating, even infuriating at times. But there's something even scarier underneath all of this. Because if nothing seems to matter to them, how am I supposed to reach them? How do you parent someone who seems like they just don't care about anything? Remember the good old days when you could discipline your kid, and they would just fall into line? I remember I used to count to three, and I rarely made it to three.
My boys just knew that when mom started counting, she meant business. They stopped whatever it was they were doing, or they got on whatever it was I told them they were supposed to be doing. Little kids are just so much easier to influence.
And actually, they often seem to care. They want your approval. They actually seem to want you to be happy, or at least it feels that way.
So now that our kids are growing up, it can sometimes feel like that switch has turned off. And it's really hurtful, and honestly confusing. Like, what changed? And it's funny, this goes even deeper than worrying your kid will do what you tell them to do.
I mean, look, on one level, we know kids are going to test boundaries. But then you have the conversation with them, or you set the boundary, and hopefully help them course-correct and learn the lesson. But this is honestly scarier than that.
Because when it feels like your kid just doesn't care, it's like the conversation you try to have with them, or the consequence you try to implement, it just doesn't register. It doesn't seem to matter. And if that's true, then what exactly am I supposed to do with that? I was talking to a mom the other day, and she told me about a situation with her kid where he had done something that was not only irresponsible, but really hurtful.
And she tried to talk to him about it, to not only tell him all the reasons why what he'd done was a problem, but she also communicated her deep disappointment and how hurt she was about what he had done. And he said, sorry, but it didn't feel like it was enough. Actually, it didn't feel like he meant it.
And then he just moved on, went about his day. Didn't even seem like the conversation had impacted him in any way. And she told me, I'm having a really hard time letting this go.
Another mom I work with told me about how her daughter got a DUI, and it felt like that should be serious enough for her to learn her lesson. But then months later, she got into a car accident with a group of friends after they had all been drinking. Even though she hadn't been driving, it felt like she had learned nothing.
And even though this mom was bending over backwards, trying to both hold her kid accountable and keep her from facing all of the devastating consequences of her actions, she felt like her daughter just didn't care. Didn't care about the risks of her choices, and also didn't care about how hard her mom was trying to help her. And it's incredibly scary.
You feel helpless to protect and guide the person you love most in the world. And sometimes it can actually feel like what you need to protect them from is themselves. The hardest part, I think, even harder than sitting with the hurt and the anger of not being able to reach your kid, the hardest part is actually the not knowing.
Is this just my kid being immature and self-centered? Are they just dealing with hormones or the need to push back or pull away? I mean, if we could really know that this is just a stage that they're going through, and that somehow, in some way, these lessons are going to land, if we could just have that certainty, then maybe it wouldn't feel so hard right now. But the reality is, we don't have this certainty. I've shared this story before, but I want to share it in a different context.
So this spring, my son was planning to spend the summer in Chicago for an internship, and he was contemplating bringing a car. But then as we were talking about it, he said, no, it's probably not worth it. I remember how long that drive is.
And then totally out of nowhere, he said, you know, every time I tell my friends the story about you driving me home from Chicago for 14 hours overnight just to get me to work, they say, wow, my mom wouldn't do that for me. You've got a really awesome mom. And he said, yeah, I do.
Now, at the time this happened, my friend, and this was only a few months ago, my jaw hit the floor. I mean that literally. Because at the time that drive actually happened, it felt like it meant nothing to him.
At the time, my son was a junior in high school, and we were not doing well. We weren't connecting. In fact, at times, he looked at me like I was the devil.
He wasn't opening up, wasn't sharing anything about what was going on with him. And boundaries, forget it. Curfews meant nothing.
I'd tell him that something he'd done was hurtful or disrespectful, and he'd just get more angry. But for some reason, at the time, he agreed to go on a college trip with me to Chicago, because college still mattered to him, and I was the one paying for the ticket. So we went.
And the visit itself was fine. It was tense, but manageable. We weren't fighting.
We were just coexisting. Then we got to the airport to fly home, and our flight got delayed, and then delayed again, and then finally it was canceled. There were no more flights out until the next day.
So my son started getting visibly angry, because he had to work the next morning. Or at least that was the story he was telling me. And so he had to get home.
Now, there are so many reasons why that story wasn't landing with me. I mean, he hadn't cared much about getting to work on time before. But honestly, in that moment, I thought, oh my god, he's actually telling me he cares about something that I agree should matter to him.
So I made a split-second decision. I said, you know what? Why don't we just drive home? Now, I'd made that same drive once before, stranded after 9-11. So I knew exactly how long and how brutal it was to go from Chicago to New Jersey.
But if I'm honest with myself, I wasn't just doing this nice, helpful thing for my son. There was a part of me that thought, if I do this for him, if I go to these great lengths, that maybe he'll finally see how much I love him. And this will maybe repair something between us.
I had a very clear ulterior motive. I wanted the drive to fix us. So we rented a car and we hit the road.
And my son spent the whole drive either texting, scrolling, or sleeping. We barely talked. I drove through the night and managed to get him to work only about 20 minutes late.
And we got there. He got out of the car, maybe mumbled a brief thanks, as if he was dismissing an Uber driver. And he got out of the car, and that was it.
So needless to say, I drove home and cried. Clearly, I was exhausted. But not only that, I was so hurt and disappointed.
I thought for sure that making this big effort would mean something to him. I mean, how could it not? But it clearly didn't. Fast forward four years, and admittedly, our relationship is now in a completely different place.
But somehow, my son now remembers that drive exactly the way I hoped he would. He actually tells the story like it's proof of how much I love him. Incredibly proof of what an amazing mom he thinks I am.
But I had absolutely no idea he was registering any of it at the time. Now, four years is a long time to wait. And let's be honest, this story doesn't prove that it's always going to work out this way.
We'd all like to think that we're striving for this happy ending. But if you're in the thick of struggling with a big kid, acting like nothing matters to them, these happy endings don't offer much by the way of reassurance. Here's what I think is actually happening, and it's subtle.
Our brains see no reaction. We see a shrug, a flat okay, a sorry that doesn't sound like it means anything. And our brains make this enormous leap.
We go from she didn't react to she doesn't care. Or from he said sorry but didn't seem to mean it to he hasn't learned his lesson. We go from she got in that car after everyone had been drinking to she doesn't care what happens to her.
Notice how quickly our minds go from what we've actually observed, behavior that appears ambivalent or hurtful and even irresponsible. And our minds go somewhere much bigger. It's like evidence about who your big kid is, or whether you've failed at teaching them the lessons you've been trying so hard to teach them.
And even whether you matter at all in their life. My friend, I know from personal experience how hard it is not to jump to these interpretations. I mean, it's not like our kids do this one time.
They often give us plenty of evidence that makes it hard to come to any other conclusion. And yet, these conclusions are still not necessarily the whole truth. My friend, this is the trap of emotional reasoning.
And here's how it works. You tell your daughter you've been terrified since the accident. And you wash her face for something.
You look for signs of worry or remorse. Anything that tells you what you said just landed. And when the signs you're looking for don't come, you don't just feel disappointed.
You feel unsettled, like something is genuinely wrong. And so your brain does what it always does with an unsettled feeling. It looks for a story to explain it.
And the most obvious explanation it finds is, she doesn't get it. She hasn't learned her lesson. Maybe also, I have no way to reach her.
So often, that pit in your own stomach becomes the proof. In other words, our own sense of unease becomes the evidence that something is broken. That they don't care.
You're not even necessarily reacting to your big kid. You're responding to your own nervous system. And interpreting that as information about them.
Just consider how much weight we put on other people's external reactions. In fact, just think about how complex your own internal dialogue is. How complicated your emotional reality is.
While it may absolutely be true that some of what you feel is written plainly on your face at times, reality is, whatever you show on your face is just the tip of the iceberg. Other people actually have absolutely no idea about the depth of your own internal experience based on what you say or what reactions you have. And so just notice how much weight we put on our own interpretations of our big kid's external reactions.
As if that captures the full experience that they're having internally. We're essentially looking at these reactions, their responses, their shrugs and their eye rolls, and the repeated mistakes. And we use those brief moments, as repeated as they may be, we're still using them to answer incredibly complex questions like, do they care? Do I still matter to them? Have they learned anything? Or are they ever going to learn? Just notice that that is an awful lot of weight.
To put on one moment, one reaction. Here's the part I don't think we often realize. A lot of the time, we're not just reacting to get through to our kid.
We're also trying to produce a reaction in them. Because if we're really honest with ourselves, that reaction is what will allow us to stop worrying. If you just look appropriately shaken by that DUI, maybe I could trust that you won't make this stupid mistake again.
Or if you seem apologetic enough, maybe I could trust you again. In fact, maybe I could also find it easier to forgive you. Or if you seem remotely appreciative of the effort I made, maybe I could feel like our relationship isn't broken, that I'm doing a good job as a mom.
And that's exactly what I wanted on that drive home from Chicago. It wasn't really a thank you I was chasing. I wanted evidence, some sign that said, we're okay, you haven't lost me.
Mom, I'm still here. I still love you. It's like I needed him to regulate my own fears with some sign of reassurance.
And at the time, he couldn't do it. For whatever reason, was it immaturity? Was it him just being in his own head, struggling with whatever he was struggling with at the time? I have theories. But at the end of the day, I don't think I'll ever really know.
The simple reality was, in that moment, he couldn't give me what I was looking for. And I do think it's worth acknowledging that there's a real developmental piece here. The part of the brain responsible for self-control and weighing long-term consequences keeps developing into the mid-20s.
And what that means in practice isn't that they can't register what you're feeling or what you're trying to tell them. It's that in a stressful, charged moment, they're often too flooded by their own internal reactions, whether that's defensiveness or overwhelm or even shame. They're too overwhelmed by all those emotions to show that what you said or did registered.
It's not that they don't have the capacity for your words to register. It's just that it's not fully developed yet, especially under pressure. Now, that doesn't excuse their behavior.
It just means that a blank face in the middle of a hard conversation isn't strong evidence of what's actually happening under the surface of their minds. So what is actually happening behind that blank stare or that flat sorry or that terrible decision? Honestly, we can't know. And that is the reality we resist the most.
Because not knowing feels unbearable when your kid's safety might be at risk or when your relationship feels broken or when your kid's future and character seems in question. And the truth probably is that sometimes our kid truly does not care. I'm not gonna lie.
But also, it is entirely possible that they absolutely care, but they won't let you see it. Maybe because showing what they're feeling feels like handing you a win. Or they could be so overwhelmed with their own shame, they don't have the energy to perform remorse for you.
Or sometimes acknowledging what you said feels like agreeing that you were right, and they're not ready to give you that. If I were to guess what was going on with my son in that car for 14 hours, to be honest, I think he was trying so hard to believe that I was the enemy. There were things I had done that he had convinced himself were terribly wrong, and he hadn't reconciled that in his mind yet.
And that was work I couldn't force him through. But he got to the other side of it in his time. None of that is a promise your kid secretly cares, and you'll find out later.
I can't promise you that. Maybe some of what you're seeing really is indifference. But maybe you could just notice how tightly you're holding onto the belief that your kid doesn't care, and that they never will.
And just consider holding it a little more loosely, because all they're really letting us see right now is a shrug, a lame apology, or a really bad choice. Not knowing what's happening inside of them is not the same thing as nothing happening inside of them. So here's your invitation.
Stop treating your kid's reaction as the scoreboard for whether or not you got through. By all means, communicate your disappointment. Hold the boundary.
Enforce the consequence. Tell your kid when something terrified you, even when you get an eye roll. Keep telling your kid you love them.
Do all of this, but stop needing to explain it five more times or chasing a sincere-sounding apology or waiting for evidence that what you're doing is working. Stop waiting for all of this to believe that what you are doing is enough. And again, I'm not saying tolerate dangerous choices.
That conversation about drinking and driving might need to happen multiple times. In fact, that's one I never get sick of reminding my boys about, even when I get the eye roll. But what if you could trust yourself to show up as the mom you want to be, whether or not you have immediate evidence that what you're doing is working.
If I'd had a crystal ball on that drive home from Chicago, I still would have been hurt by that mumbled thanks, but I wouldn't have made it mean I was losing my son. Unfortunately, we don't get that crystal ball. But what I do know now is that my son's silence back then was never proof that I didn't matter to him.
It just meant I couldn't get the reassurance I was looking for at the time. Creating this trust in yourself as a mom and navigating the pain of watching your kid not seem to care, this is the work we do in my Mom 2.0 coaching programs. You'll learn how to understand your own emotions instead of trying desperately to interpret theirs.
You'll learn the difference between a boundary that's actually working and one that's just not getting acknowledged. And you'll also learn how to navigate the uncertainty of not knowing by empowering yourself to trust that you showed up as the mom you want to be, even when it seems like your kid doesn't care. My friend, you may not get to know right now what's actually getting through to your kid.
There may be conversation your kid remembers years from now that you were so sure went absolutely nowhere. And maybe there won't be. We don't get this guarantee.
With their blank face or their lame sorry or their silence, it's not proof that nothing is happening. And maybe more importantly, you don't need their reaction to decide whether or not you showed up as the mom you wanted to be. 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.
