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Parenting A Teenager - Changing A Bad Relationship
Perhaps your child is about to enter the teen years, or he is already there and your relationship with your child has become strained.
Or perhaps your relationship has always been strained.
Whatever the case, you need to mend some fences so you can help your child work through this difficult age.
Often, a bad relationship starts with a simple misunderstanding, or with a particularly difficult phase of your life that takes time away from your child and makes her feel resentful.
If the relationship is not terrible, you don’t have to work too hard to get it back on track.
Before you sit down with your teenager to talk, be sure you get your thoughts in order.
Every parent of a teen can tell you that they begin a conversation thinking they have some modicum of control, and end up screaming and slamming doors and getting nowhere.
So, you need to plan your conversation. Sit down and write some notes, organize your thoughts into a logical sequence.
Think about how to begin so that you don’t set your teen off from the opening sentence.
If the discussion is going to be particularly difficult, you can practice it with someone else.
Have the person with whom you are practicing play the role of your child (hopefully you will pick someone who knows your child well) and try to be as honest as possible about the roadblocks your child might throw up in front of you in an effort to protect himself.
Think about how you will handle these roadblocks and what you will say to make him comfortable enough to open up and talk to you.
Plan the discussion for a date and time when you know your child has the free time to talk.
You don’t want them using the excuse that they have to go to practice or they are late for work.
Be sure there is time on their schedule to have a thorough discussion and that you are not interrupted.
If you have other children, see if you can schedule a play date at a friend’s house so that they are hanging around bothering you while you are trying to talk.
By all means, don’t have this discussion in front of other people if your child may feel embarrassed or resentful about their presence.
THINK about what your child wants and how to create the most welcoming environment.
Stay focused, and avoid becoming defensive or confrontational when you talk. Your child may try to throw blame on you or criticize you to take the focus off of her.
Be ready for that.
Don’t blame HER and don’t let her blame you. If necessary, be honest about where you have gone wrong and sincerely apologize to your child.
That honesty will earn you respect. If the two of you can agree to try harder, you have a deal.
If you break through the barriers, the next thing you want to do is to figure out how to keep this from happening again.
Talk about how you will plan to spend time together, and be honest about your schedules. Figure out how to communicate (by email, by phone, by spending 10 min a day at the kitchen table).
Whatever you have to do to keep the lines of communication open, it is important to make that breakthrough.
Before we move on to other topics, let’s discuss some special circumstances that may have caused a rift between you and your child.
Long-Term Illness and Long-Term Care Issues
If you or your spouse have been hospitalized or experienced a long-term illness at a crucial point in your child’s life, you might find that they have withdrawn from you.
This sometimes happens as a way for the child to protect themselves against the possible loss of a parent.
When they realize that you may not be around forever, they can get scared and pull away.
If that is the case, you need to have an honest discussion with them about the reality of mortality and you may also want to have your child see a counselor for awhile to work through these issues with an objective and sympathetic therapist.
If your teen feels threatened by this potential loss, he may not want to lean on you and might become more independent than he is ready to be.
If you find yourself in a situation where you have to spend a lot of time caring for an elderly parent or relative and that takes time away from you and your teen, there are several things you can do.
If your teenager is emotionally up to the challenge, you can involve the teenager in the peripheral care of this person.
NEVER put them in charge of this, but they can help you with little errands or spend time reading to a grandparent or sitting and chatting with them while you are there doing other things.
And then you are experiencing this life event together and it will teach your teenager about responsibility and give them a positive role model for their future adult life.
It will also give you time to monitor your teen and talk to them about the little things that make up their life.
If your teenager is not up to this challenge, and you find it hard to spend enough time with her, be sure you SCHEDULE that time so that your child doesn’t suffer the consequences.
Have someone else sit with your parent or elder family member while you take your child out to lunch or go to her gymnastics competition.
You can feel squeezed by elder care and the task of raising children and it is easy to just throw in the towel, but that would be a mistake.
With some planning and the willingness to accept help – don’t feel you MUST do it all alone – you can make this work.
Even if you are a single parent, you can explore the adult daycare options in your community.
These options provide transportation and common activities to get your parent or older relative out into the world and allow them to socialize with someone other than you and they give YOU a chance to wind down a bit and reconnect with your teenager.
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