POD 85 Your Teenager shouldn't be happy === I hear this all the time from parents. I just want my teen to be happy and I get it. I have definitely felt this way too. It is so hard to watch your child struggle. It's hard to watch them be sad and lonely and afraid and worried, but it's also an important part of our teen's growth and development. The more parents I talk to about this, the more I realize that so many parents define their success as a parent by whether or not their child is happy. They feel like they need to fix everything and get their kid happy again whenever something goes wrong. They feel like something is wrong with them or wrong with their child if that child isn't happy. They feel like being happy is the very best thing for this child. But what if being happy Isn't the goal. The truth is, life would be absolutely meaningless if we were happy all the time. As humans, we need opposition in all things. We need to experience the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. Because when we experience those hard things, those challenges, those down times, then when we have those positive experiences, those successes, and those highs, we recognize them. And we appreciate them and we savor them. If everything was good all the time, we wouldn't even know that it was good because we wouldn't have anything to compare it to. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we as parents need to create any of these negative experiences or any of this opposition for them. We don't need to tear them down. We don't need to make their life hard. We don't need to make them feel bad on purpose. Life will give them plenty of opposition all on its own. But I think it's so important for us as parents to acknowledge that being happy is not the ultimate goal. That opposition is important for our kids. In fact, it serves them in very specific ways. And I want to share some of those ways with you, because I think as we start to understand the importance of opposition in our child's life, we come to a place of acceptance. We don't like to see them suffer, but we realize the importance of it. And it takes a lot of pressure off of us as parents to make sure our kids are happy all the time. And it takes a lot of pressure off of our kids to feel like they should be happy all the time. Because the truth is, they won't. They will not be happy all the time. It's not the way the human experience was designed. The first thing I want you to know is that growth often happens in the struggle. I was recently doing a workshop where they asked us to think back to the hardest challenge we'd ever overcome. And as I thought back on the different challenges that I have had in my life, I realized that in every single one of those challenges, I learned so much, I grew so much, and I became more of myself through those struggles than I had been before. I have a daughter who loves to play the cello, and the only way that she gets better is by making mistakes as she's playing and learning how to fix them. The first time she plays a new piece, it doesn't sound great, but as she practices and as she puts in the work and as she struggles to play the notes, she improves. She gets better and better and better. And the next time she picks up a new piece, she is more prepared to play it better. The struggle is what motivates us to work hard, to persevere, to adapt, to get creative, to think of solutions. Growth often happens in the struggle. The second thing I want you to know is that connection often happens in the struggle. I run a Facebook page for my local area, my local community, and one of the things that I often see happen on that page is that when there is a tragedy or something really hard that happens in our community or something sad that happens in our community, I watch as the community rallies around the people affected. People who may have never connected with each other before are suddenly drawn closer together in the challenge because they have this common goal of overcoming the struggle. And the same thing happens in our families. As I look back on my relationship with each of my children, I can see how the not so happy times were the ones where we grew the closest. Navigating the struggle required us to listen to each other and learn from each other. It required us to apologize and forgive. It required us to help each other through the challenges. To serve each other and support each other in new ways and it brought us closer together. Similarly trust is often built in the struggle I think about the friends I have that I trust the most and They are the ones who have seen me at my worst and who have been through the fire with me My closest friends are the ones that I have called in those hardest times Who have seen me at rock bottom. They are the friends who have let me cry on their shoulder. They're the ones who have listened to me rant in anger when I was frustrated about something. They are the ones who I know will show up for me and who I know have my back when I'm not there. But that trust wouldn't be so strong and so deep if we hadn't been through the struggles together, if it hadn't been tested and tried in the midst of a challenge, if I didn't know that no matter what I was experiencing, whether it was sadness or anger or frustration or my life was falling apart, they would be there. Because it's been tested, because it's been tried in the struggle, that trust is deep. And that is what happens with our kids too. Our kids learn to trust us when they can rely on us to show up during their hardest times. They need to have those hardest times so that we can show up for them, so we can have their back, so we can be there to listen and to love and to hold them. That is how trust grows. And finally, just like trust, love grows in the struggle. We're coming up on the Summer Olympics this year, and one of my favorite parts of the Olympics is watching the story that they do on the athletes before they compete. They show that athlete as a child, and they talk about the struggles that their family faced to be able to help them develop their talent, their skill, their sport. They tell you about all of the bumps this athlete has encountered along the way and all of the effort and dedication that it has taken to get them here where they are ready to compete. And I don't know about you, but by the end of that intro, I am rooting for that athlete. I am so invested in their success and I am devastated when things don't work out for them. And I'm so elated if they end up winning the medal or doing well in the race. That is because love grows in the struggle. Our love for people grows as we see them for who they are, as we see them in their humanness, as we know their story and feel connected to them. Our love for them grows. And as I have watched my own children navigate struggles, my love for them has grown. I have watched my own kids navigate some really, really hard challenges. From everyday friend drama, to struggles in school, to feeling left out. I've seen them work through really challenging questions about their own beliefs and their own faith. I've seen them work hard to make things right after making mistakes, and I've seen them overcome physical and mental illness. And through all of those things, I have come to appreciate them more, respect them more, and admire them more than I ever could have if they were just always happy and good. What is better for your child than being happy all the time is having the capacity and the ability to experience any emotion. The more comfortable your team gets with their uncomfortable emotions, the richer, fuller, more successful, and more enjoyable their life will be. Throughout the month of February in my Enjoy community, we are going to be learning about how we help our kids get more comfortable with their uncomfortable emotions and how we as parents get more comfortable with our kids uncomfortable emotions. A few of the skills that I'm going to be teaching parents are how to acknowledge your child's emotions and help them feel validated in that experience. We're also going to learn how to get curious and really listen to our teens so that they can process their experiences out loud with us. We're going to learn how to stop trying to fix their problems by instead asking them the kind of questions that will allow them to work through the challenge and find their own solutions and answers. And we are going to learn how we as parents can stay calm and not let our emotions get the best of us in those moments when our teen is getting worked up so that we will stay in a place where we can be supportive and helpful to them. If that sounds amazing to you and you are ready to learn these skills for yourself and for your teen, come join us inside of the Enjoy Coaching community. I also have a free resource to teach you how to process your emotions. This is a fundamental skill that I think every single parent needs to have, and one that you need to be able to teach your teen. And so I have made that resource available for free. There is a PDF and a video guide on how to go through this process, and you can download that for free at the link in the show notes. Remember, the goal is not for our teens to be happy all the time. The goal is that they can have the capacity and the ability to experience the whole spectrum of human emotions. That is what will lead to a rich, full, enjoyable life for them and for you.
