Managing Your Teen's Expectations

podcast Dec 13, 2022

This is Going to Be FUN: the Podcast

Episode 25: Managing Expectations

Episode Summary:

Managing Your Teen's Expectations During the Holidays and Throughout the Year

Worried about finding your teen the perfect Christmas gift? Or if everyone will be happy on Christmas morning? Are you frantically trying to get everything done to create the perfect Christmas experience for everyone?

The holidays are a time of anticipation and excitement and a whole lot of fun. But they can also create a lot of high expectations. And when those expectations aren't met, it can cause a lot of disappointment for our teens...and for us as parents.

I am sharing 3 tips in this episode that will help you navigate your teen's expectations AND help you manage your own expectations too.

And these same strategies work throughout the year for birthdays, vacations, accomplishments and any other time when expectations are high.

Anticipating Christmas

Have you ever noticed how great we are at hyping up Christmas Day? We count down to it and look forward to it. We imagine what it will be like: how it will smell and sound and feel. We spend weeks preparing everything for that one special day.

The smell of our traditional breakfast casserole baking in the oven and a freshly peeled orange someone already opened after finding it in their stocking. The sounds of laughter and excitement and wrapping paper ripping and crunching.

The lights from the Christmas trees twinkling in the dark of the early morning and the comfort of having my little family all together. It is magical.

All the Anticipation Can Lead to Disappointment

But sometimes those expectations can lead to disappointment when someone wakes up sick or grumpy or didn’t get the one present they had wished and hoped for.

And a lot of times we take responsibility for our kids' expectations. We think it is our job to make Christmas perfect for them. And teenagers can be especially hard to please.

They are becoming more independent, not just in what they can do, but in how they think and what they want. Their likes and dislikes are diverging from what you want them to like and dislike as they try to claim their independence and differentiate themselves from you. And that can be a recipe for unmet expectations for you and your teen.

How To Manage Your Teen's Expectations

So today I want to share a few thoughts to help you manage your own expectations and navigate your teen’s expectations. And while this is timely with the holidays upon us, expectations aren’t limited to this season. These same principles can apply to so many different situations throughout the year when expectations are high.

So, here are three are my 3 tips to help you navigate expectations:

1. Set better expectations

When we have expectations for how other people are going to act, react, feel or respond, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We have ZERO control over any of those things.

We think if we just manipulate the situation and make everything perfect that we will be able to control how other people think, feel, react or respond, but it just doesn’t work (and it turns us into a crazy control-freak in the process). People are going to think, feel, react and respond however they want.

What you can control, though, is how you think, feel, react and respond, so I suggest creating your expectations around what you want that to look like.

How do you want to feel on Christmas morning? What if someone doesn’t like their gift…how do you want to feel about it and how do you want to respond? What if someone seems annoyed or grumpy…how do you want to feel about it and how do you want to think about them?

When you create expectations for yourself, regardless of what is happening around you, you can have the experience you want even if things aren’t going how you wanted them to.

If you want to experience a magical Christmas morning, you absolutely can. You can choose to think thoughts that help you feel love for every single member of your family. You can choose to be delighted and surprised by whatever happens. You can choose to look for the evidence that Christmas is magical and I promise you will find it.

But maybe you don’t want to experience a magical Christmas morning and that is ok too. You can also choose to be disappointed or sad or lonely on Christmas morning. The first holiday celebration without a loved one is bound to be a challenging one and you don’t have to pretend it isn’t.

A knock-down-drag-out family feud on Christmas morning may not be something you want to be delighted by or ignore. You might want to feel disappointed if your teen glares at you and says they hate every gift you picked out for them. But the key is remembering that those situations aren’t making you sad or lonely or disappointed…it is the thoughts you are choosing to think about them.

The Christmas Disaster

To illustrate this I want to tell you about our Christmas Morning a few years ago.

We decided to visit family that year for Christmas. My Grandpa had passed away a few months before and I really wanted to be there with my grandma and the rest of our family for Christmas.

Traveling with 6 kids for Christmas is crazy-town. We had planned way in advance, done a lot of strategic shipping of gifts, stuffed our car full of presents and made all the arrangements to keep all of our beloved traditions even though we weren’t at home.

After all that work, my youngest daughter woke up Christmas morning feeling terrible. We went to check out all the presents from Santa and she couldn’t even crack a smile. I handed her a present to open and she burst into tears because she felt so crummy all she wanted to do was go back to bed.

Of course, we sent her back to bed. And while I was sad that she wasn’t there with us that special Christmas morning and I felt bad that she was so miserable, I didn’t want to let that put a damper on Christmas for everyone else. So, we carried on and had a wonderful Christmas while she slept all day long.

And the next morning we set all of her presents up exactly the way they were Christmas morning and had a redo Christmas morning just for her and watched her open all of her presents. It was a little bonus day of celebration just for her and it felt just as special.

And it would have been fine if we had decided to delay celebrating, but instead we were able to find the good in a crummy situation. I mean, what are the odds that my little girl would go to sleep perfectly well on Christmas Eve and wake up so miserable that she couldn’t even open a single Christmas present?

It is kind of ironic and even a little funny when I think about it now. And what a fun memory she now has of starring in her very own Christmas morning celebration while everybody watched. She doesn’t get the spotlight very often as a middle child, so it may have actually been a blessing in disguise.

So have expectations for how you want things to go, but focus them on the things you can control – how you want to think, feel, react and respond and you will have a much better chance of your expectations being met.

2. Disappointed is not the same as Ungrateful

When it comes to unmet expectations – whether your own or your teen’s – the result is usually some form of disappointment.

I read the other day about a research study on the effect surprises have on people – for better or for worse. The study found that surprise actually intensifies whatever emotion we are feeling by 400%. That is a huge difference in how we experience an emotion.

This explains why surprise parties and vacations are so fun and exciting. It also explains why unexpected bad news can feel so devastating.

When your teen doesn’t get what they want (whether it is a tangible item or an experience they expected to have) they feel disappointed.

And when they expected to get what they wanted and then don’t, they feel surprised and disappointed which makes them feel 400% more disappointed. Add to that the fact that teenage brains are still developing and they don’t have the full capacity to regulate their emotions yet and their reactions to those feelings might be a little over the top.

As parents, we often interpret their disappointment as being ungrateful or spoiled or entitled.

And as they are feeling these intense emotions, WE are surprised by their behavior which intensifies our emotion of frustration or anger so we want to react and let them know how rude they are being and what a spoiled brat they are.

But if we can use our fully-developed adult brains to pause and remember that they are just feeling intensely disappointed, we can respond calmly and compassionately. You know what it is like to feel disappointed and it doesn’t feel great. You can probably understand why they are reacting the way they are.

Give them some time and space to process that emotion and they will probably work through it and come around. But even if they don’t, the best time to have a rational conversation about it isn’t when their emotions are at 400% intensity.

The reality is that discovering what they want and getting excited about it is actually an important part of your teenager’s development.

It is not your job to provide them with everything they want, but teaching them not to want will set them up for a life of holding themselves back and settling for whatever the world offers them. That can lead to a life of people pleasing. It can lead to staying in unhealthy relationships and miserable jobs. Not allowing themselves to want is what causes so many adults to feeling lost and like they don’t even know who they are anymore because they have gotten so used to ignoring their own wants and desires.

You WANT your teen to discover their interests and dream about what is possible so they are motivated to go out and make it happen.

It is absolutely possible for your teen (and yourself) to be disappointed about what they don’t have AND grateful for what they do have. They are not mutually exclusive. Disappointment when expectations aren’t met is not a problem…and it doesn’t mean your teen is ungrateful, spoiled or entitled.

3. Giving Gifts from Love

Gift giving is not my love language. It stresses me out and I feel like I can never come up with the perfect gift for anyone. And when I do think of something fabulous, sometimes they end up not being as excited about it as I thought they would be.

I have a few siblings, however, who are fantastic gift givers. They always come up with the most meaningful, thoughtful gifts. Stuff that I didn’t even know I needed or wanted until they give it to me and I realize how much I love it.

I have realized though, that part of my stress with gift-giving was coming from my desire to give the perfect gift. But when we focus on giving gifts that will make other people happy or wow them with my gift-giving skills, we will probably end up stressed and disappointed a lot of the time.

Because how they feel about the gift comes from what they are thinking about it.

I have a 9-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl who both want new jeans. If I get both of them new jeans that are exactly the style and size they love and wrap them up and put them under the Christmas tree, they are both going to be thrilled, right? Wrong.

The 9-year-old boy is not going to be very excited when he opens that gift, but my 15-year-old daughter is going to be elated. It isn’t because of the gift; it is because of what they are thinking when they open that gift. The 9-year-old might be thinking, “clothes are not a fun Christmas gift” whereas the 15-year-old might be thinking, “I can’t wait to wear these!” and it will completely change their experience of the gift.

I am not saying you shouldn’t try to give great gifts that people want and like. But I do recommend taking a slightly different approach to gift-giving.

A New Approach to Gift Giving

Instead of focusing on how someone will react to the gift you give, focus on how you feel about the person you are giving the gift to. Think of gift-giving as an opportunity to experience love for them.

Instead of thinking about what GIFT you can give them, just think about THEM. What do they like? What do they not like? What are your favorite memories with them? Why do you enjoy being around them? What do they do that makes you laugh?

When you direct your brain to all the things you love about a person, you get to experience LOVE for them – and that is the best part of the whole gift-giving process! The joy of loving the person is way better than watching their reaction to the gift. And when you have already experienced the best part of gift-giving you don’t put so much pressure on their reaction to your gift.

How to Give Better Gifts

This little perspective shift works like magic. Not only do you have a better gift-giving experience, but when you take the pressure off of finding the perfect gift, you make space for all the creative ideas your brain might come up with and you end up giving way better gifts.

Have you ever been having a conversation and you couldn’t think of the word for something. It drives you crazy, right? And the harder you try, the less likely you are to think of it. But when you let go and move on with the conversation, it all of a sudden comes to you. The same thing happens here too.

And when it comes to your teen, don’t be afraid to give them exactly what they want. If the goal of gift giving is just to experience love for them, the actual gift doesn’t matter as much.

So buy them exactly what they want or give them money if they like to choose their own gifts and don’t feel bad about it! I promise you aren’t a better or worse parent if you surprise them with the perfect gift they never knew they wanted or if you give them an envelope full of cash.

I hope these thoughts help you manage all the expectations you might encounter in the next few weeks so you can have the holiday experience you really want this year. Set better expectations, remember that disappointment is not the same as being ungrateful and feel all the love for the people on your list as you give gifts from love this year.

I am so excited about what I have planned for my ENJOY coaching community in 2023 and if being a better parent is one of your goals for the new year, I know you are going to be excited about it too!

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Podcast Transcript

I love Christmas morning. Watching the kids line up and break through the crepe paper at the top of the stairs like they are running onto the football field for the homecoming game, seeing everyone’s eyes light up as they figure out which pile of gifts belongs to them. The smell of our traditional breakfast casserole baking in the oven and a freshly peeled orange someone already opened after finding it in their stocking. The sounds of laughter and excitement and wrapping paper ripping and crunching. The lights from the Christmas trees twinkling in the dark of the early morning and the comfort of having my little family all together. It is magical. But sometimes those expectations can lead to disappointment when someone wakes up sick or grumpy or didn’t get the one present they had wished and hoped for. And a lot of times we take responsibility for our kids' expectations. We think it is our job to make Christmas perfect for them. And teenagers can be especially hard to please. They are becoming more independent, not just in what they can do, but in how they think and what they want. Their likes and dislikes are diverging from what you want them to like and dislike as they try to claim their independence and differentiate themselves from you. And that can be a recipe for unmet expectations for you and your teen. So today I want to share a few thoughts to help you manage your own expectations and navigate your teen’s expectations. And while this is timely with the holidays upon us, expectations aren’t limited to this season. These same principles can apply to so many different situations throughout the year when expectations are high. So, here are three are my 3 tips to help you navigate expectations: Set better expectations When we have expectations for how other people are going to act, react, feel or respond, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We have ZERO control over any of those things. We think if we just manipulate the situation and make everything perfect that we will be able to control how other people think, feel, react or respond, but it just doesn’t work (and it turns us into a crazy control-freak in the process). People are going to think, feel, react and respond however they want. What you can control, though, is how you think, feel, react and respond, so I suggest creating your expectations around what you want that to look like. How do you want to feel on Christmas morning? What if someone doesn’t like their gift…how do you want to feel about it and how do you want to respond? What if someone seems annoyed or grumpy…how do you want to feel about it and how do you want to think about them? When you create expectations for yourself, regardless of what is happening around you, you can have the experience you want even if things aren’t going how you wanted them to. If you want to experience a magical Christmas morning, you absolutely can. You can choose to think thoughts that help you feel love for every single member of your family. You can choose to be delighted and surprised by whatever happens. You can choose to look for the evidence that Christmas is magical and I promise you will find it. But maybe you don’t want to experience a magical Christmas morning and that is ok too. You can also choose to be disappointed or sad or lonely on Christmas morning. The first holiday celebration without a loved one is bound to be a challenging one and you don’t have to pretend it isn’t. A knock-down-drag-out family feud on Christmas morning may not be something you want to be delighted by or ignore. You might want to feel disappointed if your teen glares at you and says they hate every gift you picked out for them. But the key is remembering that those situations aren’t making you sad or lonely or disappointed…it is the thoughts you are choosing to think about them. To illustrate this I want to tell you about our Christmas Morning a few years ago. We decided to visit family that year for Christmas. My Grandpa had passed away a few months before and I really wanted to be there with my grandma and the rest of our family for Christmas. Traveling with 6 kids for Christmas is crazy-town. We had planned way in advance, done a lot of strategic shipping of gifts, stuffed our car full of presents and made all the arrangements to keep all of our beloved traditions even though we weren’t at home. After all that work, my youngest daughter woke up Christmas morning feeling terrible. We went to check out all the presents from Santa and she couldn’t even crack a smile. I handed her a present to open and she burst into tears because she felt so crummy all she wanted to do was go back to bed. Of course, we sent her back to bed. And while I was sad that she wasn’t there with us that special Christmas morning and I felt bad that she was so miserable, I didn’t want to let that put a damper on Christmas for everyone else. So, we carried on and had a wonderful Christmas while she slept all day long. And the next morning we set all of her presents up exactly the way they were Christmas morning and had a redo Christmas morning just for her and watched her open all of her presents. It was a little bonus day of celebration just for her and it felt just as special. And it would have been fine if we had decided to delay celebrating, but instead we were able to find the good in a crummy situation. I mean, what are the odds that my little girl would go to sleep perfectly well on Christmas Eve and wake up so miserable that she couldn’t even open a single Christmas present? It is kind of ironic and even a little funny when I think about it now. And what a fun memory she now has of starring in her very own Christmas morning celebration while everybody watched. She doesn’t get the spotlight very often as a middle child, so it may have actually been a blessing in disguise. So have expectations for how you want things to go, but focus them on the things you can control – how you want to think, feel, react and respond and you will have a much better chance of your expectations being met. Disappointment is not the same as Ungrateful When it comes to unmet expectations – whether your own or your teen’s – the result is usually some form of disappointment. I read the other day about a research study on the effect surprises have on people – for better or for worse. The study found that surprise actually intensifies whatever emotion we are feeling by 400%. That is a huge difference in how we experience an emotion. This explains why surprise parties and vacations are so fun and exciting. It also explains why unexpected bad news can feel so devastating. When your teen doesn’t get what they want (whether it is a tangible item or an experience they expected to have) they feel disappointed. And when they expected to get what they wanted and then don’t, they feel surprised and disappointed which makes them feel 400% more disappointed. Add to that the fact that teenage brains are still developing and they don’t have the full capacity to regulate their emotions yet and their reactions to those feelings might be a little over the top. As parents, we often interpret their disappointment as being ungrateful or spoiled or entitled. And as they are feeling these intense emotions, WE are surprised by their behavior which intensifies our emotion of frustration or anger so we want to react and let them know how rude they are being and what a spoiled brat they are. But if we can use our fully-developed adult brains to pause and remember that they are just feeling intensely disappointed, we can respond calmly and compassionately. You know what it is like to feel disappointed and it doesn’t feel great. You can probably understand why they are reacting the way they are. Give them some time and space to process that emotion and they will probably work through it and come around. But even if they don’t, the best time to have a rational conversation about it isn’t when their emotions are at 400% intensity. The reality is that discovering what they want and getting excited about it is actually an important part of your teenager’s development. It is not your job to provide them with everything they want, but teaching them not to want will set them up for a life of holding themselves back and settling for whatever the world offers them. That can lead to a life of people pleasing. It can lead to staying in unhealthy relationships and miserable jobs. Not allowing themselves to want is what causes so many adults to feeling lost and like they don’t even know who they are anymore because they have gotten so used to ignoring their own wants and desires. You WANT your teen to discover their interests and dream about what is possible so they are motivated to go out and make it happen. It is absolutely possible for your teen (and yourself) to be disappointed about what they don’t have AND grateful for what they do have. They are not mutually exclusive. Disappointment when expectations aren’t met is not a problem…and it doesn’t mean your teen is ungrateful, spoiled or entitled. Giving Gifts from Love Gift giving is not my love language. It stresses me out and I feel like I can never come up with the perfect gift for anyone. And when I do think of something fabulous, sometimes they end up not being as excited about it as I thought they would be. I have a few siblings, however, who are fantastic gift givers. They always come up with the most meaningful, thoughtful gifts. Stuff that I didn’t even know I needed or wanted until they give it to me and I realize how much I love it. I have realized though, that part of my stress with gift-giving was coming from my desire to give the perfect gift. But when we focus on giving gifts that will make other people happy or wow them with my gift-giving skills, we will probably end up stressed and disappointed a lot of the time. Because how they feel about the gift comes from what they are thinking about it. I have a 9-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl who both want new jeans. If I get both of them new jeans that are exactly the style and size they love and wrap them up and put them under the Christmas tree, they are both going to be thrilled, right? Wrong. The 9-year-old boy is not going to be very excited when he opens that gift, but my 15-year-old daughter is going to be elated. It isn’t because of the gift; it is because of what they are thinking when they open that gift. The 9-year-old might be thinking, “clothes are not a fun Christmas gift” whereas the 15-year-old might be thinking, “I can’t wait to wear these!” and it will completely change their experience of the gift. I am not saying you shouldn’t try to give great gifts that people want and like. But I do recommend taking a slightly different approach to gift-giving. Instead of focusing on how someone will react to the gift you give, focus on how you feel about the person you are giving the gift to. Think of gift-giving as an opportunity to experience love for them. Instead of thinking about what GIFT you can give them, just think about THEM. What do they like? What do they not like? What are your favorite memories with them? Why do you enjoy being around them? What do they do that makes you laugh? When you direct your brain to all the things you love about a person, you get to experience LOVE for them – and that is the best part of the whole gift-giving process! The joy of loving the person is way better than watching their reaction to the gift. And when you have already experienced the best part of gift-giving you don’t put so much pressure on their reaction to your gift. This little perspective shift works like magic. Not only do you have a better gift-giving experience, but when you take the pressure off of finding the perfect gift, you make space for all the creative ideas your brain might come up with and you end up giving way better gifts. Have you ever been having a conversation and you couldn’t think of the word for something. It drives you crazy, right? And the harder you try, the less likely you are to think of it. But when you let go and move on with the conversation, it all of a sudden comes to you. The same thing happens here too. And when it comes to your teen, don’t be afraid to give them exactly what they want. If the goal of gift giving is just to experience love for them, the actual gift doesn’t matter as much. So buy them exactly what they want or give them money if they like to choose their own gifts and don’t feel bad about it! I promise you aren’t a better or worse parent if you surprise them with the perfect gift they never knew they wanted or if you give them an envelope full of cash. I hope these thoughts help you manage all the expectations you might encounter in the next few weeks so you can have the holiday experience you really want this year. Set better expectations, remember that disappointment is not the same as being ungrateful and feel all the love for the people on your list as you give gifts from love this year. I am so excited about what I have planned for my ENJOY coaching community in 2023 and if being a better parent is one of your goals for the new year, I know you are going to be excited about it too! Make sure you go to the link in the show notes and get on the waitlist so you don’t miss your chance to get inside when it opens in a few weeks! https://client.jenbelltate.com/membershipwaitlist