Parenting The Teen You Have, Not The One You Want

Back when my husband and I were dating, his family had an upright piano that they were looking for a new home for. Now, this piano was special. It was a family heirloom, and they wanted to keep it somewhere close because they didn't wanna’ give it away. They just wanted to find a home for it.   Someone who would take care of it and use it and enjoy it. Now I don't play the piano, but at the time I was a vocal performance major, and so his family offered to let me keep the piano in my home so that I could use it and enjoy it. The challenge though, was getting the piano up into my third floor apartment that I lived in with my four roommate.   And there was no elevator to get up to this apartment. It was just stairs. So my husband and his buddies brought the piano over and they hafted that piano up three flights of stairs with a few choice words and a fair amount of grumbling. And I loved having that piano. But then my roommates and I decided we were going to rent a home that was closer to our college campus.   So we had to move the piano out of the third floor apartment down the three flights of stairs and into the new rental home. Well, this home was built at a time when they did really crazy architectural things, like put an entire wall right inside the doorway. So this piano had to go into the door, stand up on its side, and shimmy around the corner to get into the home.   But then a few months later, my husband and I got engaged and we had to again move that piano out of the rental home and into our first apartment, which happened to be on the third floor of an apartment building with no elevators. Now, none of this would've been possible without my husband's amazing friends who moved that piano every single one of these times.   And after we moved it up into our third floor newlywed apartment, one of his friends looked at us and said, your kids better be freaking Mozart. Years later when our oldest child started piano lessons, I think this rang in my mind. Your kids better be freaking Mozart, and I put so much pressure on my oldest child to become a great pianist.   I remember him preparing for a recital one time and he was not prepared at all. The recital was coming in maybe a day or two, and he could barely get through the song that he was scheduled to play in this recital. And I made him play that song over and over and over, four measures at a time until he got it.   And then I recorded him on my phone and we went back and watched it with a fine tooth comb to figure out how he could do better, how he could play better. It was not my finest parenting moment and looking back, I really wish I could push the reset button and redo that moment. Down the road a little ways.   I let him quit piano lessons and he's picked it back up later and been really motivated to learn songs on his own, which has been really fun to see that love of music grow in him. He's not freaking Mozart for sure, but he has discovered a place where he can enjoy music and enjoy piano without the pressure I was putting on him to be amazing at it.   We dream about the things we want for our kids. We want them to be happy. We want them to be healthy, successful. We want them to get included. We want them to have a lot of friends. We want them to be smart, hardworking, and respectful. We have dreams of who we want them to be, how we want them to be, what they can become.   As moms, we see their potential. We see all the good in them, and we see what is possible for them. But what do we do when they don't reach that potential? What do we do when they don't want to pursue those goals and those dreams? What do we do when our teenagers don't turn out exactly the way we thought they would or exactly the way that we want?   We have to parent the teen. We have not the one we want. I recently got back from a backpacking trip with my husband and some friends of ours, and on that trip we were hiking to waterfall. And we had no service on our cell phones, so we couldn't really look up the map, and it was really hard for us to find the trail that we were supposed to be on.   And the biggest challenge was we couldn't figure out where we were compared to where we were trying to go. If you don't know where you are on the map, it's really hard to figure out your next step, and that is true in our parenting as well. Our biggest job is to figure out who our team is today. Right now, not who they were as a little kid, not who they were a year ago, not who they will be as an adult, but who they are right now.   As I coach parents, I notice that so many moms are missing the great things their teenager is doing, the great qualities their teenager does have because they wish they were different because they have this expectation of who they should be that is getting in the way of seeing the good in who they are.   Right now we have to figure out where we are on the map. We have to figure out who our teenager is today. And then we have to meet them where they are so that we can move forward toward our destination together. The way we do this is by getting curious. Stop assuming you know you're teenager. Their interests are changing all the time.   In fact, half of the time they don't even know themselves because they are finding new things to be interested in, to care about, to pursue every single day, and sometimes even hour by hour. Think about this. If your teen didn't feel any pressure from you to be who you want them to be, who would they be?   What would they be interested in? A lot of times as parents, we think we know the answer to this question because we've asked our kids all along, which sport do you wanna play? What classes do you wanna take? Do you wanna do an afterschool activity? What club do you wanna join? But so often our kids answer those questions through the lens of what would make my parent happy and proud of me.   They aren't really answering based on what they want. They're answering based on what they think you want to hear, so that you will love them so that you will be proud of them. So the challenge becomes finding the answers to those questions without just asking them, because we don't know if they're answering for themselves or if they're answering through that lens of, I'm telling you what I think will make you proud of me and what I think will make you love me.   So we have to really get curious. We have to really be observant. Now, that doesn't mean we can't encourage our kids to do things that we think will help them grow. Doing hard things is part of the process of growth and teenagers, like all humans. Try to resist doing things that they think are going to be hard.   So one tip that I love to share with parents as they are helping their teens make decisions about what they want to do, who they want to be, things they want to pursue and participate in, is to have their teenager check their reasons, and you can guide them through this process if their reason for wanting to do something or not to do something has to do with fear of failing, fear of what other people are going to think.   Fear of not being good enough or just avoiding hard work or hard things in general. I think it's really important that we as parents help them work through that and find a better reason. Helping them overcome fear and avoidance is less about pushing our own agenda for them and more about helping them reach their own potential and get out of their own way.   In order to do any of this, we have to really understand where our expectations for our teens are coming from, and they come from our own background and our own experience. And there is nothing wrong with having expectations for our teens, but our expectations often set us up for disappointment because we can't control what our teens decide to do.   Now, those expectations might come from the way we were raised. The expectations our parents had for us. If you grew up in a home that had really high expectations about grades or participation in sports or getting scholarships, you likely will pass those along as expectations for your own kids. They also might come from expectations that other people have for us, that our friends have of how we should parent or our mother-in-law has for how we should parent.   They might come from our own dreams and interests, the things that we were interested in and passionate about. We want to pass that love onto our own kids. Like in the case of piano, I wanted my child to develop a love of music because I loved music. Those expectations might come from our own biggest regrets.   I wished that I had taken piano as a child that I had gotten really, really good at playing the piano. It would've come in so handy when I was a vocal performance major, so I wanted that for my kids. But that doesn't mean that that was what they were interested in. Our expectations might also come from what we see others do or accomplish from that comparison of everybody else's doing it.   I don't want my kid to miss out. I don't want them to be behind. I don't want them to not have every opportunity that is available to them. We see what others are doing or accomplishing, and it looks like it's amazing and we want that for our kids. Another place our expectations come from is what we are making those expectations mean about us or about our teen.   If they don't meet that expectation. If our child doesn't win the awards or get the scholarship or go to college, what are we making that mean about us as a parent? Are we making it mean that our child isn't smart or that they won't be successful or get a good job or be able to provide? At the root of all of these expectations we might have for our teen is fear.   And fear is never going to lead to our best parenting. In fact, it will keep us stuck parenting the teen we think we should have, and we will end up missing out on the teen that is right in front of us waiting to be loved. If you want more support and help in this process of parenting the team you have right in front of you of enjoying them and seeing the good in them, of figuring out where your expectations for them are coming from.   And taking the pressure off of them to do the things that would make you proud or say the things that they think you wanna hear. I would love to be your coach. I provide this kind of support inside of my enjoy coaching community. And whether you are currently struggling with your teen and things are a constant battle, or you just wanna make sure that you are honoring who they really are and setting them up for a lifetime of emotional health and a strong relationship with you that will go on long after the team years.   You'll find the tools and the support that you need inside of Enjoy. We'll see you inside. https://client.jenbelltate.com/membership