Why you aren’t connecting with your teen I know you want to connect with your teen. You have heard all the research: - Kids who feel connected to their family experience less anxiety and depression. -They are more empathetic, trusting and cooperative with others which leads to them having better relationships throughout their entire lives. - Teens who feel connected to their family are less likely to engage in risky or violent behaviors. - Teens with good relationships with their parents are more resilient and get better grades. - They are more confident and have higher self-esteem With all of those benefits, of course you want to do anything and everything you possibly can to connect with your teen. A quick google search will reveal tons of ideas for how to connect. You can try everything from conversation starter games to baking something with them but without the essential foundation I am going to share with you today, your relationship with your teen will never be as connected as it could be. So before you go out and drive your kids crazy trying “30 ways to stay connected with your teen” or “8 Creative & Crazy ideas to connect with your teen” I want to help you get yourself in the right mindset so your efforts aren’t met with dramatic eye rolls. First, in order to really connect with your teen you have to get clear about job as their parent. Your job as a parent is not about your child -- it is about YOU. Your teen’s behavior, grades, attitude or appearance do not determine your success or failure as a parent. But so many moms define themselves by how their children behave. The truth is, you don’t get to take credit for your child’s success or achievements BUT you also don’t get to take credit for their failure or mistakes. Your child’s successes, failures, achievements and mistakes are really just an indication of who your child is choosing to be right now. They are indications of their values, maturity, self-control and motivation. It isn’t who they will be forever…it is just who they are right now. The only way to measure how well you are doing as a mom is by looking at what YOU do and determining how similar it is to what you WANT to do. I think your most important job as a parent is to love your kids. Your job is not to get them to love you. Your job is not to change them. Your job is not to make them happy. Your job is not to mold them into the people you want them to be or make sure they never experience hard things. Your job is not to send them to an Ivy League College. Your job is not to make sure they get a fair shot. And your job is not to raise a well-adjusted adult who contributes in the world, like I used to think mine was. And if you are thinking, “But Jen, why not? That is actually exactly what I want for my kids! What mom wouldn’t want her child to be happy and have a great life and become a contributing adult?” I get it! And I know. But every one of those things is about your child, not about you. If it worked to try and control your child into being the person you want them to be, I would be on board, I’d support you wholeheartedly! But it doesn’t work. Your child gets to decide how they want to feel about you. Your child gets to decide if they want to be happy…or not. Your child gets to decide whether or not they care about college and grades and school. Your child gets to decide whether they want to contribute as an adult or whether they want to be a surf bum and live in a van. Your child will experience hard things…and you might be part of the hard things they have to experience. In fact, your failings as a mom might be the exact thing that motivates them to stand up for themselves, get good grades so they can move across the country for college or develop the skill of forgiveness. When you know that your job is simply to love your child, you will show up differently! Now, I am not saying you should let your child do whatever they want without consequences. Love will look different in every situation. Sometimes love looks like teaching. Sometimes love looks like rules. Sometimes love looks like advocating. Sometimes love looks like talking about the potential dangers of the path they are currently on. Sometimes love looks like accepting the person they are choosing to be and mourning the person you thought they were going to be. And sometimes love looks like “I love you and no.” When you stop trying to control your child and start working on controlling how YOU show up…everything will change. You can decide how you want to react when your child doesn’t do what you asked. You get to decide how to react when your child yells “I hate you” and slams the door. You can decide who you want to be when your child gets an A…or a C…or an F. You get to decide how you want to show up for your child when they are sad, or lonely or excited. The question I want you to ask yourself is, “Who do I want to be as a parent?” Not “who do I want my kid to be after I parent them” but “Who do I want to be as a parent?” Write the answer on a sticky note and put it somewhere you will read it every single day. The second thing you have to do is think about your teen differently Our connection with someone else comes from the way we think about them. Think of someone you follow on social media or even an author or celebrity that you really like. Do you feel a connection to them? Why? They may not even know you exist, but every time you see them in your feed or hear about them you think about how awesome they are, you are curious about what is happening with them. You feel connected to them because of the way you think about them. One day after my kids left for school, I looked around and noticed that none of them had done what they were supposed to do the night before. I walked around my house picking up the things I had asked them to put away and with every item, I got madder and madder. My thoughts about my kids made me feel angry: Why can’t they just put their stinkin’ shoes away when they take them off? Why didn’t anyone do their jobs? They know that every single day after dinner we do our after-dinner jobs. It isn’t a mystery…we’ve been doing it for years! Why did they even have cups upstairs…they know better than to bring drinks upstairs. My kids are so irresponsible and such slobs! I have taught them better than this. This is unacceptable! My kids were at school. They had no idea I was angry. They didn’t feel bad. They didn’t feel the wedge in our relationship. But I did. I was miserable thinking about all the ways they were doing it wrong. You can’t connect with someone when you are judging them. How do you think about your teen? Does it make you feel connected to them? Do you constantly focus on the things they are not doing? Or the things they are doing wrong? How much time do you spend thinking about all the awesome things they do? If it is too much of a stretch for you to think about the good things they do, try being curious. Not curious about how you can get them to change or do what you want…curious about what is going on in their brains. Why they like the things they like. Why they are drawn to certain people and clothes and music. What inspires them? If I had been curious about why the jobs weren’t done instead of walking around with judgement and blame, I would have had a totally different experience straightening up my house that morning. “I wonder what they were doing last night after dinner that was so interesting and important to them? I wonder why they like to keep their shoes by the door? I wonder why they needed their cup upstairs? I wonder how their friendships are going? I wonder how school is going for them? I wonder why they seem so interested in that game on their phone? I wonder what makes it so fun for them?” As you get curious about your child, you start to see them for who they are right now…instead of seeing how different they are from the version of them you had hoped they would be. I know it is a bummer, but that version of them doesn’t exist, and the more you wish it was so, the less you will be able to connect with your child. You can only connect with who they are right now. When you aren’t trying to change them and fix them and mold them into the version of them you imagined they would be, you get to love them for who they are. I promise your child is 100% loveable right now! They aren’t perfect. Nobody is. Fortunately for all of us, that isn’t a prerequisite for being loveable. But how can you think about your child in a way that creates more connection? Do you remember when you were dating someone new and you wanted to know everything about them…their favorite snack, their favorite food, their beliefs and values, the things they had experienced in their life. You got to know their friends and made a special effort to learn about their family. You probably know a lot of that information about your child already, but is it possible that you have just assumed some of it? How can you get to know them even better? What could you learn about them that you don’t already know? Now, please, don’t go ask your child 8000 questions or they will be super annoyed with you and you will learn nothing. That isn’t how you did it when you were dating someone new (although I did go on a date once where the guy took out a list of conversation starter questions, so maybe you could try playing would you rather or a converstion starter game). Pay attention to your child. Listen to them. Be genuinely curious. Not only will you learn a ton, but you might actually enjoy spending time with them! You might find that who they are is even better than who you thought you wanted them to be. Either way, they are 100% loveable just the way they are. It is your LOVE ABILITY – or ability to love – that will grow when you start thinking about them differently. As you practice thinking about them in a way that creates connection, your ability to love them for who they are will grow and both you and your child will feel a greater sense of connection as a result. With these two concepts in mind, I would love to invite you to join my free 10 for 10 Connect with your Teen Challenge at the link in the show notes. Each day for 10 days, I will send you a quick 10-minute challenge to help you connect with your teen. As a mom to three teens and three more almost-teens, I know that you are not interested in cheesy ideas that will annoy your teens, so these ideas are teen-approved. By the end of the 10 days, I promise you will feel more connected to your teens! You can also follow me @jenbelltate over on Instagram for more details about the challenge and even more ideas to help you connect with your teen. There is one more concept that is essential to creating connection with your teen, but it is so important that I want to do an entire episode on it! Check back next week to find out what it is and learn how it can help you create an even deeper connection with your teen.
