Do you miss being included in your teens life?
What makes a happy child turn into someone you hardly recognise?
Let’s explore how you can build your child’s confidence and bring restoration of relationship through the communication that you have with them.
A teenage tantrum can happen when a young person can’t regulate their emotions without support from a calm adult
I fully understand it isn’t easy to remain calm in the presence of a teenage tantrum! It takes practice to keep your own emotions regulated. It can feel scary to be in the presence of a young person who appears so out of control.
Have you noticed your teenager began to change and chose to spend much of their time away from you?
Maybe you wondered if you may have failed them in some way? They may even appear angry towards you.
In an ideal world, parents provide a secure base for their child to explore the world from and this began when they were a toddler. They felt safe with their parent and they knew they could return to the safety of their presence if they felt they needed to.
During the adolescent years, a young person has a developmental phase in their brain which means that they can feel rather lost as they start to develop their own values. These values may differ from the ones held by their parents. They may start to become influenced by peers and the opinion of their peers can start to become more important to them than the opinion of their parents. This is a change for both the parent and the young person.
It is a normal developmental phase for young people to begin to prefer to spend more time with their peers. It is important to realise that even though your young person is physically independent, no longer requiring you to dress them or do many things they once required, they still need parents to help them emotionally.
Your teenager can feel as though they don’t fit in and as if no one understands how they feel. They still need parents to help them emotionally.
They may start to compare themselves to their peers and feel inadequate. At the same time, maybe their grades at school are not as good as they hope for. Adolescence can feel a time of being judged by school, peers and parents, leading to deep feelings of insecurity including not liking themselves.
Wise advice I heard was to eat a meal around a table five times or more each week to help your young person feel as if they belong. It may be that you choose to have a time of talking about what highs and lows each of you have experienced that day as a way to have some open communication together.
Young people know their parents very well and they have learnt which buttons to push to get a reaction. There is a place for you as a parent to be able to reflect on what it is that your teenager says that can cause you to lose your patience or to feel angry yourself.
Being able to model how to repair a disconnect in relationship is essential to help your young person know how to do this.
They still need a place where they can feel valued, accepted and loved unconditionally for who they are. This can be tricky for parents when their teenager is having angry outbursts and treating the parent with disrespect, disconnect in the relationship can easily occur.
When emotions are running high and you feel angry at your young person’s behaviour it can be difficult to prevent saying more than you know is helpful. When this happens, once you are aware that you have said something that you know was not useful or perhaps was even unkind. It is important to be able to model an apology for your part in the conflict.
Young people are seeking reassurance from their parent and they seek their feelings to be validated as much as an adult does.
It can be useful to separate out your young person from their behaviour. You may like to spend some time thinking about the qualities you do see in your young person. Letting them know what you see that you do like e.g. about how they offer kindness to their friends, or the time they did offer to help; you can help them to offer more of this behaviour.
You could say something like: son/daughter, I love you, I want you to know that I am proud of you (you may have an example of a time when you feel proud of them that you choose to say here). I want the best for you and I would like our relationship to be one where we get on well with one another. I am here for you and if there is something that is upsetting you do feel you can talk to me about it. Your feelings are important. Is there anything I can do differently that may help our relationship to flourish?
If there is behaviour that has been especially disrespectful (where you too may have joined in with an argument and also said things that were not useful) at this point you can acknowledge your part and apologise.
Going forward you may like to plan a calm conversation where you let them know that you hope that they can understand that you are not going to accept being called names by them. If emotions are high or you are in the midst of conflict it is not the time to discuss boundaries of expected behaviour.
Encourage your young person that there are other ways they can learn to be when they feel angry. They may need to be supported until they have calmed down enough to talk in a more reasonable way. If you realise you also find it hard to calm down, who can you seek out to support and help you calm your emotions?
They may like to walk for 10 minutes and start to notice what they see, they may like to run as fast as they can or do some other type of physical activity to help them release the energy that anger can create.
Everyone is unique and each person needs to find their own way of managing the angry feeling.
Some people write down how the anger is causing them to feel, ‘a scream that can’t stop screaming’, ‘like an earthquake inside them’, ‘like a war inside’.
Anger in itself is not bad, it can lead to behaviour that is later regretted if ways of coping with the angry feelings are not discovered.
It is possible for anger to be resolved through thoughtful words. It may be that no one helped you with your anger when you were younger and then you may not know how to help your young person to regulate themselves when they are angry.
Perhaps in your family home your parents demonstrated a lashing out in anger and they were not able to teach ways to regulate strong emotions.
When a child is angry, stress hormones flood the brain and this can cause cognitive thinking to become very difficult, instead a more primitive part of the brain can act impulsively as the emotional part of the brain works faster than the thinking part. This can lead to feeling threatened and going into fight, flight or freeze mode.
When a parent uses a soothing tone they are able to help calm the child by offering empathic listening as the young person expresses what has happened for example: ‘it seems to have really upset you that you were not able to take your turn on the xbox because the other children would not let you’ – ‘you seem very upset and angry at the moment’, naming the emotions the child is experiencing for them and helping them feel heard, listened to and valued will help to calm and soothe them.
As a child is offered empathy and enabled to calm by the support of parents, this helps with developing new neural pathways in the brain, leading to an ability to gradually self regulate emotions.
Using the communication model PACE described by Daniel Hughes can help improve the connection between you and your teenager.
P playful: in caregiving a playful moment can reassure both that conflict and separation are temporary and will never damage the strength of a relationship. Playfulness offers comfort and connection.
A acceptance: we can accept what someone is telling us without agreement.
C curious: ‘what was that like for you?’ ‘how do you feel about it?’
E empathy: is imagining the experience of another, putting yourself in their shoes.
It may be that if you as a parent are stressed and overwhelmed and these feelings are not dealt with and processed well, the young person in your home experiences your stress and may feel there is not room for their own emotions to be listened to and heard.
What is so hopeful is that it is never too late to start to develop stress relieving ways. As you talk to someone about how you are feeling and are really listened to you will begin to develop these vital neural pathways in your brain.
Part of being an adolescent may involve extremes, they seek risk and adventure. They may use extreme language to talk about their experiences and this may be frightening for them, and at times you, as their parent.
They may say to you that they wish they were dead. This can be a very frightening thing for a parent to hear from the mouth of the child they love deeply. How will you respond if you hear those words? Will you react angrily telling your child they are ungrateful? Or will you be able to imagine how frightening it is for your child if they do have feelings of not wanting to be alive?
For a young person when they do not feel accepted for who they truly are by their parent this can lead to feelings of self hatred.
Even during the primary school years children can have feelings of ‘sometimes I don’t like myself’.
It is so very important to ensure that your young person believes that you love them just the way they are (disrespectful behaviours and all). You may hate their behaviours. Remember all behaviour is a type of communication.
What do you think your young person wants you to know?
This blog has talked about changes in the teenage brain and how both adults and young people can learn to regulate their emotions. As a parent you can model behaviours you may like to see in your teenager and you can affirm behaviours you see that you do like.
Your teenager needs your positive attention, particularly emotionally, and your affirmation, even if they are isolating upstairs.
Remember as a parent you have a fresh start with your child each day and the fact you have taken time to read this article says that it is important to you to find a way forward to a deeper connection with your young person.
If you think it may help to be listened to as you journey with your teenager, then please do contact me. If you feel your young person may benefit from having a confidential space to talk through their feelings, I have worked with adolescents for over 20 years including those who are in foster care and would be happy to accompany them. Please contact me.