Dear ones, I recently asked you what would be good for you as parents during your children’s teenage years, what you need to feel less alone and overwhelmed with certain topics. And today I would like to build you a soft cloud that can envelop you when things get challenging again.
Maybe there was another ruckus yesterday, someone got impatient again and was even hurtful as a result, there were accusations again or the exact same discussion that you’ve been going round in circles for weeks. You might be asking yourself:
How do I deal with it when my child blames me for everything and accuses me of not wanting them to be happy? How can I remain tolerant when I am openly rejected by my child? How can I endure this painful rejection? Am I doing everything right? Is it the same for others?
All the questions in teenage years
How do I manage not to take insults personally? How can I address things that I know will probably make the child explode? How do I deal with tantrums when the 16-year-old teenager doesn’t feel understood again? Is it okay to forbid my 13-year-old to have gel nails or am I exaggerating because it’s nothing existential?
When does it „click“ when it comes to school, when things are getting serious and something needs to be done? Who gives ME a hug when I have to pick my child up after a bad grade because they are questioning their entire existence? And how can I stay cool when he doesn’t care about poor performance?
How can I stay relaxed when the first parties are coming up? How can I let go and stop being so scared when the children are out and about? Who can tell me that everything will be okay and that this is all just a phase and that my child won’t slip away (or is it already doing that?)?
Where else can I influence media consumption? Who can help me to strengthen my child if they have experienced a bullying situation? How can I give them confidence and a desire for the future when everything is in a fog?
Where are the other parents who are honest about how difficult it all is sometimes, who recognise that there are also bad times, times of doubt? How do I manage to keep a sense of humour in this new life situation?
How much goes through our heads!
Do you see how many questions there are? How many areas of life they affect? How shaky the foundations are because we perhaps didn’t realise what was coming at us in this phase of our lives? It’s absolutely okay to feel overwhelmed by all the abundance. It’s fantastic that you’re thinking about whether you’re doing it right, because that’s how we come to reflect.
When the big picture becomes so out of control, we need to look at what we still have under control on a small scale. How can I regulate myself? What else helps me in challenging situations? Under what circumstances can I cope better?
If I’ve ever ended up in a ditch on a Vespa myself, it might be important for me to forbid my child from travelling on two-wheelers because otherwise I won’t be able to sleep all night. If the idea of my child being chauffeured around at night by a strange Uber driver gives me the creeps, I can offer to pick them up myself at a certain time.
We also have to be able to live with the decisions
It is the compromises that we also negotiate with ourselves in order to be able to cope better with these new situations in our lives. We are allowed to explain our decisions to our children, but we have to see which battles we are really prepared to fight so that we can then make our announcements with conviction. After all, WE also have to be able to live with our decisions.
Let’s compare this with a situation on holiday when our three children were still very small and very lively and active. We went to a viewpoint on a mountain overlooking the sea. There were fences (you can put up fences! And you decide how close you build them to the cliff) and yet the children were running around far too fast and far too uncontrollably. I could already see them falling into the sea in my mind’s eye.
If I had been there alone in this situation, I would have simply put them back in the car and buckled them in again to keep them safe because I was so scared of heights that I couldn’t relax. But now there were three of us here, the other two said they could keep an eye on her and accompany her, so I went into the car alone and was able to calm down again.We should also know our own limits well
But we need to know our own limits well. And distinguish between real danger (there wasn’t any) and perceived danger (my nervous system). Of course, if there was real danger, we would have left them all in the car. Logo. So it was more relaxed for everyone to separate for the moment. They could enjoy the view, I myself was out of the worry of responsibility and didn’t transfer my own fears.
We can ask ourselves what is really important to us. We are allowed to set firm rules and we are also allowed to soften rules and find compromises. Fixed values and variables. We can make sure that everyone gets through this phase as unscathed as possible, including us. We are allowed to talk about feelings, we are allowed to maintain and accept boundaries.
Being a lighthouse: offering orientation and reliability
We can be the lighthouse when a storm comes up and our child’s boat starts to wobble and even loses its bearings for a moment. The lighthouse doesn’t go with them. The lighthouse stands firm, shines into the dark and remains reliable.
But the lighthouse also needs maintenance. Sometimes it needs a new coat of paint and modern electricity. The lighthouse also needs a bit of restoration when storms have raged around it and gout residue has settled on the masonry. A restoration that helps it to withstand the next waves and to bounce back from time to time, even if it then sometimes squeaks inside.
You can be big, you can shine, you can be sure that your signals will be received, even if the path through the fog sometimes takes longer… in the end, we offer orientation and, above all, reliability. Because we are there. And we stay there. Even if the boat is far away and only flashes on the horizon.
