For Parents: Improving Connection with Teens

If you’re the parent of a teen, you already know that some distance and pushback on your limits is part of the deal. However, when negotiations and conflict feel like the only conversations you’re having, your overall relationship can start to feel strained.

This can feel even more overwhelming if you know that your teen is struggling. Whether it’s anxiety, ADHD, or a big life change like starting a new school, we can falter when we try to connect AND also need to set typical parenting limits (no, you cannot stay out until 3AM on a Wednesday!). The harder we try, the further away they may seem. That dynamic is not a failure of the relationship; rather, it’s a product of how teen/parent relationships and emotion dysregulation work.

Three Patterns That Show Up in Almost Every Family

Research on adolescent therapy and family dynamics, including foundational work by DBT-A co-developers Jill Rathus and Alec Miller (2015), identifies 3 main patterns that come up between parents and teens:

• Too loose versus too strict: either having too few limits or having too many rules that are challenging to keep up with

• Making light of problem behaviors versus making too much of typical teen behaviors: either minimizing real warning signs or worrying about behavior that is a part of normal adolescent development

• Forcing independence versus fostering dependence: either leaving teens to handle problems that are developmentally out of their skillset or hovering in ways that prevent a teen from building confidence and skills

If any of these sound familiar, you’re in good company. The goal isn’t to pick one side or the other, but instead to find a middle ground through building emotion regulation skills and strengthening communication skills.

Where Emotion Regulation Comes Into the Picture

Adolescents, by nature, are in a process of rapid brain development. They are beginning to process information faster, increase their problem-solving capabilities, improve their capacity for complex emotions, and learn essential planning and decision making skills for adulthood (Konrad, Firk, & Uhlhaas, 2013). However, these developments are in process. This can feel uneven and chaotic because it is! Sometimes your teen can respond in wildly mature ways to stressful situations, and other times frustrate the heck out of you when they text you 17 times in a row panicked that they forgot their lunch (and metrocard!) for the 3rd time this week.

Rathus and Miller (2015) also give us really helpful insight into the ways in which emotions for teens, in particular those with challenges such as anxiety, depression, or ADHD, can feel more sensitive, intense, and slower to settle than those of their peers or of adults. When a conversation gets tense, their nervous system can end up working against them. What looks like defiance or shutting down is often a teenager in emotional overwhelm.

This is important for us to understand, not to excuse behavior, but to change how we can respond to it. Put plainly: a teen’s behavior can be out of bounds and be speaking to a need for emotion regulation skills. When we understand this, it opens up a different kind of conversation that is more likely to actually land.

How Parents Can Improve Connection: Validation

Ok, so how do I improve that connection?

Validation is one of the key skills parents can employ when having conversations with teens. It’s also one of the most misunderstood concepts. Validation lets another person know that their thoughts, emotions, or behaviors make sense in a situation (Rathus & Miller, 2015). It’s like communicating, “Ah, I see how you got there.” And when used correctly, validation can feel incredibly soothing and improve connection between two people.

Now, validation does not require communicating agreement. For example, let’s say Rosie was just broken up with and is devastated. She is trying to communicate that to you, but does so by saying “I’m never going to school again - I cannot be seen in public like this!” Our first thought as a parent may be Yes, you really do need to go to school. And that is also true! They do need to go to school! However, what our teen is asking for is for us to hear that they are upset and embarrassed. Replying instead with “You’re feeling really hurt” may go a much longer way than starting by focusing on the school part.

Why is this step so important to do first?

Because we need our teens to know that they are being heard to start to kick in the capacity for emotion regulation skills. If I rush to enforcing a limit, problem solving, or ignoring their concerns, it can escalate the situation. However, if Rosie knows she is being heard, she may be more willing to engage in some coping skills and planning for how to get through the school day (such as planning to go to school with a close friend, where to sit at lunch to avoid this ex, and how to focus in shared classes). She can both know that you get it, and she can understand that she needs to go to school.

Using validation consistently in interactions with others can be an integral tool in working through problems, coming up with viable compromises, and getting your relationship with your teen back on track.

For more information on parent-teen strategies like this, reach out to us to schedule a consultation.

References

Konrad, K., Firk, C., & Uhlhaas, P. J. (2013). Brain development during adolescence: neuroscientific insights into this developmental period. Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 110(25), 425–431. https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2013.0425

Rathus, J. H., & Miller, A. L. (2015). DBT skills manual for adolescents. Guilford Press.