Navigating a tough Conversation with your Teenage Daughter—A Therapist's How-To
Your days are exhausting.
You work a full day, and don’t even leave home. Somehow this new corona “normal” is more exhausting than before. You thought that quarantine would bring your family closer together, but everyone sits on their device all day. That can’t be healthy, can it? You end the last zoom call of your day, and the stress of work and family are inescapable. They aren’t separate anymore and there is no space between one and the other; they are one and the same. Hanging up with work means it’s time to navigate the emotions of your family and teenage daughter, but your own emotions feel unmanagable. WIth all that, it’s time to pull together a nutritional dinner.
The last thing you want is to have a blow up with your teenage daughter: words fly, she’s angry and hurt and disappointed, and you aren’t sure why. Meanwhile, you’re desperately digging through the fridge trying to find the last ingredient to make a recipe called, “this is all I have left in my fridge.” In that moment, there are a million things on your mind, and setting your teenage daughter up for emotional success is high on the list, but you don’t know how to do it and you have a million competing priorities (a.k.a. life). In the heat of the moment, you snap, and maybe you say the wrong thing to her, or maybe it was the right thing?
Talk about chaos and waning energy. It’s easy to get engrossed in what we are doing—grocery shopping, setting the table, running from one to-do to the next—and miss the little interactions with our teenagers that have a lasting emotional impact on them.
Being a mom is hard. It feels lonely; it feels like you’re navigating a million unspoken rules and piecing together a few spoken ones. The rules oftentimes feel contradictory, and more times than not, it feels like you aren’t your daughter’s favorite person. It seems like you’re blocked out, even when you’re trying to give your daughter love.
The good news is, you aren’t alone. There are six quick and simple tools you can use to communicate with your teenage daughter more effectively and set her up for an emotionally healthy adulthood.
>> Set the tone.
Setting the tone of your conversation is important, and this starts before even talking to your daughter by acknowledging yourself.
If you haven’t heard it today, we want you to know that you matter. Your daughter won’t tell you this (maybe ever), but coming from this place and recognizing that your actions and presence have an effect on others, including your daughter, is an important place to start. When you know you matter, you understand that your daughter and her feelings also matter. It’s easier to hear her feelings as hers, not yours to fix when coming from this space. When you acknowledge yourself, you won’t be left accidentally feeling like her feelings are at your expense. This helps you see the person in front of you and understand what you can do to help her, even if it’s just hearing what’s on her mind.
Come from this space before engaging with your daughter. If you know you aren’t in this space of love and acknowledgement, you can always express you need a moment to re-group and breathe so that you can come back to the interaction when you’re fresh. You aren’t going to always get it “right,” but don’t let that keep you from trying.
>> Respond, don’t react.
Pause. Take a breath before responding to your daughter. Exhale your stress or external pressures and become aware of how these stresses will want to control the interaction with your daughter. Being aware of your stress can help you understand when you rush a conversation or have a strained tone of voice. Knowing your external environment helps you know what you need to enter into a conversation clearly. Also, being aware of these pressures allows you to notice when you’re reacting so you can shift to the response that feels aligned witht he relationship you desire with her.
By taking three deep breaths before talking, we can reset our vagus nerve. Why is this important? Our vagus nerve is important in controlling our sympathetic nervous system, or better known as our fight or flight reaction. This is the part of our nervous system that keeps us safe when there is a physical (i.e. a lion is chasing us) or emotional threat to us. When our daughter is yelling at us, our sympathetic nervous system is activated and we may fight, run, or freeze. Cue the loud screaming voices and slamming doors. Taking three deep breaths curbs our fight or flight response and allows us to reset and come from a place of intentionality rather than uninformed reaction.
>> Get curious about your daughter’s experience.
Take a moment to analyze the context. Did she have a test at school? Were you aware of the difficulties in her life today? If she’s edgy with you, it isn’t the best time to ask questions. Validating her emotions instead with phrases like, “It looks like you’re stressed...had a hard day...are overwhelmed...have a lot going on” can be the best approach. Label her emotions and validate what she is feeling. This is a way to let her know she is seen. Be mindful of your tone. Saying things like, “Oh you’re angry again?” doesn’t validate her and may intensify the interaction. If you are both feeling edgy, it’s appropriate to communicate that you had a hard day and that it’d be best to address the situation when you’re both ready.
>> Recognize the clues.
If she raises her voice or acts out, get curious. Raising her voice may mean she doesn’t feel heard, or that she’s experiencing a big emotion she doesn’t know how to talk about yet. Make sure you are seeing her for all that she is and not just how she is reacting. Her teenage brain is learning how to regulate emotions and be self-aware, however, she’s going to mess it up a lot. Stop and listen to what she is communicating through her body language. Her needs may be different from what she is vocalizing.
>> Set a boundary.
If she is disrespectful in her response to you, defuse the situation and set your own boundaries. Setting your daughter up for an emotional healthy life doesn’t mean you have to bend at her every demand. If you feel like you’ve been disrespected, you can say: “I see that you’re feeling a lot, but I’m not okay with you yelling or using profanities or slamming the door in my face. How else can we solve this? How about we come back to this when you feel ready?” It is okay to walk away from a tense situation and address it later when both of you are ready. This also teaches your daughter that she can do the same when she has difficult or tense interactions, now or later in her life.
>> Notice the Small things.
Teenagers are in a phase of their lives when they’re learning a lot, and their emotions are only one intense part of everything they are trying to learn. The journey from tense outbreak to calm conversation won’t happen overnight. It’s so important to notice the small shifts in the way both of you communicate in difficult situations. Let her know you see that you see she’s trying. Let yourself know that you are trying, too. We change when we feel the benefit. She may go from reacting to self-identifying her emotions. Maybe she feels more comfortable to talk about the hard things. You aren’t going to get it perfect every time, and neither is she. You can always come back and re-group by saying: “I didn’t handle that the way I wanted to.” Interactions can always be repaired, and coming into each interaction with this mentality gives both of you grace to “mess up” and try again. Noticing the small shifts and reflecting on your progress helps you celebrate the progress. The size of the progress isn’t what is important. Progress is progress.
Most importantly, you don’t have to do it all alone. Seek help, ask questions, and get the support you need. The phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” wasn’t coined for nothing. Get the resources you need and set your daughter up for success later in life by enrolling her in groups like Truth Tribe which aim to normalize sharing difficult emotions.
Truth Tribe is group therapy where young women can explore their emotions and difficult situations in their life through mindfulness and yoga. Truth Tribe offers online and in-person groups, but due to COVID, it’s only online right now. The online groups will remain, even once COVID has allowed therapy to reconvene in person.
Join our private Facebook group for parents to get tips and tricks you can apply to your interactions with your daughter today.