Teenage daughter

[N888]

My relationship is not good with my 20 year daughter and she is rebelling against us. I need advice please.

[Juliet_84]

Hi N888,

Can you give us some examples of the types of things you argue about? So that we can see if there are any common themes or ways to approach it differently?

[N888]

Hi. 

She thinks first we are against her (we arent) and we have to walk on egg shells around her. When she goes out....she thinks she doesnt have to tell us where and who she is with. When i ask, she yells at me. Im happy she is going out, but the respect isnt there. 

Her curfew. Always pushes the boundaries. Alcohol, always pushes for more. Money, always wastes and spends money. Its a constant battle. I know she wants to be an adult, but she still makes bad decisions.

[therising]

Hi N888

I remember the very moment I woke up to the question 'What am I doing (in the way of parenting)?'. I realised then that I was parenting from my own parents' perspective. I was expecting my daughter to follow their rules (that I found coming out of my mouth) before realising how those rules used to trigger me at times. I recall my daughter asking me, when she was younger, 'Can I go to the indoor pools with my friend and her mum this evening?'. My husband and I agreed 'No. You're not going out the evening before a school day. 'She reassured that they were having some dinner at the pool, she had no homework to do and she'd be home before 7pm. Again our response was 'No'. My daughter questioned and questioned to the point where I could feel myself getting annoyed with her and then it suddenly hit, 'It's not fair. She's right. It's not fair she can't go out and have fun before coming home at a perfectly reasonable time'. I was prepared to rob her of fun, basically because of this rule. My husband agreed that he had to follow the same rule. We smiled at each other before saying to our daughter 'No worries, just make sure you're home by 7', which she was. I realised how I was more inclined to listen to my parents' rules than my own child's reasonable requests. I began to listen more and my daughter and I began to negotiate more as reason able people. Of course, she's not been a perfect angel but that's okay. What can I say? Glass houses 😁

Being a bit of a rebel when I was younger, I began to consider a lot of the things I did and the kind of discussions I wish my mum had had with me. While my mum would have said 'You shouldn't be drinking so much', my approach with my daughter has been along the lines of 'If you begin to drink more and more, you need to seriously question that. If alcohol's offering you some form of high or relief, you need to begin wondering why you can't get that naturally'. It's more a matter of leading her to be more conscious about the decisions she makes.

One of the key things I've promoted with my kids over the years is listening to their instinct/intuition. 'You'll feel when you're about to do something wrong or go off course, just as you'll get a feel for what's the best course of action. You'll feel which people not to trust (that red flag feeling) and you'll get a sense of the one's who are a good and reliable source of inspiration. I think if I'd been led to develop better instincts when I was younger, I wouldn't have done half the things I did, leading to regret. At 52, I've reached the conclusion regrets are few when instincts are good.

[smallwolf]

I don't think it is helpful for your daughter to be yelling at you. In that area you deserve to be respected.

I also think back to when I was a 20-something at Uni. I moved away from home and so did my brother. Some live in a college and others share houses or similar. Some would take their new found freedom to the extreme.  Of course, here parents won't know what is happening. It sounds that in your situation you get to see it all. 😞

It would be nice if ours kids took our advice... and sometimes they have to learn through their own mistakes.

Have you tried to have a conversation with her using I communication (vs You)?

[N888]

Im too scared to talk to her sometimes. I feel she is hiding things from me and she is withdrawing from the family. She hides in her room. Doesnt help around the house. Always on her phone, snapchat or instagram. 

I find her friends advice is always better than mine. Some of the advice she gets from them. I shake my head.

But positive note....she is doing extremely well at Uni and always goes to work. 

Now she has a new boyfriend for a week and he comes first. Yesterday she was out with him, didnt tell us where she was and when I rang her. She yelled at me and came home at 1am. 

Maybe it is my fault and im the problem. Like she said. 😪

[therising]

Hi N888

One of the things I struggle with the most regarding my kids involves fear. When you love your child or children so much that you fear for them, based on the questionable choices they make, that kind of love and fear are hard to manage at times. They can be the most precious person or people on the face of the planet as far as we're concerned. It can be so hard not to guard them. Personally, I used to be somewhat of a helicopter parent until my kids expressed how this stopped them from developing in certain ways. Such a hard habit to break.

My daughter's almost always chosen groups of friends pretty well. While she could be a member of a group who may be a bit experimental of rebellious, my fears were small based on the nature of such people. I got to know her friends to various degrees. They were all basically good people. No matter our age, most of us will have good friends with some bad habits or questionable outlooks.

Most of us eventually come to be good savers, we come to be more responsible in a lot of different ways, we come to be more thoughtful of others, more grounded in certain ways etc. In the lead up to who we eventually come to be we can be big spenders, irresponsible in a number of ways, thoughtless at times and ungrounded etc. While your daughter takes great responsibility with her uni work and her job (coming back down to earth on occasion), she sounds more conscious than a lot of people her age. 

You both sound like you're challenging each other in a number of ways. Some of those challenges may be ones you have in common. What does respect mean to the both of you? What does being more considerate mean to the both of you? What does a sense of peace or a sense of love mean to the both of you? With her not being a parent, one thing she most likely won't be able to relate to is that sense of fear that comes with loving someone so much.

[N888]

Yes, its the fear and trust. Im struggling with. She broke the trust with that Uni friend she meet and she changed my daughter. 

Now building that trust and fear of her making mistakes and rebelling. 

How do i overcome the fear? Build the trust again? Every time she goes out and I hear her bedroom door open I get anxiety!! It brings up bad memories when she went out with that Uni friend and didnt listen to us at all. But when they all needed lift homes at 1am in the morning, they would all call me.

How do i handle her going out with her new boyfriend now? 

I love my kids and yes, want to protect them unconditionally. 

[N888]

What do i do, when she just leaves the house, without telling any of us. 

Thats when my fear kicks in....😞

[therising]

Hi N888

The fear is absolutely horrible at times. I think it's because we love them so much. If we didn't like or care about our kids we wouldn't care where they were or who they were with. We wouldn't even care what happened to them.

I suppose it comes down to packing as many skills into them as possible, this way if they got into some sort of trouble, they'd have the skills to manage. The skill of fully convincing everyone to get a taxi home when a friend insists on drinking and driving everyone home, the skill of questioning a friend or boyfriend when their behaviour is questionable, the skill of managing alcohol...the list goes on. 

I think one of the key factors when it came to managing my fear as my kids got older involved my imagination. Sounds so simple and even a bit ridiculous but it's truly challenging thing to manage at time. I have to imagine my kids making it home safely. I have to imagine them being able to manage what to do in a challenging situation. I have to imagine them having the common sense to phone me if they really need me. I have to push myself to imagine the best outcome, as opposed to the most fearful one. Once they step out that door, the only thing I have control over is my imagination and, in turn, my stress levels and nervous system.

I think there can be some fear and/or dread in our kids' minds too. If my kids fear what I'm going to say when they tell me where they're going, they either won't tell me or they won't tell me the truth. If they dread my reaction, they'll not feel the freedom to tell me. Of course, I will question them if they tell me something I find highly questionable. If I didn't care so much I wouldn't question them.

I've mentioned to my kids in all honesty how much I fear at times and how that's because I love them and I worry about their well being. They've told me I need to have more faith in them and their ability to manage. As parents and with years of experience, we've learned there are some things in life you just don't see coming and they are the things we worry most about for our kids.

[Juliet_84]

Hi N888,

I don’t think it’s a matter of being anyone’s fault, you both just seemed to be locked in a battle at the moment and it’s not conducive to getting along. The reality is that you can both keep going like this and hope the other one backs down (spoiler alert they won’t) or try and find some way to meet somewhere where you’re both happy. And that will likely mean both of you probably bending a bit further than you’d like or feel comfortable. I think you need to sit down and have a discussion with your daughter, not a lecture or one where you are in control of but one that you’d have with a friend. Tell her you are exhausted and at a loss as to what to do and ask her where she is coming from and listen. I imagine (knowing most teenagers) she will want more freedom and sees the fact she always fulfils her uni obligations and goes to work as proof that she can be trusted, and it is to be commended. You will need to think beforehand about what you need, I imagine communication is key. So you can say “I don’t mind what you do on X, Y and Z but I need a text at 5pm each night you are out so I know what to do about dinner” or something like that. Explain why you need to know so she doesn’t just think you’re being unreasonable. Give her relatively easy things that she can stick to so that she doesn’t just not bother and give her the reasons why it’s important to you. Get the boyfriend over for dinner too, it’s a lot harder to screw over people you’ve met etc.